Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c24.s1.7

v2.c24.s1.7

The alien generalissimo and the Ruhela soldier of fortune carried out their dread master's command to the letter. They first swooped down upon Mathurā. But the fabled birth-place of the Divine Preserver was not to fall without a struggle. True, the Marathas, after sucking the Delhi-Agra region and the Doab on the other bank dry for three years, had fled away. Not a single Maratha bled in defence of the holiest of Vaishnav shrines; their pan-Indian suzerainty (*Hindupad Padshahi*) did not involve the duty to protect. But the Jāt peasantry were determined that it was only over their corpses that the ravager should enter the sacred capital of Braja. Outside the village of Chaumuhā, eight miles north of Mathurā, Jawāhir Singh barred the invader’s path with less than 10,000 men and offered a desperate resistance (28th February.) From sunrise the battle raged for nine hours, and at the end of it “ten to twelve thousand infantry lay dead on the two sides taken together; the wounded were beyond count,” and the broken remnant of the Jāt army took the road to their homes. *