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Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c27.s7: § 1. Peshwa selects Sadashiv Bhau to lead his army to Hindustan

Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c27.s7

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§ 1. Peshwa selects Sadashiv Bhau to lead his army to Hindustan

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There was boundless exultation in the Peshwā's camp at Ahmadnagar in the night of 13th February 1760. His recent campaign against the ruler of Haidarabad had met with the completest success. The Nizām had been hemmed round during his advance from Udgir, defeated with heavy loss, and brought to an absolute standstill at Ausā on 3rd February, when still forty miles short of his refuge at Dhārur. He could save himself from annihilation only by agreeing to cede to the Marathas territories worth 45 lakhs of Rupees a year, with an additional 15 lakhs as *chauth* for his dominions, and transfer to the victors the two strongest forts in Mughal Deccan (Daulatābād and Āsir) and two cities (Burhānpur and Bijāpur) each of which was the capital of an imperial province, as well as Mulher, the chief fort of Baglānā. Ahmadnagar, the capital of a third Deccan subah and the largest depot of arms and munitions in the South, had been gained by bribery on the 9th November before, and the Peshwā had entered it with due pomp on the 29th of that month. On 11th February the Nizām had signed formal orders to his local officers to hand these places over to the Peshwā's agents. The result of this campaign is best summarized in the words of a learned Muslim protégé of the first Nizām-ul-mulk, "The descendants of Asaf Jāh retained nothing more than the subah of Haidarabad, some portions of the Bijāpur province, and a little of Bidar, and that too on condition of paying the Marathas one-fourth of their revenues." [Azad Bilgrami.] The Peshwā's courtiers burst into the wildest panegyrics,—"His Highness was born under the same natal star as Alexander the Great. Wherever he casts his angry glance, his enemies are crushed into atoms. He has attained to the height of glory." It was, indeed, the *apogee* of Maratha expansion.

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But there was a fly in the Peshwā's cup of honey. On 27th January he had received a letter from his officers in the Delhi region written on the 8th before, reporting that Abdāli had invaded India again, swept the Marathas out of the Panjāb, forced Dattāji Sindhia to raise the siege of Shukartal without securing any indemnity from Najib Khan, and had himself crossed over to the Gangetic Doāb and effected a junction with the Ruhelas, while Dattāji had fallen back on Delhi, and that a decisive battle was expected to be fought on the next day. After this followed an ominous silence from Northern India for three weeks, while the Peshwā's anxiety went on deepening day by day. Then news began to trickle through from the North-Indian correspondence of bankers received at Aurangabad, that Dattāji had fallen, Jankoji had fled away in headlong rout to Rajputana, and the Maratha army in Hindustan had ceased to exist. An official letter reached the Peshwā on the 15th (or 16th) of February to confirm this tale of disaster. At one blow all his gains in North India had been wiped out, and he must again fight for the Maratha control over the Delhi empire and build up his supremacy in Hindustan from the very foundations. [Raj. i. 155, 157, 164, 165. SPD. i. 83,9.]

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There was no help for it but to promptly send a very strong army under a chief of indisputably high position,--such as a member of the Peshwā's own family, if he was to recover the lost ground at Delhi. A mere general and vassal like Holkar or Sindhia was not adequate for such a task. So, the Peshwā set out from Ahmadnagar on 19th February, after recalling his generals and armies from the Ausā region to his side. They met him at Patdur* on 10th March, and long consultations began as to the future plans.

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∗ At the end of the Udgir campaign, the Bhāu had taken post at Parli, 40 m. n. of Ausa and 12 m. n.e. of Ambajogai or Mominabad. Patdur (spelt Partur in Atlas sh. 55) is 27 m. s.e. of Jalna and a railway station on the Hyderabad Godavari Valley Railway. Sindhkhed is 26 m. n. of Patdur. Ambad is 30 m. w. of Patdur.

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Almost up to the last moment the Peshwā had intended to give this command to his own younger brother Raghunāth Rao Dādā (aged 26), as he had conducted campaigns in Hindustan in 1754-55 and 1757-58. But in the inner council of 13th March there was a stormy scene. Raghunāth had brought back from his last Delhi expedition only a debt of 80 lakhs in addition to the unpaid salaries of his soldiers, and he had been taunted for this negative result by the Peshwā’s chief manager, Sadāshiv Rao Bhāu, the son of Bāji Rao I’s younger brother Chimnāji Appā. This Sadāshiv, though not yet fully thirty years of age, had already gained a high reputation and popularity with all classes of suitors and civil officers by his close attention to finance and the punctual transaction of administrative business, while his quick and complete overthrow of the Nizām in the recent campaign had made him suddenly spring to fame as a great organizer of victory. The hero of Udgir alone was believed to be capable of restoring Maratha glories in the north. Raghunāth Rao sulkily declined the command, and it was finally decided that the Bhāu should lead the northern expedition. But lest he should set up an independent principality of his own in Hindustan when enjoying supreme command there without a partner, a brake on him was devised by sending the Peshwā’s son Vishwās Rao (a lad of seventeen) with this army as its nominal commander-in-chief, while the Bhāu was to act as his guardian and the executive manager of all his affairs, like the experienced nobles joined under the name of Atāliqs to the young princes of Delhi in their first campaigns. [Raj. i. 168, 167. Kharé, i. 14.]

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