Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c27.s27.4

v2.c27.s27.4

But in 1772, and still more markedly in 1789, things were not as they had been in 1761. In these eleven years, the El Dorado of Bihar and Bengal had become closed to the Marathas beyond the possibility of conquest; even the *chauth* for these provinces, though formally granted to them by the Mughal Emperor in 1746, had lapsed, and they durst not claim it (as Mahadji Sindhia found to his cost when he sent a feeler to Sir J. Macpherson on this old legal claim); Oudh was now girt round by British bayonets, and the long coveted city of Allahabad was entrusted to the same strong arms; even the Pār Ruhelas,—those last possible allies of the Marathas (either through military weakness or territorial ambition) in any invasion of Oudh,—were to be crushed only two years after Shah Alam’s return to Delhi under Maratha protection.