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196 charge "sword in hand, in close order, at full gallop." So the vizir remounted, and went storming down upon the Maratha centre under a shower of rockets. The Marathas fought bravely for a short time; but their leader was killed, their line was broken, and they were utterly routed with enormous slaughter; for the pursuit was by swarms of cavalry over a level plain, and the exasperated peasants massacred the Marathas everywhere.

The Peshwa, alarmed by the news of his army's situation in the north, was moving up from the Deccan, and had reached the Narbada River. There his scouts brought him a runner who was carrying a letter from some bankers at Panipat to their correspondents in the south. He opened it and read: "Two pearls [his son and cousin] have been dissolved; twenty-seven gold mohurs lost; of the silver and copper the total cannot be reckoned," an enigmatic message that told him of an immense political, military, and family catastrophe. He never recovered from the shock, which destroyed the baseless fabric of Maratha domination in Northern India. They might plunder towns, levy contributions, and even occupy some of the provinces for a time; but the fate of empires is decided by pitched battles, and in close lists the south-country freebooters would always go down before the hardier races of the northwest.

Such a decisive victory has usually been followed in Asia by the rise of a new dynasty and the establishment of an extensive dominion. Yet although the