After these things the allies moved to Dehli; but the Daurani troops became mutinous and quarrelsome; and they parted on ill terms. Shujaa marched back to Mahdi Ghat, whence he had come six months before, with the titular appointment of Vazir of the Empire. The Shah, having written to the fugitive Shah Alam, to salute him as emperor, got what money he could out of the exhausted treasury and departed to his own country. Najib Khan remained at Dehli under the title of Najib-ud-daulah, with a son of the absent emperor as ostensible regent. Having made these dispositions, Ahmad the Abdali returned to his own country, and only once again interposed actively in the affairs of the Indian peninsula.
Such was the famous Campaign of Panipat, the first disaster, on a great scale, of the power of the Mahratta confederacy, and the besom which swept the land of Hindustan for the advent of the British.
It appears that, at this period, the Shahzada had applied to Colonel Clive for an Asylum in Calcutta, while the Colonel was at the same time in receipt of a letter from the minister at Dehli the unscrupulous Ghazi-ud-din calling on him to arrest the prince as a rebel and forward him to Court in custody. Clive contented himself by sending him a small present in money. About the same time, however, Clive wrote to Lord Chatham (then Prime Minister, and Mr. Pitt), recommending the issue of orders sanctioning his demanding the Viceroyship of the Eastern Subahs on behalf of the King of England; an application which he guaranteed the Emperor's granting on being assured of the punctual payment of fifty lakhs a year, the estimated fifth of the revenues. "This," he says, "has of late been very ill-paid, owing to the distractions in the heart of the Moghul Empire, which have prevented the Court from attending to their concerns in those distant provinces." Although nothing came of these proceedings, they are here noted as the presage of future events.
PART II.
CHAPTER I.
The English Shujaa-ud-daulah Shahzada enters Bihar; his character Ramnarayan defeated M. Law Battle of Gaya March towards Hindustan Massacre of Patna Flight of Kasim and Sumro Battle of Buxar Treaty with British Text of Treaty Establishment at Allahabad Emperor's establishment Authorities cited Broome's Bengal Army Legal position.
THE events related in the foregoing introductory chapters had led to a complete obscuration of the Timuride family and power. Whether or no that dynasty was to resume its sway once more depended entirely on the turn that events were to take at this crisis; and chiefly on what might happen in the eastern provinces of Bihar and Bengal, where a new power was rapidly making itself felt. To that quarter, therefore, general attention was henceforth drawn; and the new power the English began to be, by common consent, treated as arbiter of the future. The Nawab of Audh was also an important element in the problem, as it then appeared; and the return of the ruler of Kabul to the plains where he had so lately struck a blow that seemed decisive, was a matter of almost daily expectation.
1759. When in 1759 the heir to what was left of the empire of Hindostan had gallantly cut his way through the myrmidons sent against him by the ruthless Minister, he crossed the Jamna and took refuge with Najib-ud-daulah, the Afghan, who was then at Saharanpur in the Fifty-Two Parganas. But finding that noble unable to afford him material support, and still fearing the machinations of his enemy, he gradually retired to Lucknow, intending perhaps to wait there until the return of the Abdali leader might afford him an opportunity of turning upon the Mohamadan and Hindu rebels.
The present viceroy of Audh was Shujaa-ud-daulah, the son of the famous Safdar Jang, whom he equalled in ability, and far exceeded in soldierly qualities. On his first succession to his father's now almost independent fief he was young, and content with the unbounded indulgence of those bodily faculties with which he was largely endowed. He is described as extremely handsome, and above the average stature; with an acute mind, somewhat too volatile; and more prone by nature to the exercises of the field than to the deliberations of the cabinet. But neither was the son of Safdar Jang likely to be brought up wholly without lessons in that base and tortuous selfishness which, in the East even more than elsewhere, usually passes for statecraft; nor were those lessons likely to be read in ears unprepared to understand them. Shujaa's conduct in the late Rohilla war had been far from frank; and he was particularly unwilling to throw himself irredeemably into the cause of a ruined sovereign's fugitive heir. Foiled in his application to the Viceroy of Audh, the Shahzada (Prince) then turned to a member of the same family who held the Fort and District of Allahabad, and was named Mohammad Kuli Khan. To this officer he exhibited an imperial patent in his own name for the lieutenancy of Bahar, Bengal, and Orissa, which were then the theatre of wars between the British traders of Calcutta and the family of the usurping Viceroy of those Subahs, Aliverdi Khan. The Prince proposed to Mohammad Kuli that they should raise the Imperial standard and reduce both competitors to their proper level. The governor, a man of ambition and spirit, was warmly encouraged to this scheme by his relation, the Viceroy of Audh (for reasons of his own, which we shall speedily discover, Shujaa highly approved of the arrangement); and a powerful official, named Kamgar Khan, promised assistance in Bihar. Thus supported, the Prince crossed the frontier stream (Karamnassa) in November, 1759, just at the time that his unfortunate father lost his life in the manner related above. (Part I. chapter v.)
1760. In the distracted state of the country it was more than a month before the news of this tragedy arrived in camp, which was then pitched at a village called Kanauti, in Bihar. The Prince immediately assumed the succession, and, as a high aim leads to high shooting, his title was to be nothing short of "sovereign of the known world," or SHAH ALAM. He is recorded to have ordered that his reign should be reckoned from the day of his father's "martyrdom"; and there are firmans of his patent-office still forthcoming in confirmation of the record. He was at once recognised as emperor by all parties; and, for his part, he wisely confirmed Shujaa-ud-daulah as Vazir; while he intrusted the command of the army in Hindustan, in the room of the assassin Ghazi, to Najib-ud-daulah, the Abdali's nominee.