Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c27.s17.11

v2.c27.s17.11

After the 7th of December the sole star of hope visible to the confined Maratha army was Govind Ballāl, who had been commanded by the Bhāu to ravage Najib’s estates in the Mirat and Bulandshahar districts and send convoys of grain and treasure to Pānipat *via* Kunjpurā. And within ten days of that date even this star set. Leaving his headquarters at Etāwā, with less than 10,000 men, mostly rustic levies and second-rate Maratha light horse, Govind moved northwards to the upper Doāb, to carry out his task, which if successfully accomplished would have counteracted the closing of the Delhi route by Abdāli. Govind was an old man of over sixty; his life had been spent in revenue collection varied by petty fights with refractory landlords and attacks on their small mud-forts. He was now too stout to ride on horseback with ease or speed, and in such broken health as to be unable to bear the strain and rough life of light forays. He fondly imagined that the entire Doāb was secure fro n his enemies, as all the Durrānī and Ruhela soldiers were entangled at Pānipat, 200 miles away; and so he repeated Malhar Holkar's mistake of 4th March 1760 by neglecting to keep a sharp look out. His advance to Shāhdara, opposite Delhi, was unopposed; all the agents of Najib were driven away from the way, and half a dozen villages in the Sikandrabad region were sacked by the raiders. The Maratha force lay dispersed in fancied security from Shāhdara by way of Ghaziabad to Jalalabad (10 miles north-east of the latter city.) Here doom overtook them like a bolt of thunder from a cloudless sky, in the form of a body of 5,000 newly arrived Durrānī horse, led by Atāi Khan and Karimdād Khan and guided by Najib's captain Karim Khan and some spies of that Ruhela chieftain, in the morning of 17th December.*