Fall of the Mughal Empire v3.c35.s3.10

v3.c35.s3.10

Marching from Delhi by way of Bārapula and Badarpur, Najaf Khan reached Ballabhgarh, 25 miles south of the capital. Here he received a highly important accession to his strength in the person of Ajit and Hirā Singh, the dispossessed heirs of the founder of that great fort, —the northernmost bulwark of the expanded Jat kingdom. They offered to assist the invaders with their local knowledge and influence if Najaf Khan would promise to restore their patrimony to them after it had been wrested from the Jat Rajah’s agents. The defection of such men at the very outset of the campaign “broke the waist of Nawal Singh’s resolution”, and he fell back from his first post at Bāwni-Kherā (six miles south of Palwal) to Banchāri, nine miles further south, where he entrenched his camp. While Mirzā Najaf himself halted at Sikri-Fathpur Biloch, five miles south of Ballabhgarh and nine miles north of Palwal, his captain Najaf Quli, newly arrived from his successful operations in Mewāt, was sent off with the vanguard (8th October) to clear the way. This captain advanced, daily fighting skirmishes and driving back the Jat patrols. Nowhere was any defence offered, and the villages in the north Jat territory lay helpless before the invaders. "As the autumn crop was then ripe, the Nawab's soldiers fed themselves and their horses on the standing millet crop along their route. They plundered every village that lay in their path, set fire to it, and carried off all the cattle and sheep &c., which they sold at low prices or ate; especially the beggarly Ruhelas of Mullā Rahim-dād, whose leanness turned into fatness from eating the plundered provisions, and whose appearance after being clothed in plundered apparel changed from the look of wild beasts to that of human beings." [Ibrat, i. 231, Miskin 290.]