Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c28.s1.21

v2.c28.s1.21

This is a convenient point for taking a bird’s-eye view of the rest of Najib’s career. The Panipat campaign had left him without a rival in the Delhi Government and supreme in authority and influence in the north, though grievously weakened by the heavy slaughter of his trained soldiery during the long warfare and the draining of his resources through the payment of money subsidies to Abdali and the supply of provisions to his army from his Doab estates for over a year. On the other hand, the Jat Rajah was now the strongest and richest potentate in India. Najib wisely shrank from a trial of strength with Suraj Mal. His ambition was therefore strictly limited to the country north and west of Delhi and his old jagirs in the upper Doab and Rohilkhand, besides such former Maratha acquisitions in the middle Doab as he could easily seize. Further down the Doab, *i.e.*, roughly south of a line drawn west to east through Delhi, the Jat Power now expanding without fear or check impinged upon Najib’s possessions and precipitated a deadly conflict which was to dominate Delhi’s external politics till February 1765. After Najib’s potent diplomacy and still more potent gold had enabled him in that month to finally checkmate the new Jat Rajah and turn his hostile designs to other quarters, the Ruhela chief’s ceaseless preoccupation to the very end of his days was with the Sikhs. In spite of some signal victories gained by him in the field, this eternal trouble wore his strength and resources out, desolated and beggared his Doab jagirs, and converted the northernmost Doab and the sub-Himalayan tract facing it on the west bank of the Jamuna,—*i. e.*, the Ambala district,—practically into Sikh dominion.