Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c28.s1.22

v2.c28.s1.22

In this perennial contest, it was only by hard marching, hard fighting, and the relentless sacrifice of everything else to the supreme military need, that Najib could prevent his principality from dissolving and the Sikhs annexing its fragments. But the end was, all the same, the devastation of his lands and the insecurity of the roads every year. At the same time a life of strenuous exertion was telling upon his health, and illness began to sap his vitality from 1763 onwards. After 1764, his patron and potent supporter, Ahmad Shah Abdali, became too much entangled in civil wars at home, the mutiny of his troops, the irrepressible upspring of the Sikh nation and latterly his own illness, to come to Najib’s rescue. Najib was thenceforth thrown entirely upon his own resources. But the folly and failure of Jawahir Singh made Najib safe at home, except for the Sikhs, from March 1765 onwards, as the debacle of Pānipat had removed the Maratha menace from him for a decade after 1761.