Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c25.s6.4

v2.c25.s6.4

Vital had received orders to bring the prince away with himself; but he left him with a small escort under his own son and told him to go wherever he pleased. “Shah Alam, after bidding farewell to Vital Rao, marched beyond Dādri on 16th June, turned his face to the path of the wilderness in sole reliance on God, and told his followers that they were free to accompany him or not as they liked. Most of them left him.” By way of Churkhi he went to Hisār, where he found the Bikānir Rajah’s reply refusing to give him an asylum in his kingdom, a refusal softened by a purse of Rs. 10,000. At Hisār he gathered many military adventurers and some money, and resuming his march on 25th July reached Kunjpurā on the 31st. Then crossing the Jamunā, he reached Muzaffarnagar and was conducted by Najib's brother and eldest son with all honours to Jansath and lodged there. Here many Bārha Sayyids joined him. Najib himself welcomed the prince at Miranpur (c. 20 August) and gave daily subsistence to his troops, but he refused to go to war with the wazir and the Marathas for the sake of his master's son. Unable to effect his purpose here, the prince, after making an addition to his harem, marched from Miranpur across Ruhelkhand to Oudh, where Shujā-ud-daulah received him with full ceremony on 2nd January 1759. Shah Alam's adventures in concert with this ally will form a separate chapter, because they did not affect the history of Delhi or of the imperial Court, but concerned only an outlying and lost province.