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240 capital. Under their patronage, he had been replaced on his throne in 1771, but the Marathas treated his kingship as a mere pageant, using his name as a pretext for seizing more districts, and leaving him almost destitute in the midst of a plentiful camp. They were now swarming about the north country and rapidly gaining the upper hand of all the Mohammedan princes. What concerned the English more particularly was that they were demanding, in the emperor's name, surrender of the districts of Kora and Allahabad, which had been made over to him by Lord Clive in 1765, when the Diwani of Bengal was granted to the Company. For since these districts bordered on Bengal as well as on Oudh, their occupation by the Marathas would have been equally fatal to the security of both territories.

On the northern frontier of Oudh, in the angle between the line of the Himalayas and the Upper Ganges, lay the country possessed by the Rohilla Afghans. This was a chiefship established about twenty-five years previously by an adventurer of reputed Afghan parentage, who had asserted his independence of the Moghul Empire during the confusion caused by Ahmad Shah's earlier descent upon India. It was now under a confederacy of which Hafiz Rihmat Khan was the leader, and it formed an important section of the general line of defence against the Marathas, who had broken through in 1771 and now reappeared in 1772. As Oudh covered the open side of Bengal, Rohilkhand covered the exposed frontier of Oudh; so when the Rohillas implored the vizir to succour them, the vizir, fearing