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The three Mahrattas, Sindhia, Holkar, and Bhonsla, were plotting the overthrow of the British, and the Peshwa was looking out of brooding eyes upon Hodson, the Resident at Poona. Up on the hill, in the temple of Parvati, the priests repeated prayers to the black goddess calling for the destruction of the hated whites.
The Peshwá, at Poona, still maintained a show of independent authority over the other great Maráthá chieftains, Sindhia, Holkar, and the Rájá of Nágpur or Berár. But the real military power of the Maráthás rested with these leaders, and their predatory troops of horsemen terrorised all Central India.
Having taken up a threatening position in Rájputána, and defied Lake's summons to retire, he was treated as an enemy, and proved a very formidable enemy. Instead of relying, like Sindhia, on disciplined battalions, he fell back on the old Maráthá tactics, and swept the country with hordes of irregular cavalry who lived by pillage.
If they went back to Karowlee with a story of ill treatment, of broken promises, that hot-headed old Rajput would turn against Sindhia. And the present policy of the Mahratta Confederacy was to secure allies in the revolt against the British which was being secretly planned. The Dewan was also afraid of Nana Sahib. He saw in that young man a coming force.
And now that this young Afghan hath destroyed the dignity of my empire; I see none but thee, O Most Holy! to have compassion upon me. Yet peradventure Timur Shah my kinsman may come to my aid; and Madhoji Sindhia, who is even as a son unto me he also will surely avenge my cause. Asaf-ud-daula and the chief of the English; they also may come to my relief.
"Speak, Patan," Kassim commanded; "thou dwellest overlong upon some lie." "There was a mission," Barlow answered; "it was from my own people, the people of Sind." "Of Sindhia?" "No; from the land of Sind, Afghanistan. We ride not with the Mahrattas; they are infidels, while we be followers of the true Prophet." "Thou art a fair speaker, Afghan. And was there a sealed message?"
Sindhia did not at the time accompany him, but retired to his favourite cantonment of Mathra. It has been already mentioned that there is little or nothing recorded of the condition of the country or of the people by native historians. It must not, however, be thought that I am satisfied with recording merely the dates of battles, or the biographies of prominent men.
Gholam Kadir replied by an assumed fit of ungoverned anger, and producing an intercepted letter from Shah Alam, calling upon Sindhia for help, ordered the Emperor to be disarmed, together with his personal guard, and removed into close arrest; and then, taking from the privacy of the Salim Garh a poor secluded son of the late Emperor Ahmad Shah, set him on his throne, hailed him Emperor, under the title of Bedar Bakht, and made all the courtiers and officials do him homage.
The result of the capitulation was that the eldest son of the deceased Afrasyab received an estate, yielding a yearly revenue of a lakh and a half of rupees. The rest of the property valued at a crore, a sum then corresponding to a million of money, but really representing much more of our present currency was seized by Sindhia.
1802. The overthrow of Thomas was nearly the last of Sindhia's successes. The Peshwa, on whose side Sindhia had been fighting, sought refuge with the British at Bassein, and Holkar obtained temporary possession of the Mahratta capital. On the 31st of December the celebrated treaty of Bassein was concluded with the Peshwa. It appears from the Wellington Dispatches, published by Mr.
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