Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c27.s27.14

v2.c27.s27.14

Did Bālājī Rao cause the disaster at Pānipat by breaking his promise to go to the relief of the Bhāu with an army from the Deccan? No, because there is not a scrap of evidence that he made any such promise, or even that the Bhāu had appealed to him for reinforcements. The modern effort to make the Peshwā or Govind Ballāl the scapegoat for the Pānipat disaster is at once disproved by the contents and dates of the original letters of the Bhāu and the Peshwā, and the fact that it took at least four weeks in the most peaceful times for a letter to travel from Panipat to the Godāvari, while the least local disturbance on the long route would delay the letter by weeks more. The popular theory that the Bhāu put off his attack on Abdāli immediately after the rival armies had reached Pānipat because he expected that the Peshwā would come up in the rear of Abdāli and thus the enemy would be easily destroyed between two fires, is pure moonshine, because the Bhāu decided to entrench on 4th November [Raj. i. 264], when there was not the least whisper of the Peshwā having started for the north or even that he had decided on a personal campaign in Hindustan.