Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c27.s27.11

v2.c27.s27.11

By this time all was over with the Bhāu, and on 24th January the Peshwā at Bhilsā intercepted a banker’s letter written from Delhi giving the fatal news of Pānipat. All his plans were now upset. He halted at Bhilsā till 7th February, and then marched by way of Sihor and Sironj to Pachhar, 32 miles north of Sironj, in the delusive hope that the rumours about the Bhāu and some other chiefs having escaped from the field might prove true. Here the survivors from Pānipat met him, and pressed him to return home. The awful catastrophe had unhinged his mind and hastened the work of consumption. He began to moan to himself alone, call for his lost son and cousin, and talk incoherently. By this time he had been reduced to a skeleton, having lost 64 lbs. Leaving Pachhar on 22 March, the Court returned to Punā in June, and here he expired on 23 June 1761. It was a dismal sunset to the glorious noon of his father's and his own reign. A new scene now opened in the tragic drama of Maratha history, with its "Theban horrors" of murder suicide and the untimely death of the young.* But the historian of Delhi is not concerned with it, as the Delhi Government practically enjoyed a respite from Maratha intrusion almost to the end of the reign of the new Peshwā Mādhav Rāo Ballāl (1761-1772.) Panipat had done its work even in the South.