Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v1.c20.s8.t1.44

v1.c20.s8.t1.44

exalted office of Sindhia’s lieutenancy in Hindustan. Lakwa was joined by all the chiefs of Mewar, his cause being their own; and Hamirgarh, still held by Nana’s party, was reinvested. Two thousand shot had made a practicable breach, when Bala Rao Inglia, Bapu Sindhia, Jaswant Rao Sindhia, a brigade under the European ‘Mutta field,’¹ with the auxiliary battalions of Zalim Singh of Kotah, the whole under the command of Ambaji’s son, arrived to relieve the lieutenant. Lakwa raised the siege, and took post with his allies under the walls of Chitor; whilst the besieged left the untenable Hamirgarh, and joined the relief at Gosunda. The rival armies were separated only by the Berach river, on whose banks they raised batteries and cannonaded each other, when a dispute arose in the victor camp regarding the pay of the troops, between Bala Rao (brother of Ambaji) and Nana, and the latter withdrew and retreated to Sanganer. Thus disunited, it might have been expected that these congregated masses would have dissolved, or fallen upon each other, when the Rajputs might have given the coup de grâce to the survivors; but they were Mahrattas, and their politics were too complicated to end in simple strife: almost all the actors in these scenes lived to contest with, and be humiliated by, the British.