Fall of the Mughal Empire v3.c35.s7.2

v3.c35.s7.2

Ranjit Singh heard of the usurpation from his castle of Kumbher. He gathered his own retainers and the loyal Jat captains together, and hiring a body of 2,000 Maratha horse under Jaswant Rao Bāblé and some Nāgā monks, made a secret night march to Dig. He himself with his personal friends entered that fort by stealth and hid himself. His Maratha and other troops from outside attacked the Ruhela camp under the fort walls early at dawn. Here the families and property of all the Ruhelas were lodged, and therefore Rahimdād naturally hastened there from the city to defend them. Then "Ranjit Singh showed himself to the public like the Sun rising above the horizon, and called all the Government officials in the city to his side. The Jat soldiers also came out of their hiding places, attacked the Afghans and drove them in groups, beating them with sticks like oxen or sheep." For, during their short ascendancy Rahim-dād's men had treated the local people with the usual Afghan insolence and rapacity, molesting even the women. Before the rising *en masse* of the people of Dig, the Ruhelas were ultimately overwhelmed, though they at first defended themselves with courage. At least four thousand men perished in the fight and the remnant of the Ruhela mercenaries escaped through the city gate nearest to them. But they left their general's son a prisoner and abandoned all their property to the Jats. Rahim-dād, too, had to sacrifice much of his camp baggage, and took the road to Delhi, where he was enlisted by Abdul Ahad Khan as a valuable instrument and sent to wrest the Crownlands in the Hansi-Hisar district which Mirzā Najaf's men held as fiefs, but which the Emperor wanted to resume. Here the faithless mercenary chief met with his deserts while besieging Gohāna (18 miles north of Rohtak), being shot dead by the troops of Amar Singh of Pātiāla, who had been set against him by Najaf (circa 30th December, 1775.)