भारतीय इतिहास के ६ स्वर्णिम पृष्ठ (वीर सावरकर - विदेशी आक्रान्ताओं पर विजय गाथा)

the Pathani rule, as of yore. But earlier, he had visited India along with the warriors of Nadirshah's invasion and was fully conscious of the growing Maratha influence in the imperial administration at Delhi. So, he was far too cautious in making his moves. After having secretly supplied all sorts of armed help to the Pathans and the Rohillas in the Doab, Abdali himself came aggressively in the month of January 1748 up to Lahore and captured it. This was the first of his invasions of India. 1044. But the Moghal imperial army defeated Abdali's advance guards just near Lahore and blocked his way to Delhi. Just at this time, he got reports that his enemy, the Emperor of Persia, was preparing to invade Kabul and that at the invitation of the Moghal Emperor to help arrest his onward march, the Marathas had set out with a large army towards Delhi. So considering it to be inopportune to press onwards to Delhi, that shrewd general Abdali retreated immediately to Kabul. But before his departure, he had it proclaimed throughout India that the whole of Punjab was subject to the sovereign Afghan rule under him. The first treaty of surrender by the Moribund Moghal Empire with the Marathas 1045-46. In the meanwhile, the Moghal Emperor at Delhi had delegated most solicitously all administrative authority over the whole of India right from Bengal, Bihar, Orissa to Sindh (including the Subba of Multan), the whole of Punjab, Rohilkhand, Doab and all the South Indian divisions of the Moghal empire to the Marathas by a special treaty. 1047. By this treaty, at least by this written consent of the Moghal emperor, the Marathas had become since that date the de facto sovereigns of the whole of India, and the Moghal Emperor himself had been reduced to a non-entity. 1048. The tremendous reponsibility that devolved upon the Marathas because of this change in the imperial administrative authority was, of course, the onerous one of defending the Moghal empire against all internal as well as external dangers—against internal rebellions and revolts as well as against foreign invasions. Gigantic as this responsibility was, it was only the Maratha sinews that could bear it efficiently—the sinews that had almost realised the dream of the foundation of Hindu—Padpadshahi! That is why they accepted that condition of the treaty quite readily as if it was a boon. Abdali's second invasion of India