Fall of the Mughal Empire v3.c40.s4: § 6. Mahādji Sindhia’s first invasion of Jaipur 1786. Settlement of the tribute
Fall of the Mughal Empire v3.c40.s4
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§ 6. Mahādji Sindhia’s first invasion of Jaipur 1786. Settlement of the tribute
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Aligarh capitulated on 20th November, and thus freed from his anxiety, Sindhia began (on 3rd January 1786) his march towards Jaipur, taking the Emperor with himself. Arrived near Dig he halted for over a month (10 Jan.—15 Feb.) trying to secure a peaceful payment through the mediation of the Narukā and the Bohrā. But the hope faded away, and at last the entire camp resumed its advance (on 15 Feb.), arriving near Lalsot on the first of the next month. The Rao Rajah of Mācheri had been sent on to Jaipur in advance. He returned with the Jaipur envoys, Bālāji Mahant (the spiritual guide of the late Rajah Mādho Singh) and the Bohrā minister on 6th March. Mahādji himself paid the first visit to Bālāji and prostrated himself before him. The Brahman in pontifical pride did not rise to welcome him, but graciously stretched his leg forward and the supreme lord of legions rubbed his forehead on the monk’s holy toes (8th March.)
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On the 10th discussions were opened. Last year, out of the tribute settled (21 lakhs), only three lakhs had been paid and certain parganahs (Hindaun &c.) with an estimated revenue of 10 lakhs ceded; these had been occupied on behalf of Sindhia by the Narukā and Najaf Quli Khan. The Jaipur envoy now begged Sindhia to release these lands and also to deduct from the tribute due an estimated compensation for the damage to the crops caused by the imperial army of occupation. [DY. i. 162.] The higgling was long protracted, and at times threatened to end in a rupture because of the double-dealing of the selfish Narukā. If Mahādji had agreed to the moderate sum offered by the Jaipur envoy, it would in all probability have been actually realised through the wise Khush-hāli Rām's influence and exertions. But the Narukā Pratāp Singh, unwilling to promote a peace which would make him disgorge Narnaul and other parganahs, cunningly set Mahādji against any reasonable settlement by advising him to rise absurdly high in his demands (to 60 lakhs), and told him that if he accepted any smaller sum after personally coming all the way from Dig to Jaipur and bringing the Emperor himself in his train, it would lower his prestige! He even suggested that, if the reigning king of Jaipur failed to find such a large sum, he should be deposed and Mān Singh set up on the throne, with the Narukā Pratāp as his guardian and regent, in return for which post he would pay Sindhia 50 lakhs. This selfish man's one aim was to perpetuate his hold on the Kachhwa kingdom by becoming the all-powerful Maratha's agent and representative there. In the course of time Mahādji realised that the Mācheri chief was a deceiver and mischief-maker, saying one thing to him and another to the Jaipur Rajah. [*Ibr.* ii. 156.]
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During the parleys, the Jaipur side offered ten lakhs in full clearance of all the arrears and including the present year's instalment of the tribute. But Mahādji said that the arrears had now reached a total of three krores and forty lakhs;—to which Khush-hāli Rām replied, "We have not even so many pebbles. Where can we find that number of rupees?" After much talk it was at last agreed by both sides that the Kachhwa kingdom should pay 63 lakhs (60 lakhs as *peshkash* and three lakhs as *darbar* charges), and out of this amount eleven lakhs were to be paid immediately (cash 7 lakhs, jewels 3 lakhs, elephants and horses 1 lakh),—ten lakhs were to be paid in six months' time, and twenty lakhs were to be provided by the cession of land; and the remaining 22 lakhs were covered by assignments on the revenue of the fiefs of the feudal barons. But the collections already made by the imperialists during their recent occupation were to be set off against the last item. [*DY.* i. 168. Satara ii. 254. *Ibr.* ii. 155.]
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These terms being settled, the Jaipur envoys paid three lakhs in cash and kind, and Khush-hālī Rām took his leave (on 20th April, 1786) to collect the balance of eight lakhs and thus liquidate the first instalment. At Jaipur, the Bohrā squeezed some money out of Rodā Rām khawās,—who had made hay while enjoying the sunshine of royal favour—and assessed the richer citizens individually for forced contributions. Payment was enforced by confinement. His dismissed rival, Daulat Rām Haldiā, then migrated to Oudh with his family. "Khush-hālī Rām, on becoming regent again, restored all the former officials to their posts and imprisoned the new ones [of the Haldiā party], released the bankers and other rich people then in confinement, reassured the citizens and made them reopen their shops." [*HP.* 476. *Aiti. Tip.* vi. 41.]
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The first quota of eleven lakhs having been fully discharged by the end of May, Sindhia left Rāyāji Pātil with a strong force, as well as Najaf Quli and the Mācheri Rajah, in that kingdom for collecting the second instalment of ten lakhs and the assignment for 22 lakhs on the baronial estates, and also for holding the ceded districts. Then he started on his return journey on 4th June, reaching Dig on the 20th. Two days later the Emperor set out for Delhi, and four days after him Mahādji moved to Mathura, where and at Vrindāvan a few miles north of it, he passed the next five months.
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§ 7. Sindhia's anxieties and money difficulties during 1786. His movements in January and February 1787.
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Throughout the year 1785 Mahadji had been worn out by harassing anxiety and opposition, and he had to make his position as Regent of the Empire good by capturing Dig, Agra and Aligarh, and to reopen the Deccan road by suppressing the troublesome Khichis of Rāghogarh. No doubt, at the beginning of 1786 the political sky in the north had cleared and he felt himself free to march to Jaipur and press the Rajah for the tribute due. But this year was a period of no less anxiety to the Maratha nation than the preceding one: their chief in Puna was engaged, with very inferior armed resources of his own and the lukewarm aid of a Haidarabad contingent, in a deadly contest with Tipu Sultan at the head of a superb cavalry and a matchless artillery worked by Frenchmen. And it was only on 26 February 1787, that this war was ended by the treaty of Gajendragarh. In addition to this long and serious entanglement which killed all hopes of his getting any support from his Central Government, Mahadji was involved in difficulties of his own,—a rupture with the British resident James Anderson over Faqir Khair-ud-din (March-May 1786), the revolt of Gosain Himmat Bahadur, and the encirclement of his general Khande Rao Hari in Bundelkhand (Oct.-Nov.) But towards the close of the year the situation had greatly eased, except for his money difficulties which became more and more hopeless.
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The portion of the Mughal Empire that still belonged to the Padishah was yielding no revenue: it had now shrunk into half the middle Doab and the Delhi-Agra districts. But even here much of the land had been alienated by Mirzā Najaf Khan as military fiefs. What little remained under the Crown had not yet recovered from the ravages of fifteen years' anarchy and civil war and the continuous drought of the last three years. Sindhia tried one chancellor after another in his attempt to raise a revenue from Hindustan; but he could as soon have drawn blood out of stone. This failure, which he wrongly ascribed to the negligence or peculation of his diwans, almost drove him mad and he wanted to see if more money would flow from his doing the diwan's work himself! Such an attempt meant in effect that he threw himself into the arms of irresponsible and incompetent low class officials or smooth-spoken cheats. Old men sadly noted this infatuation of the supreme executive head of an empire, but could do nothing to avert his ruin. By the end of 1786, the Emperor's monthly allowance of Rs. 1,30,000 was already five months due, the pay of the troops had fallen still more heavily into arrears. And during his long halt at Vrindavan Mahadji had lavished large sums on the temples and priests—in prayers for the gift of a son and heir.
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Finally leaving Vrindavan on 17th November, he arrived on the bank of the Jamuna at Chirghat, 15 miles northwards, close to the fortalice of Shergarh. As the Mewatis were disturbing the country to his west, he made a march in that direction and reached Nandgāon (15 miles south-west of Shergarh) about the 10th of December next. Here James Anderson took leave of him (13th Dec.) on retirement to England. Shortly afterwards Mahadji marched north-westwards into Mewat in order to overawe the rebels there, especially Murād Beg, a Mughal officer of the Najaf Khani service, whom Sindhia wanted to remove from the possession of Kishangarh fort (13 miles west of Firuzpur-Jhirka) and the governorship of Mewat. This having been peacefully effected, he turned north to Pinjor, 8 m. north of Hodal (c. 30th Dec.) so as to be nearer to Delhi and more speedily conclude his negotiations for bringing the Emperor to his camp, and also to check the Sikh raids into the north Delhi tract. An expedition against Ghulam Qadir, the successor of Zābita Khan, for the purpose of wresting the Saharanpur district from him, was also contemplated. In fact, Mahadji's mind was not yet made up: he meant to shape his policy according to the actual conduct of the Jaipur Government. In the neighbourhood of Hodal he lay encamped for the next two months. And here he received his two Delhi agents—Shah Nizāmuddin and Ladoji Deshmukh, whom the Emperor had sent (on 6th February 1787) to dun him for his outstanding allowances, now amounting to Rs. 8,40,000. It was no easy matter for Sindhia to find such a sum, and he detained the envoys for three weeks, after which he sent them back (27th Feb.) with bankers' bills for two lakhs payable at sight, assignments for five lakhs on the revenue of Mirat and other mahals, and a promise to pay up the balance of Rs. 1,40,000 in two months. The next day Sindhia set his face southwards for Dig, where he celebrated the Spring Carnival on 4th March, and then on the 16th of that month began the invasion of Jaipur in person.
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§ 8. How the Jaipur Government provoked invasion in 1787.
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When in June of the previous year Mahadji had retired from the Jaipur kingdom, he had left behind him Najaf Quli Khan and the Rao Rajah of Macheri to collect the promised tribute. Both of these agents were lukewarm in his cause, the first through habitual indolence and self-indulgence, and the second through the selfish design of enlarging his own State at the expense of Jaipur. Of his own men Sindhia had quartered a contingent under the faithful Rāyāji Pātil there, to collect the sums assigned upon the vassals of the Kachhwa kingdom. This force, a little over 5,000 Deccani horse, could do nothing decisive when matters came to a fight.
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The fact was, the Jaipur Rajah had no wish to pay anything. "Every time after great effort and the assembling of an army against him, a little money could be collected from him." [G. Ali, iii. 231, Ibr. 162.] Experience had also taught Sindhia that he could not put the necessary pressure upon the Rajah by means of his agents and that if he expected any substantial result he must go there in person.
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In addition to this persistent default, Rajah Sawai Pratap Singh had sent his ex-diwan Daulat Ram Haldia to Lucknow (May 1786) to intrigue for the hiring of an English force against the Marathas. This agent spent eight months there, and though the new Governor-General Lord Cornwallis definitely forbade any English intervention in the quarrels of the Indian States, some local British officials (like Kirkpatrick), out of alarm at Sindhia's designs in the Doab, encouraged Daulat Ram's hopes of armed aid from their Government. In January 1787, Haldia returned to Jaipur and was installed as prime minister once more, while Khush-hālī Rām Bohrā, who stood for friendly relations with the Marathas, fell out of favour. The Bohra's greatest crime in his master's eyes was his kindness to Mān Singh, the dispossessed legitimate heir, whom he was accused of trying to instal on the throne by the aid of Mahadji. [DY. i. 173, 220. PRC. 86.]
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Meantime Sindhia had proposed to the Jaipur Court a marriage between his little daughter and their young Rajah, but it was declined on account of the difference in caste between them. The Rajputs refused to recognise the Maratés as Kshatriyas of equal purity.
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With the return of Daulat Ram to power and on the strength of the rumours which he brought that the English were concentrating their forces in the Doab against Mahadji's eastern frontier, the Jaipur Government took up a vigorous policy of resistance. A close defensive alliance was formed with the neighbouring Rajah of Jodhpur, and the Kachhwa vassals everywhere were ordered to refuse payment of the sums assigned on them to Mahadji by last year's treaty and to resist the Marathas by force. The Rajah shut himself up in his capital and prepared to stand a siege, abandoning the idea of fighting the invaders in the open. The tortoise drew his head into his impenetrable shell and lay in motionless security there, shutting his eyes to his realm outside which lay bare to the invader's fury.
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Rayaji Patil and his colleagues had at first gained some successes and occupied some of the outlying parts of the Kachhwa kingdom. Then came the Rajput reaction. Towards the end of December 1786, he lost 700 men in an abortive assault on a local mud-fort. The situation became steadily worse after the return of Haldia, and at the end of February Mahadji had to send up a strong force under his Bakhshi Jivā Dādā to support Rāyāji. [*DY.* 173, 216, 199. *Ibr.* ii. 168. *PRC.* i. 80.]
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This brings us to March 1787. In the middle of that month Mahādji definitely set out on the invasion of Jaipur, for he had at last become convinced that nothing short of annexation of a portion of Jaipur territory would enable him to secure payment of the enormous contributions which the Kachhwa Rajah owed to the Emperor and to the Peshwa. We see repeated here the intolerable position of Dalhousie when confronted with the eternal default of the Nizām in paying for his subsidiary force.
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It was, however, after long hesitation that Mahadji chose to draw the sword. The Emperor, fearful of his own safety, wrote again and again urging his Regent not to advance beyond Dig with the bulk of his army, lest the English should swoop down upon defenceless Delhi and enthrone some princely puppet of their own, as they had already done in Bengal and Oudh. Such a suspicion was strengthened by the recent massing of English troops on the Doab frontier of Oudh, as far as Farrukhabad where no European infantry had been seen before this. [*DY.* i. 213, 220. G. Ali iii. 231. *ML.* 301. *PRC.* i. 99.]
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At first, so long as Sindhia did not lose all hope of getting any money from Jaipur through his agents, his chief concern was to protect the north Delhi region from the Sikhs by sending a strong force there under Ambaji Inglé and also to hire the Sikh leaders for an invasion of Saharanpur in order to exact tribute from Ghulam Qadir Khan. But Ambaji totally failed in the second part of his mission, and the fear of British intervention from the Fathgarh camp made Mahadji finally give up his ambitions in the upper Doab. [PRC. i. 77, 78.]
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At Jaipur, too, his earlier hopes faded away as completely, and this enforced on him a policy of active aggression. In December 1786 the power of that kingdom had reached its low ebb from the lack of a policy and a leader to enforce it, dissensions among the nobles in the capital, and a temporary coolness with its only ally the Jodhpur Rajah whom Sindhia’s agents had approached with success. Matters came to such a pass that in the middle of January next the discontented and long unpaid generals of the Kachhwa State agreed to open the gates of the capital and admit the Maratha troops for a bribe of Rs. 80,000. But the plot did not mature. Daulat Ram Haldiā returned from Lucknow a few days afterwards, the pro-Maratha faction among the Rajah’s nobles was crushed and Haldiā became prime minister once more, bent on pursuing an open anti-Maratha policy (c. 20 January.) The quarrel with Jodhpur was quickly made up and armed preparations for defence were pushed on. Rāyāji Pātil’s position was rendered still weaker by the enemy’s busy seduction of his faithless Mughalia contingent with promises to pay their arrears of salary. He, therefore, wrote “daily urging his master to advance speedily to his support.” [Ibr. ii. 163. PRC. i. 71, 82.]