Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c27.s27.17

v2.c27.s27.17

The Bhāu nowhere says that he was looking for armed relief from the South. He perished, not so much from insufficiency of man-power, as because his army at Kunjpurā and after "lived in the air"; it had no secure base at all. He had rejected Suraj Mal's wise advice to leave all his non-combatants and impedimenta behind in the Jāt forts, so as to render his force extremely mobile. After this it was a criminal folly on his part to make Delhi his base and yet leave there Nāro Shankar with a contemptible force of 3,000 light horse and 3,000 foot, all second line troops or raw recruits [Raj. i. 237], whom any Durrāni lieutenant could have crushed. Even a Dattāji Sindhia with fully 10,000 seasoned horse of his own, if posted at Delhi, would not have been more than what the importance of that base during the Bhāu's northward advance to the Satlaj demanded from a far-sighted general.