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1665] patience, an adept in the ceremonious courtesy of the Muslims, a master of Turki and Persian, besides Urdu and the Rajput dialect, he was an ideal leader of the composite army of Afghans and Turks, Rajputs and Hindusthanis, that followed the crescent banner of the sovereign of Delhi.

Age and experience had cooled the impetuous ardour of his youth, — he had once led a forlorn hope, at the storming of Mau, — and he now employed stratagem in preference to force, and bribe in preference to war. His foresight and political cunning, his smoothness of tongue and cool calculating policy, were in striking contrast with the impulsive generosity, reckless daring, blunt straightforwardness, and impolitic chivalry which we are apt to associate with the Rajput character. And now this veteran of a hundred fights donned his armour at the age of sixty to crush a petty chieftain, who in less than ten years had grown great enough to baffle all the resources of Bijapur and to challenge the prestige of the empire of Delhi.

It was, however, with no light heart that Jai Singh* set himself to the task of subduing Shivaji,