Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c27.s7.5

v2.c27.s7.5

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.]