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George," where Hafiz Rhamet, the great leader of the Rohillas, and many others of their principal chiefs were slain; but, escaping from the slaughter, Fyzoola Khân "made his retreat good towards the mountains, with all his treasure."
The Rohillas routed the Imperial army commanded by the Vazir in person, and though Safdar Jung wiped off this stain, it was only by undergoing the still deeper disgrace of encouraging the Hindu powers to prey upon the growing weakness of the Empire.
Gujarat was overrun by the Mahrattas; Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa were occupied by the successor of Aliverdi Khan, Audh and Allahabad by Safdar Jang, the central Doab by the Afghan tribe of Bangash, the province now called Rohilkand by the Rohillas.
Since this prominent mention has been made of the Rohillas, and since they are now for a short time to play a yet more conspicuous part in the fortunes of the falling empire, it will be well to give a brief description of their situation at the time.
Sujah Dowlah was bent on subjugating the Rohillas; and Hastings had at his disposal the only force by which the Rohillas could be subjugated. It was agreed that an English army should be lent to the Nabob Vizier, and that, for the loan, he should pay four hundred thousand pounds sterling, besides defraying all the charge of the troops while employed in his service. "I really cannot see," says Mr.
During the next two months constant skirmishes and duels took place between parties and individual champions upon either side. In one of these Najib lost 3,000 of his Rohillas, and was very near perishing himself; and the chiefs of the Indian Musalmans became at last very urgent with the Shah to put an end to their suspense by bringing on a decisive action.
Circumstances, moreover, were now far more in his favour than they had been since 1785. During the three years that followed, the Rohillas of Ghausgarh were broken, Muhammad Beg was dead, the strength of the brave but indolent Rajputs was much paralyzed, and Najaf Kuli Khan who never had opposed him, but might have been formidable if he pleased had succumbed to a long attack of dropsy.
Even if the Rohillas were little other than robber chiefs, even if their existence constituted a weak point in the lines of defence against the ever-terrible Mahrattas, all this did not in the eyes of Burke and of those who thought with Burke justify Hastings in lending English arms for their extermination and receiving Indian money for the loan.
He was charged with having sold for a vast sum the services of British troops to crush the free tribes of the Rohillas, with having wrung half-a-million by extortion from the Rajah of Benares, with having extorted by torture and starvation more than a million from the Princesses of Oudh.
It was especially magnanimous on the part of the Vazir to let bygones be bygones, since they included the murder, by himself, of his new Deputy's kinsman and former patron Mohammad Kuli Khan, the former Governor of Allahabad; and it was not an impolitic, though probably unintentional, stroke on the part of Sir R. Barker to lend his assistance towards introducing into the direction of the Imperial councils a chief who was as strongly opposed to the Rohillas as to the Mahrattas.
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