Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c44.s1.8

v4.c44.s1.8

One cannot help feeling that Nānā Fadnis’s wrong policy was due even more to his ignorance of North Indian conditions and people than to the crooked working of his Machiavellian mind. He saw the things of the Delhi empire through his ears. His sole visit to North India had been made more than 30 years before, as an obscure and sickly lad, in the disastrous Pānipat campaign. Thereafter, neither he, nor any first-grade agent of the Peshwā was sent to visit Mathurā personally, see things for himself, and give a final decision in the Holkar-Sindhia dispute with all the authority of the Peshwa's Government. Such a course alone could have averted so much waste of blood and money by the Maratha race.