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 CHAPTER V

The Rohillá War

1772-1774

In the midst of his peaceful labours, Hastings kept from the first a careful watch over the course of affairs outside the Bengal frontiers. From the first, he saw signs of manifest danger to the peace of his own provinces in the disorders that seethed around them. The restless Maráthás were fast recovering the ground they had lost in the rout of Pánípat. In 1769 the Peshwá, Mádhu Ráo, had sent forth a mighty army to harry the people and despoil the princes of Northern India. After levying blackmail on the Ját and Rájput States, these locusts swarmed through Rohilkhand, threatened Oudh, and driving the Mughal troops before them entered Delhi itself in the winter of 1770. Masters once more of the Imperial city, they invited Sháh Alam thither from his temporary capital of Allahábád. In spite of earnest remonstrances from Calcutta, the weak but ambitious son of the murdered Alamgír eagerly caught at the prospect of revisiting as Emperor the home whence he had fled for his life in