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Updated: May 5, 2025
Although this campaign was dictated by a Mahratta policy, yet the small Moghul nucleus bore a certain part, being ably commanded by the Persian, Mirza Najaf Khan, who has been already mentioned as Governor of Korah, and of whom we shall hear frequently during the account of the next ten years.
"The prince appeared to be moving as in a spell; but as he concluded the remainder of the missive and remembered, at its inspiration, that he was, indeed, the grandson of the Moghul and the heir-apparent of this pageant throne of Delhi, a sensible degree of his customary cynical assurance returned.
But a new generation of Moghul nobles was now rising, whose valour formed a short bright Indian summer in the fall of the Empire; and the invasion was rolled back by the spirit and intelligence of the heir apparent, the Vazir's son Mir Mannu, his brother-in-law Ghazi-ud-din, and the nephew of the deceased Governor of Audh, Abul-Mansur Khan, better known to Europeans by his title Safdar Jang.
At the same time he deputed Ismail Beg across the river to practice upon the fidelity of the garrison; and such was the Beg's influence that the Moghul portion of the Imperial troops joined him immediately, and left the unfortunate Emperor to be protected exclusively by unbelievers, under the general direction of the Gosain leader, Himmat Bahadur.
Ismail Beg had married his uncle's daughter, and was a person of great spirit, though not, as it would seem, of much judgment or principle. The battle, as described by Native history, began by a reconnaisance of Ismail Beg at the head of 300 Moghul horse.
The fort of Agra surrendered on the 27th of March, 1785; and all that remained of the power of the Moghul party was the fort of Aligarh, where the widow and brother of the late minister, Afrasyab Khan, still held out, in the hope of preserving the property of the deceased, the bulk of which was stored there.
The gallant writer estimates Ismail Beg's Moghul horse, however, at 5,000 sabres; and admits that the Mahrattas would have sustained severe loss but for the timely firmness of the regular battalions.
The handful of English merchant-venturers who under Queen Elizabeth's charter first established three hundred years ago a few precarious settlements on the far-flung shores of a then almost unknown continent no more dreamt of ruling India than did the great East India Company of which they had laid the foundations when it first sought to extend its trading operations into the interior and sent an embassy to court the goodwill of the mighty Moghul emperors then at the height of their power.
But the great Aurungzebe was then on the throne of Delhi; and though the Moghul empire had declined somewhat from the standard set up by Akbar and maintained by Shah Jehan, the fighting merchants were soon taught that they were but as children in the hands of its chief. They were driven out of Bengal, and Aurungzebe thought of expelling them from his whole empire.
In the action which ensued, the Moghul force which, though well disciplined and well led by Mirza Najaf, seconded by M. Medoc and some efficient native officers, was numerically weak, fell back upon Humayun's tomb, within four miles of the palace of New Dehli.
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