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Rh and Rohillas did as they pleased in the middle Doab and Rohilkhand, Gujarat and Malwa were Maratha provinces, and the Deccan, even the part held by the second nizam, was wholly beyond the mastery of Delhi.

Meanwhile, Ahmad Shah still hovered over the Panjab, which was tamely ceded to him in the hope of checking worse demands; but a treacherous attack on his governor at Lahore roused him to a fresh invasion, and in 1756 Delhi again experienced all the horrors of a sack. When he withdrew in the following year, the old intrigues and jealousies revived; the Marathas were again called in, and this time the peshwa's brother actually occupied the capital, where a new puppet-emperor, Alamgir II, who had succeeded the debauched Ahmad in 1754, was helpless between the rival interests of the vizir, Ghazi-ad-din, and the Afghan chief of Rohilla, Najib-ad-daulah. The Marathas now made themselves masters of the Panjab, and felt that they were within sight of the conquest of the whole of Hindustan. They were in the zenith of their power. Their domestic differences had been accommodated, and a general combination of all their forces was arranged. They were no longer the ill-disciplined band of marauders that had baffled Aurangzib by their guerrilla tactics; besides such predatory hordes, they had well-ordered cavalry and infantry, and a better artillery train than the Moghuls themselves. Full of their strength and ambition, they raised the cry of Hindustan for the Hindus.

It had become a religious war, centred round the