Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c27.s27.3

v2.c27.s27.3

But what a change from the Indian world of 1760! The contrast can be most easily realized if we imagine that the Marathas had triumphed on that 14th of January. Then the broken Durrāni army would have been expelled from India, robbed and hunted down by the Sikhs through the Panjab, the Indus would have been closed to invasion from the north-west, the mortal enemy Najib Khan would have been crushed outright instead of reigning for the next ten years as the dictator of Delhi, and the middle and upper Doab would have been purged of every single element hostile to the Marathas. The Bhāu’s army, flushed with victory and seeing all their enemies in North India cowering in terror, would have taken up Dattāji’s interrupted plan of annexing the provinces of Allahabad and Bihār and fleecing Bengal. In 1761 the English would certainly have saved Bengal from Maratha incursion by regularly paying *chauth*, but they could hardly have fought to preserve Bihār, as their Home forces were now involved in the weary exhausting latter stage of the long-drawn Seven Years’ War. Therefore, Bihār would have remained a jumping-off ground for further Maratha adventures in the north-east, as Orissa had become by Alivardi’s cession of 1751. Shujā-ud-daulah would have sunk into obedience as a tribute-paying vassal.