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 396 HI.ST(JlfY OF INDIA. [Book III.

A.D. 1734. resources would enable him to make head again.st the Mahratta.s. He was far from fulfilling this expectation. The Mahratta Pilajee Guicowar, ancestor of the Guicowar family still ruling in Gujerat, resi.sted all his efforts to expel him, but was at last, at Abhi Sing's instigation, basely assassinated. Nothing was gained by the atrocity; for it only exasperated the Mahrattas to such a pitch that, not satisfied with overrunning Gujerat, they carried their ravages to Jood- poor, and made the rajah glad to compound with the loss of Gujerat for the safety of his hereditary state. Successes of In Malwali, where the Mahrattas were headed by Bajee Rao in person, their

Bajee Rao, ^

in Malwali. arms wcre equally triumphant; and the Mogul government, after several inef- fectual expedients, tacitly concurred in the surrender of the province to the Peishwa in 1734. This important concession, so far from satisfying his ambi- tion, only made it more grasping ; and in proportion as the weakness of his adversaries was disclosed, he rose in his demands, and insisted not merely on levying the chout, but on holding, in full right, as a jaghire, the province of Malwah, and the whole country south of the Chumbul, together with the cities of Muttra, Allahabad, and Benares. Mahomed Shah, alarmed above measure by this new demand, evaded it for a time by temporizing, and endeavoured to induce the Mahratta to withdraw it by giving him a right to levy tribute on the Rajpoots, and to increase the amount of that already exigible from the Dec- can. This last grant cost the emperor nothing, and was regarded as a stroke of good policy, because its natural tendency was to set the Mahrattas and Nizam - ul-Moolk at variance. In this respect it was not altogether a failure, as it drew Nizam- ul-Moolk's attention to his true position, and convinced him that he had much more to fear from the Mahrattas than from the Mogul. Under the influ- ence of this conviction, he adopted a new system of policy, and resuming friendly communications with Mahomed Shah, midertook to employ all his power in protecting him against the encroachments of the Mahrattas.

He threatens This engagement was not allowed to remain long as a dead letter. In 1737, at the very time when it was entered into, Bajee Rao was advancing on the Mogul capital. The only check he sustained was in the defeat, by Saadut Khan, governor of Oude, of Malliur Rao Holkar, the founder of the Holkar family, who with a marauding party was ravaging the country beyond the Jiunna. Tliis defeat elated the Moguls, who magnified it into a discomfiture of the whole Mahratta army, which was represented as in full retreat to the Deccan. When Bajee Rao was informed of these vain boastings, he simply remarked that he would soon show the emperor he was still in Hindoostan. He was as good as his word. Suddenly quitting the Jiunna, and leaving the Mogul army which had been sent to oppose him inactive before Muttra, he hastened on by forced marches, and never halted till he presented himself before the gates of Delhi. The expedition, however, appears to have been undertaken rather in a spirit of bravado than with any serious design of attempting the capture of the city,

Delhi,