Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c27.s10: § 4. The situation in the Doab and Maratha diplomacy
Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c27.s10
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§ 4. The situation in the Doab and Maratha diplomacy
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On 15th June Gangādhar Yashwant (Holkar’s diwān) came and saw the Bhāu, and two or three days later Malhar himself joined them. Suraj Mal presented vast quantities of foodstuffs and other supplies to the Maratha army, and they enjoyed a month of plenty and repose after their constant marching for two months and a half. Consultations now began between the Bhāu and Malhar as to their future course of action. Suraj Mal himself visited the chief on the last day of June.
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The Bhāu met with two severe disappointments at this stage. It was learnt that Shujā-ud-daulah had decided to cast his lot in with the invaders, and that all the Rajput princes, great and small, were confirmed in their policy of sitting on the fence and keeping both sides in play till some great battle should prove which of the two powers was decidedly the stronger.*
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∗ Raj. i. 194, 203, 212 and 216 (halt s. of the Utangan), 217 (2 Ziqad is a mistake for 2 Zihij=16 July, the correct date of the
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A long diplomatic tussle had been going on at the Court of Lucknow between the Maratha envoys and the agents of Abdālī for securing the adhesion of Shujā. While the Nawāb of Oudh was hesitating to which of these two powerful sides he should add his weight, the Bhāu hoped that the arrival of his army near Delhi would put heart into Shujā to reject Abdālī’s invitation, or at least keep him neutral by the fear of a Maratha invasion of his realm if he openly declared against them. Following this policy, the Bhāu from Mālwa had ordered Govind Ballāl to collect boats near Etāwa for enabling the grand army to bridge the Jamunā, cross into the Doāb, drive out the Afghan outposts, and thus insert a wedge between the Abdālī camp and Shujā’s dominions. But Govind failed to secure any boats, the rains began very early this year, and by the end of June the water-level of the Jamunā was too high to allow fording. To spoil the Maratha plan more thoroughly, while Govind with his unreinforced contingent could neither raid Shujā’s province across the Ganges, nor make reprisals on Najib’s jagirs in the upper Doāb, the Maratha posts in the middle Doāb were menaced by a southward march of Najib Khan and Jahān Khan, in the middle of May, when the Bhāu was still far away beyond the Chambal. The Afghans besieged the Maratha *thānahs* of Etāwa
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Bhāu’s arrival at Mathurā.) *SPD.* ii. 127 & 124, also Raj. i. 217a (Malhar meets the Bhau.)
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and Shukohābād, and pushed on to Bithur (north of Cawnpur.)
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The shock of this invasion emboldened the dispossessed local Rajput landlords to rise against the Maratha usurpers everywhere in the Doāb. The Bhāu, on receiving reports of it, wrote frantically to Govind Ballāl, “Urge all your thānahdārs to hold on to their posts patiently. In a few days I shall arrive and all will be well. It is better to die with honour in defence of your posts. The Ruhela besiegers have no artillery with them. . . It is surprising that your collector of a place like Etāwa has fled away!” Shukohābād was abandoned by its Maratha garrison, but that of Etāwa held out, and Najib, leaving it untaken, passed on to Oudh, where he achieved a momentous triumph by inducing Shuja to declare for the invaders. The news of this diplomatic reverse reached the Bhāu on 4th July, and he planned to send his troops across the Jamunā into the Doāb, whence they were to ford the Ganges and invade Shujā’s territory. But the plan failed through his lack of boats and the early flooding of the rivers.
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At the same time the blind obstinacy of the Marathas made a war to the death inevitable for them. When, on 16th May, the month of Muslim fasting ended, Hāfiz Rahmat came from Abdali to open peace talks with Malhar Holkar. At Mathurā he was met by Gangādhar Yashwant ( Holkar’s diwān ) and Suraj Mal, as the intermediaries from this side. They conducted him to Bharatpur, but nothing came of his efforts, as the Maratha demands were exorbitant* and they were only waiting for the vast reinforcements under the Bhāu to reach them, when they would be able to crush Abdālī and thus keep possession of everything they had ever gained in Northern India. So, they deliberately spun the negotiations and at last on the arrival of the Bhāu (middle of June) sent the baffled peace-maker back to his master.
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§ 5. The Bhau's plan of war, to seize Delhi first.
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The Bhāu had arrived on the north bank of the Chambal on 8th June, but halted there,† some twenty miles south of Agra, with the Utangan river (also called the *Gambhir*) interposing between him and that imperial city, till 13th July. This five weeks' inactivity can be explained partly by his uncertainty about his future line of action, but mainly by the early and excessive rainfall of that year, which prevented him from crossing the Jamunā into the Doāb and also made the raging torrent of the Utangan impassable for horses, artillery and transport carts for weeks together. Govind Ballāl's failure to build a bridge of boats near Etāwa led the Bhāu to abandon his first plan of attacking Abdāli in the upper Doāb and raiding Oudh.
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∗ Raj. i. 186, 191, 194-196, 198-200, 204, 209, 212, 215-217. SPD. ii 124, 127. DC.
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† I was at first tempted to regard Pahārī, 16 m. n. e. of Dholpur, 26 m. s. of Agra, and midway between the Utangan (now called Bān-gangā) and the Chambal, as the Bhau's halting place. It exactly agrees with his known movements. But in Raj. i. 188, Pahārī-war means the hilly country north-west of Sironj and not a village named Pahārī, as the Bhau's route north of the Chambal was still uncertain. "From the difficulty with which its flood-stream is crossed, the Utangan takes the title of Ghorā-pachhār or Overthrower of Horses....Its character is essentially that of a mountain torrent...Its bed, 800 feet wide, is of sand mixed with shingle,...it runs between lofty banks cut up by numerous ravines, some of which penetrate deeply into the adjoining lands." N. W. P. Gazetteer, vii. 423.
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Malhar Holkar first met the Bhāu about 18th June. He then allayed Suraj Mal's suspicion of treachery by taking personal oaths and giving solemn assurances, and conducted him to the Bhāu, who advanced two miles to welcome so valued an ally (on 30 June.) Arrived outside Agra (*c.* 14 July) with Malhar and Suraj Mal, the Bhāu inspected the Jamunā and was forced to abandon the plan to which he had clung so long for throwing a bridge of boats over the river and sending a strong detachment into the Doāb with orders to converge upon Aligarh. Early in that month some troops of Suraj Mal had crossed the river, probably by a boat or two, and attempted to restore the lost Jāt posts on the east bank facing Mathurā and Agra. But their number had only reached two thousand when the rising level of the rain-swollen Jamunā cut them off from their supports assembled at Mathurā. Not a single Maratha trooper could follow these Jāts to the assistance of Govind Ballāl.
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This stern decree of Nature forced a change of plan on the Bhāu. If he could not, for the next three months, cross over to the east bank to attack Abdālī or his allies, neither could Abdālī cross to the west bank in support of his agent at Delhi. The Bhāu's mind was quickly made up. Two days after reaching Agra he advanced to Mathurā (16 July), informed Govind Ballal of the suspension of the long-talked of march into the Doāb, and on the 21st sent a strong detachment ahead to seize Delhi, which, he knew for certain, was held by a very weak garrison.*
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§ 6. Affairs of Delhi city, 29 Nov. 1759-21st July 1760.
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We shall now turn to the doleful story of the lordless city of Delhi. Immediately after the murder of Alamgir II (29 Nov. 1759), the wazir's agent in this atrocious deed, Mahdi Quli Khan, silently enthroned in the fort Muhi-ul-millat (the grandson of Aurangzib's youngest child Kām Bakhsh) under the title of Shāh Jahān II. But the new 'king of kings' was even more of a shadow than his luckless predecessor. The harem apartments of the palace were ransacked by the regicide wazir and the story went that fifty lakhs in cash and jewels were taken away, even the marriage portions of the princesses not being spared. But retribution was close at hand. Abdali was coming, and at the news of it an exodus from Delhi began on 8th December, even the princes being removed from the palace (in bullock-carts) to Hasangarh fort (in the Doāb.) * On 28th December the wazir returned from the army of Sindhia to Delhi and began to entrench the river bank by way of precaution. [DC.]
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∗ Raj. i. 216, 217, 223.
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Then events moved apace. The baggage of the Maratha army set out from Delhi on retreat to Rajputana about 6th January, 1760, and two days later the remnant of their rearguard plundered the shrine of Nizām-ud-din Auliyā and carried off some rich men of the city for ransom,—thus making a last grab at the capital before abandoning it to the foreign invader. On the 9th Dattāji Sindhia fell in a battle ten miles north of Delhi and his army fled away in headlong rout to Rajputana, the wazir following their example. The victorious Durrani king encamped at Khizirabad, south of the city, and on 21 January made a pilgrimage to Nizam-ud-din’s shrine. Next day a foraging party from his camp went to the Old City and Paharganj, and carried away the beams and planks of the houses for firewood. [DC.] Yaqub Ali Khan, a cousin of the Abdali wazir, but long settled in India at the city of Shahjahanpur, was appointed subahdar of Delhi on behalf of the Shah (31 January.) This able and good governor applied himself to the pacification protection and relief of the ruined and distracted population of the city, enlisted a defence force of 600 men, mostly sehbandi or militia of little fighting value, from the Indian ex-soldiers and idlers, with only 25 or 30 Turks and Durranis to stiffen them, and appointed his own kotwal to re-establish police control over the capital and his superintendent of markets (karora-i-ganj) to ensure its food supply. [DC.]
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∗ Delhi. ‘After the fall of Dattaji, Abdali entered Delhi fort. The men of his camp plundered the property of the citizens by violence. For three days great disturbance raged there. On the fourth day the Shah ordered his soldiers to leave the city and dismount outside it.’ [Husain Shahi, 51.] ‘Abdali came back from Narnol and slew and plundered the people of Delhi to an extreme.’ [Muz. 178.] Miskin (204-206) gives a graphic and detailed eye-witness's account of this plunder and slaughter of the city people. On 19th October 1760, the Delhi Chronicle records, “Bhāuji has captured Kunjpurā. Throughout this entire month, a state of death settled on the inhabitants of Delhi city from rumours of the coming of the Shah, who had decided on a battle near Kunjpurā.”
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Throughout February 1760 the Abdali king was absent campaigning against the Jats and Malhar Holkar in the Bharatpur State and Mewat. On the last day of that month (29th), he returned to the capital, but in a day or two crossed over to the Doab in pursuit of Malhar Holkar, as we have seen in Chapter 19, §15. After expelling the Marathas, he encamped near Aligarh, while Delhi continued in charge of Yaqub Ali Khan with the puppet Emperor Shah Jahan II sitting on the throne and receiving presents from the officials on ceremonial occasions like the Nauroz (20 March.) The political centre of gravity shifted from Delhi to the Doāb, and diplomacy and intrigue were conducted in and from Abdāli’s camp there. At the end of May rumours arose that Shah Alam II, after being defeated by the English in Bihar, was coming at the invitation of Abdāli to ascend the throne in Delhi, but he held back and stopped in south Bihar. [ DC. ]
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At the end of June, while the new Maratha army under the Bhāu arrived near Agra, the unusually early flood of the Jamunā cut Delhi off from the Doāb. Yaqub Ali Khan, therefore, turned to the defence of his city. The Delhi Gate of the palace-fort was kept closed ; as for the city wall, the two leaves of the Lahor Gate having been burnt before, he replaced them with the large wooden front-entrance of the Sarāi of Mihrbān Aghā (9th July), in order to meet any Maratha attack. [ DC. ]
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§ 7. The Bhau captures Delhi.
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That attack came on 22nd July, when a strong force detached by the Bhāu from Mathurā under Malhar, Jankoji, and Balwant Ganesh Méhéndélé, accompanied by the titular wazir Imād-ul-mulk (whom Suraj Mal had introduced to the Bhāu at Mathurā), appeared in the morning and assaulted the city-gate.* The defenders were so few that the resistance was prolonged only by the huge stone walls of the capital. But in the afternoon the invaders broke into the city by way of Jāvid Khan's mansion. The fort held out under Yaqub Ali Khan, who kept the assailants back by fire from the ramparts. One body of Marathas crowded before the Asad-burj and attacked the Khiziri gate, another body assaulted the Delhi Darwāza. For nearly two hours Malhar and Jankoji tried to break the Khiziri gate, but it was covered with brass plates and braced with iron bars, and defied all their efforts.
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The garrison was very small, the Hindustani militiamen disappeared, and only a handful of Turks and Durrānīs kept up the defence with their muskets. From their small number they had to leave large portions of the walls undefended, while the flood of Maratha light horse swarmed round the fort on all sides. Seizing this confusion, while the garrison's attention was fixed on the Khiziri gate, about a hundred men of Vital Shivdev, followed by groups from Holkar and Sindhia's contingents climbed the wall on the side of the Asad-burj and entered the palace unperceived. But they had no leader and no foresight. Instead of first opening the gates to their brethren outside, they recklessly dispersed for plunder through the royal apartments, each man blindly seizing what he could and throwing the booty down from the ramparts to his comrades on the sandy bank below. The alarm soon spread to the garrison, and some fifteen Durrānīs came up from the Salimgarh side and advanced against the dispersed Maratha looters, shooting down a dozen of them and then charging sword in hand. The rest fled away and leaping down from the walls in abject terror fell on the sand bank with broken limbs. Thus, a captured fort slipped out of the Maratha hands, through the selfish greed and thoughtless cowardice of their soldiery.
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∗ The Bhau's capture of Delhi,—DC. Raj. i. 222-224. Nur-ud-din 33. Siyar, iii. 66. Muz. 180-182.
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The Maratha generals then assembled in Sadullah Khan’s house and laid a regular siege to the fort, digging trenches before the gates and mounting guns. The city nominally passed into Imād’s control, while the Marathas encamped in the suburbs. Ibrāhim Khan Gārdi planted three guns on the river bank below the fort and bombarded the palace from the east side, which was lined with beautiful edifices like the curvilinear roofed mansions (bangla) of the Asad-burj, the Octagonal Tower, and the harem chambers. “Large breaches were made in the Diwān-i-khās, the Rangmahal, the Moti-mahal, and the Shāhburj, but the strength of the fort-walls was not impaired in any way.” For some days this exchange of fire continued. On the 29th of July, the Bhāu himself arrived from Mathurā and encamped near Kālkādevi, i.e., the Qutb Minār village;
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and Yaqub Ali, having exhausted his food supply and knowing relief by his master impossible, begged for terms of peace. The Bhāu jumped at the proposal and allowed Yaqub Ali to march out with his property and troops, and cross the Jamunā to join his master. Thus Delhi fort passed into Maratha possession on 2nd August, 1760.
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§ 8. Suraj Mal Jat abandons the Maratha side.
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Meantime, Shujā-ud-daulah from his camp on the eastern bank of the Jamunā had sent a letter and an agent, Rajah Devidat, proposing to bring about a peace between the Peshwā and Abdāli through the mediation of the Bhāu and Najib, on condition that the absent Shah Alam should be recognized as Emperor, his eldest son Jawān Bakht installed in the government of Delhi as his vicar (wali ahad or Heir), and Shujā appointed imperial wazir, and that the Shāh should return to his own country and the Marathas to the Deccan. The very entertainment of this proposal antagonized Imād and his patron Suraj Mal, and these two went away in anger from their camps at Tughlaqabad to Ballabhgarh, without taking leave of the Bhāu. Next morning (4th August) the Bhau's secretary Mahipat Rao, Malhar's diwān Gangādhar, and Sindhia's manager Rāmāji Anant went there to pacify and bring them back, but without success.*
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∗ Defection of Suraj Mal,—Raj. i. 222. SPD. xxi. 190
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The defection of Suraj Mal was even more ruinous to the Maratha cause than Shujā’s choice of hostility a month earlier. The Bhāu had no longer a single friend left north of the Narmadā. The Maratha relations with the Jāt kingdom had been marked from the first by grasping tyranny. Their unprovoked siege of Kumbher (1754) had been ended only by the promise of a tribute of 30 lakhs. Moreover, the expansion of the Jāt power from the Mathurā-Agra district over the Jamunā into the middle Doab crossed the line of Maratha ambition there. Suraj Mal had built and richly stored the fort of Rāmgarh (now called Aligarh), intending to make it a second Kumbher in the midst of his Doāb possessions, and Govind Ballāl, the Maratha governor of the tract immediately south of it, had planned (middle of May) to capture this fort and replace Jāt rule by his own in that region. [Raj. i. 187.] Though the design could not be put into execution, thanks to Afghan pressure, this unfriendly attitude could not be kept a secret from Suraj Mal. When the Bhāu entered Jāt territory on 8th June, he no doubt issued strict orders to his men not to molest or rob his ally’s subjects. The Peshwā had also advised the Bhāu not to dun Suraj Mal for the unpaid balance of the tribute of 1754. [ SPD. xxvii. 255. ] But
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(assurances given.) xxvii. 258. Mux. 184. DC. Imad-us-sadat, 180, (also 81) and Wendel, 81, say that the Bhau insulted Suraj Mal by calling him a mere landholder. (I doubt it, though the Bhāu certainly rejected the war plan of Suraj Mal and Malhar.)
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even a less astute man than Suraj Mal would have guessed that as soon as the Abdali menace was removed, the locust swarms of the South would come down upon him for their old dues. Even then, as between Abdāli and the Marathas, he would have preferred the latter if only they had the sense to adopt a live and let live policy and honest enough to keep their plighted word. Such an assurance the Bhāu failed to give to Suraj Mal’s complete satisfaction. On the contrary, he insulted and alarmed the Jāt king beyond hope of appeasement.
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All evidence agrees in showing that the Bhāu antagonized Malhar Rao Holkar, and even if he did not openly insult his veteran lieutenant by calling him a dotard past his usefulness, he certainly disregarded Malhar’s counsels and thus lowered him in the eyes of the army and the public. Malhar’s angry remark that if these proud Brāhmans of Punā were not humbled by the enemy they would make him and other captains of the Maratha caste wash their soiled clothes, is historically true,* in view of his natural feelings, after this scarred veteran’s advice had been brushed aside by a youth under thirty years who had never seen North-Indian warfare. Suraj Mal, who was the shrewdest Hindu potentate then alive, naturally saw eye to eye with Malhar Rao for his strong sense of realism in politics and war, and distrusted the Bhāu, who trod the air of theory instead of planting his feet on the bedrock of the real facts of a situation. Suraj Mal had before this placed himself under the protective wings of Malhar, and sided with him in the Bhāu's council-chamber ever since their coming to Agra.
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∗ This does not mean that Malhar turned a traitor to his master’s cause; he merely took care to save himself out of the wreck of the Maratha army on 14 January 1761.
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§ 9. Sadashiv Bhau's character and policy examined.
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The Bhāu had started from the Deccan with a wholesome respect for the Durrāni military power and a persistent belief that his own resources must be greatly increased by the addition of fresh musketeers, firearms, munitions, and North-Indian allies, before he could confront such an enemy with any hope of victory. His almost daily correspondence during this campaign effectively disproves the popular tradition that his head was turned by insolence and pride ; it could not have been so before his capture of Delhi ( 3 August ), when Suraj Mal had already been estranged. His letters [ SPD. xxvii. 255, 257 ] to the Peshwā show that even after the capture of Delhi he realized the gravity of his position and the difficulty of defeating Abdāli in pitched battle, so that he still preferred a waiting game and the policy of starving the enemy out as the best in the circumstances. A durable and honourable peace with Abdāli was possible by sharing Hindustan with him, vix., by ceding the Panjāb to Ahmad Shah and confirming Najib's possessions in the Doāb. But such a settlement he had rejected in June, long before his capture of Delhi, because the Peshwā's instructions were clearly against ceding the Panjāb to the Afghans. Therefore, a fight to the finish with the Durrānīs was the only course left to the Bhāu, and for this choice of an extreme policy the responsibility rests not on the Bhāu but on his master in Punā.
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Sadāshiv Rao's capture of Delhi forms a turning-point in his career. Its immediate effect was to restore the prestige of Maratha arms which had been ruined by the fall of Dattāji and the rout of Malhar early in this year. Abdālī's partisans were now dismayed and began to waver, and even to intrigue in secret with the Bhāu. The Shāh himself passed through a period of anxiety and avowed his readiness to return to his own country if only an honourable peace could be made with the Marathas and the Ruhelas could be assured of safety from Maratha aggression during his absence. This far-resounding success, secured with the loss of less than a score of men and after only a week of exertion, blinded the Bhāu to the realities of the situation. He regarded Shujā's proposal of peace as a proof of the hopeless weakness of Abdālī's cause. As he wrote to Govind Ballāl on the day of his entry into Delhi (3rd August), "Ahmad Bangash and some Ruhelas are going away [from Abdālī's camp] to their homes. Shujā now realizes what to expect from his having joined Abdālī!
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Internal dissension is increasing among the Durrānī sardārs. My capture of Delhi has broken his waist. I have put off the fight with him only in consequence of the high level of the Jamunā.” Eighteen days later he was still puffed up with the same idea and wrote, “Yes, my conquest of the capital has struck awe into Abdālī and caused a split in his camp. Many Turānis wish to desert his service for ours. His troops are greatly frightened. Many of the Ruhelas have gone back [to their homes] beyond the Ganges, and the rest are about to do so. Najib alone is keeping up his spirits. Shujā, as the result of his joining Abdālī, finds himself bogged.” The lame Ahmad Khan Bangash, who merely enjoyed the prestige of his office as imperial Paymaster-General and held the strategically important position of Farrukhabad, now began to make secret overtures begging the Bhāu’s favour through Govind Ballāl, and peacefully evacuated Farrukhabad before the advancing Marathas (29th August.) [Raj. i. 224, 233, 236, 237.]
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Shujā and Najib continued throughout August and September to hold peace parleys with the Bhāu, but without success, as the Peshwa’s demands were impossible. The Bhāu continued to receive intelligence about the Abdālī camp of a kind most flattering to his vanity and tending to confirm him in the delusion that the Muslim league was broken up and that the invaders would be thankful for a retreat home with their bare lives. For example, on 29 August Govind Ballāl wrote, “At night a consultation was held by the Shāh; all his followers, high and low alike, advised him, ‘You ought not to stay in this country. The strength of the Marathas is increasing daily. Therefore, do not listen to anybody else’s [i. e., Najib’s] counsels, but make peace with the Marathas and go home.’” On 21st September was sent this report: “There is a tumult in Abdālī’s army. High and low, all urge him to come to terms with the Marathas and return home. Besides, he has no spirit for fighting left in him. At Anupshahar, ten thousand of his horses, camels and mules have died, and more are dying daily. Thank God! the Peshwā’s star is dominant.” [Raj. i. 236, 247-246.]