‘To their benefactors the Marathas are grateful, to their enemies relentless. If they are insulted they will risk their lives to avenge themselves.’
—Hiuen Tsang
Neither these domestic distractions, nor the treacherous civil wars, nor the rise of such new and dangerous enemies as Haidar and Tippu, could make the Marathas forget their duty to avenge the day of Panipat and inflict condign punishment on all those who dared to go against them there. For some time after the death of Nanasaheb, Holkar and Shinde were the two chief Maratha Sardars who kept guarding their national interests in the north as best as they could. When the civil troubles and intrigues of Raghoba could be fairly managed, Madhao Rao in 1769 determined to dispatch a punitive expedition to the north under the command of Binivale. All Maratha Generals in the north were ordered to join the force. Crossing the Narbada with a set purpose of resuming the direction and control of the Hindu Empire and of inflicting a crushing penalty on all those Indian principalities who had dared to pray for a work for the ruin of the Maratha power since 1761 the powerful Maratha army reached Bundelkhand, quelled the petty disturbances there and punishing the recalcitrant princelets and princes on there way, reached the Chambal without much serious opposition. The Jat showed fight and refused to hand over Agra and other forts he had usurped since the day of Panipat. Near Bharatpur a pitched battle was fought. The Jats contested the field as bravely as heroes do, but unable to hold long against the Maratha forces. They broke and fled leaving thousands of their comrades dead on the field and all their camp with elephants and horses and war material fell in the hands of the Marthas. Soon after their leader, Nababsing, sued for peace and returning all Maratha possession he held, paid in 65 lakhs of rupees to them, as his MCMttJaied tribute. Now the advancing Martha army marched forth towards the gates of Delhi, expecting their sworn enemy tfcere would put up some fight against them. But, the old fox that wily Najibkhan was again all humility and repentance, the wry news of the victorious march of the Marathas brought him to the camp as a supplicant for life. He retuned all his spoils in ffee Doab, smoothened the way of the Marathas to Delhi and would do anything for them, if but pardoned and allowed to live tfcar he might conspire once more against them as soon as a favourable opportunity presented itself. But this time nothing could likely to shield him from the vengeance of the Marathas had not Death himself intervened and shielded the author of Panipat from the wrath of the countrymen of those who had fallen there.
The Marathas entered Delhi: there was none to contest the capital of Akbar and Aurangzeb. Ahmedshah Abdally, who contested it last, had at least come to terms and had already opened negotiations with the Peshwa and sent his envoys to Poona. There after protracted deliberations the parties reached an understanding by which Ahmedshah Abdally virtually promised to cease to dabble in the Imperial politics of India and acknowledged the Marathas as the protectors of the Indian Empire. Thus the victor of Panipat himself confessed the political futility of his victory and of the ambition that led to the battle and acknowledged the Hindus to be the paramount power of Hindustan. Having thus eliminated the Afghan element from the Imperial politics of India and taken possession of Delhi, the Marathas completely isolated the Pathans and the Rohillas who were only two really powerful Muhammadan centers in India that still would have, if they could, contested the Imperial power at the hands of the Hindus. But their day of reckoning had come. The memory of the outrages and indignities the Rohillas and Pathans had inflicted on the Marathas at Panipat had set on edge the steel of the Maratha vengeance and roused the forces of retribution that could perhaps be crushed, but never coaxed. This the Pathans knew as well as the Rohillas. They, under their old leaders, Hafiz Rahimat and Ahmedkhan Bangash, both of whom had seem Panipat, joined hands and determined to present a bold front to the Maratha hosts as they came.
Halting for a while at Delhi the Marathas entered the Doab. They found that the forces of their old enemies growing menacingly great. Some 70,000 Moslems were in arms. But the Marthas did not wait to count them. Field after field was furiously fought. But field after field the Pathans and Rohillas got mercilessly hewn down. Wresting fort after fort and town after town from the hands of their foes and sweeping the whole Doab clean of Pathan resistance, the advancing army of Maharashtra invaded Rhilkhand and crushed the Rohillas as mercilessly as they had done the Pathans. Death had shielded Nazibkhan from their vengeance, but his son Zabetkhan still lived to pay for the sins of his father and his own. He had taken shelter behind the walls of the impregnable fortress of Shukratal. The Marathas marched straight against the fort; opened a furious bombardment against it and inflicted such a terrible loss on the contingent in side that Zabetakhan could no longer hold it against them. One night he fled away and crossing the Ganges entered Bijnoor. Crossing the Ganges quick, the avenging army of the Marathas, too, forthwith marched towards Bijnoor in the very teeth of the fearful fire that the Moslem batteries, kept by Zabetakhan to guard the gates, opened on them. They carried the batteries, they routed the two powerful armies that contested their way, they put thousands of the Rohillas to the sword and entered Bijnoor. The whole district lay trampled under the hoof of their horse. Zabetakhan fled to Nazibgad. The Marthas pursued him there and took Futtehgarh. Here to their boundless delight the immense booty, that Nzibkhan and his Rohillas had carried away from the Maratha camp at Panipat, fell back in the hands of the victorious Marathas. Their truimph was complete. Even the wife and children of Zabetakhan were captured by them. The cruel and brutal fate that had met the few Maratha women and hundreds of youths at Panipat at the hands of those very fierce Rohillas would have justified the Marathas in dealing out vengeance in terribly equal measures to the family of Nazib and Zabeta now, but true to the tradition of the Hindu triumph the Martha vengeance did neither contemplate their forcible conversion, nor their victimization to the brutal passions of the camp bazaars. The Hindu arms, even without resorting to these barbarous and brutal acts, had struck such tenor in the hearts of the Rohillas and Pathans all over the kod+++(??)+++, that the very sight of a Maratha trooper was enough to make a whole village of Rohilla Moslems take to their heels. Those of their leaders who survived, fled away to the interior of the forests of Terai. There too it was only the setting in of the rainy season alone that shielded them from the steel of the Maratha vengeance So terribly had they to pay for Panipat.
Having thus carried their colours to the very borders of the forests of Terai and cowed down all their foes, the return march was sounded and the armies of Maharashtra marched back to wards Delhi in 1771. There their diplomats had already reaped the fruits of the victories of their Generals and outwitting and frustrating the designs of the English and Suja to secure the person of Shah-Alim, the Mogul claimant to the throne, and thus assume the position of the paramount power in India, had forced Shah-Alum to resign to the Marathas all rights and responsibilities of conducting and defending the Indian Empire in return for nominal recognition of him as the Emperor of India. Even this nominal recognition he would not get till he agreed to pay back all accumulated arrears since the day of Panipat and Chowth to the Marathas and consented to divide equally any new acquisition of territory. Once what was nearly done in 1761, was fully done in 1771. After the crushing defeat of the Rohillas and Pathans there remained no Moslem throughout India who could contest the sovereignty of the Hindus in Hindustan. That year really marked the end of Muhammadan independence and power and ambition. The Moguls, Truks, Afghans, Pathans, Rohillas and Persians, Northern and Southern, all sections and sects of the Moslems, strove to contest and seize the Imperial power of India and rescue their Empire from falling into the hands of the avenging forces of Hindudom. But the Marathas made all their endeavours come to naught, held the Imperial power of India as the protectors of Indian Empire for over 50 years against all who came to contest or challenge it. After 1771 we may dismiss the Moslems as a power in the political field of India. The Hinuds had finished them and had recovered thus Hindustan and the independence of their Hindu race from Attock to the seas. The only claimant against whom they had thenceforth to struggle and strive was not the Moslem but one far different in nature and character and caliber from the Mussalman. It was the Englishman.
It would have been strange if the drafting away of these two great armies from the Maratha camp to the north had not induced the redoubtable Haidar to try his luck again, and challenge the Maratha supremacy in the south. Madhao Rao immediately crossed the Tungabhadra and, at the head of a powerful army, went on capturing fort after fort and giving battle after battle to the foes. A second army was posted to harass Haidar when he entered the woods of Anavadi. One night while it was lying encamped near Mattoo, Haidar, with a picked forces of some 20 thousand men came out of the woods and, supple as a tiger, fell upon the unsuspecting Maratha forces. But fortunately the very first boom of Haidar’s gun rouse Gopalrao, the Commander of the Marathas. He instantly sensed the danger, know that the whole Maratha army would be cut off before it woke if the slightest hesitation or weakness was shown. He jumped on his horse, unfurled his national colours and, taking his position, ordered the war-drums to sound the alarm: at the terrible sound, soldiers after soldiers started up and rushed from his camp-bed to the battlefield. The terrible fire of the foe thickened. Trooper after trooper was hit down. But the Marathas wavered not. The thunder of Haidar’s guns and the fury of his bombardment threatened to round the Marathas off: but Gopalrao stood immovable, intrepid—his colours flying defiance. The war-drums still sounded the alarm. His aide-de-camp was standing by. A cannon ball burst and smashed off his head to pieces. A column of blood spouted up so forcibly that it fell in shower all round and drenched the Maratha Commander in a goty bath, Still Gopalrao stood his ground on his horse.++++++ A bullet struck down his horse—he mounted a second. No sooner had he mounted it than that too was hit by a bursting shell: the General was unhorsed again. But again he mounted a third charger and kept his post in the very jaws of death. Unshaken; intrepid, a slight tremor of a nerve, an inch of the ground lost would have meant a panic and the whole army fallen in the hands of an exultant foe. But the Commander’s courage grew contagious and the whole army of the Marathas, men and officers, bore the fire fronting it as an iron wall. Haidar, as he came near, stood awed at the sight of this indomitable fortitude and, dismayed, wheeled back as suddenly as he had come out. The campaign continued. Pethe, Patwardhan, Panse and other Maratha Generals gave a ceaseless chase and pursued Haidar from field to field and at Moti Talao caught him so completely in their clutches that his whole army was cut to pieces and all his camp with arms and ammunition fell in the hands of the victorious Marathas. Now the Marathas meant to remove Haidar altogether from the political field, but just then a letter reached their camp from Poona, commanding them to end the campaign and return to the capital as the Peshwa was lying seriously ill.. Grudgingly the Maratha Generals drew up a treaty and got it , signed, by which Haidar had to cede all the territories that comprised Maratha ‘Swaraj’ and pay 50 lakhs of rupees as his tribute to the Peshwa besides all expenses of war.
Amidst such glorious events the news of the illness of their leader, under whose capable guidance the Marathas had avenged the wrongs done to them at Panipat and restored their nation to the height of her past greatness, reached the different Maratha camps and capitals from Delhi to Mysore and affected the whole people as a great national calamity. It was not only his martial qualities and achievements that rendered Mdhao Rao so popular amongst his people. His civil administration, too was just and equitable, his concern for the welfare of his subjects, princes and peasants alike, was as deep and sincere, his efforts to see justice done to the high and low alike were so strenuous and watchful that his subjects even to the meanest came to bear a personal love and devotion to him. The powerful feared his probity and strictness. The peasant and the poor confided in him and knew him to be their beloved protector. In spite of domestic troubles and ruinous civil wars caused by the ambitions of his silly uncle he, within ten years of Panipat, made his nation forget it or rather remember it as a battle that was nobly lost, and yet won and struck down with his mighty hand all those who raised their hands against the cause of Hindu independence and Hindu-pad-padashahi. While he was yet but in the flower of his youth, he was at the height of his popularity and fortune and his nation was expecting at his hands things even more glorious than the achievements of his great father. Madhao Rao fell a prey to consumption when he was only 27 or so.+++(4)+++ While he lay seriously ill in his palace, he tried to please and placate his incorrigible uncle who even then was conspiring with the Nizam, managed to pay off all his public debts, and ordered his royal physician to administer to him such phials as would leave, his power of speech unaffected even unto his last moment, so that it might enable him to die with the Lord’s praises on his lips. As the news of the serious illness of the Peshwa spread abroad from all sides of his realm, his devoted people poured into Poona to have a last look of their national hero and national and beloved father. He, thereupon, ordered that the gates of his palace be closed to none and that the meanest of his subjects be not prevented from seeing him. On the 8th of Kartika (1772) the noble prince summoned the learned and the pious to his presence. Bowing low to them all and in front of those who kept thronging round his palace as they would round a temp|e the prince asked for their leave: “We depart!” said he: “bound for the last great pilgrimage, we depart: bid ye all a kind farewell unto me.” Then repeating the name of the Lord, the young prince, like a great yogin, yielded his last breath amidst the sighs and sobs of a whole people with the Lord’s name Gajanan Gajanan lingering on his lips.+++(5)+++ His young, childless and devoted wife Ramabai, gave away her jewels and other valuables to the pious and the poor and discarding the persuasions and the pressure of her royal relations, mounted the funeral pile of her lover. Immolating herself in the leaping flames she lighted the torch of her soul to illumine the secrets of the deathless love and the divine beauty that could yet be attained by man. Down to this day Maharashtra offers her loyal and loving tribute of tears at the mention of these, her prince and her princess, Madhao Rao and Ramabai. Down to this day the national bards bewail— ‘Fled is the light of our life and lost the jewel of our heart.’