पानीपत १७६१ (मराठा साम्राज्य एवं पानीपत महायुद्ध इतिहास)

SADASHIVRAO'S APPOINTMENT FOR NORTHERN INDIA 45 portion of Shuja's dominions or the land of the Ruhelas. When not threatened by Shuja and when the Maratha armies were not in his neighbourhood, he would not shirk from invading and occupying the Maratha districts in the lower Doab.⁶³ He would never offend any party by his words and always tried to keep himself on speaking terms with all. Ahmad Khan had come to Abdali's camp but seeing that there was no work there for three months of the rains he and also the Ruhelas, except Najib, left for their homes with Abdali's permission.⁶⁴ From their homes they kept on writing to Bhau that they had joined Abdali under duress. Bhau seems to have misjudged their motives as they were always keeping up a correspondence with Bhau and promising to join him under certain conditions. It is difficult to say whether they actually feared the consequences of joining Abdali as against the Mara- thas or were merely fooling him this time so as to save their dominions from the armies of Govindpant Bundele and Gopalrao Ganesh Barve. But Bhau was trying his best to take advantage of the enforced delay and hoping to separate some of his allies from Abdali. Many Afghan sardars wrote to Bhau that they would detach themselves from Abdali as soon as they found an opportunity to do so. But Abdali kept a strict watch over them and never once allowed them to move away from his camp. Bhau even tried to detach some of the Afghan tribes who were accompanying Abdali with the hope of loot but were not directly employed by him, and were actually starving. Ahmad Shah's Durrani troops were at this time living on loot. Najib was supplying Abdali with 200 maunds of grain and 15,000 rupees cash every day for his aid. But this was sufficient for his personal slaves only. Bhau had ordered Govindpant to engage them if they came over to his side and to send them to Bhau's camp if necessary.⁶⁵ He had asked Govindpant to remain where he was and try to move in such a way as to make Shuja and the Ruhelas leave Abdali's camp for defending their threatened territories.⁶⁶ But the terror of Abdali's forces was such that it made any move on Govindpant's part well-nigh impossible. The Maratha officials in the Doab seem to have been completely demoralised by the experience of the past four years, and no one was ready to take any risk in the matter. This is clear from Sadashivrao Bhau's order to Govind- pant in the middle of August to forbid any Maratha employed under him to send back his effects to the Deccan, as Bhau had come to know of such a move.⁶⁷ It meant that the Marathas living in those regions were not very sanguine about the outcome of the war and feared the worst. This explains the cause of the non-compliance of Sadashivrao Bhau's orders by Govindpant and Gopalrao Barve. They were unable to do anything vigorously or enthu- siastically because the overwhelming majority of the Maratha employees had completely lost heart. Notwithstanding such sombre atmosphere Sadashivrao Bhau was going on with his plans of meeting Abdali after the rains. Though the hope of solv- ing the political problem of the governance of India without resort to arms was ⁶³ Ibid. 1.236. ⁶⁴ Ibid. 1.237. ⁶⁵ Ibid. 1.257 ⁶⁶ Ibid. 1.242 ⁶⁷ Ibid. 1.223.