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HISTORY OF THE SIKHS
90
India at their feet, and they concerted with Ghaziud-din a scheme pleasing to both, the reduction of Oudh and the expulsion of the Rohillas.^ But the loss of the Punjab brought Ahmad Shah a second time to the banks of the Jumna, and dissipated for ever the
1758-61.
Ahmad Shah's
fifth
expedition, J
759-61.
Delhi occupied by the Afghans, but after-
wards taken by the Marathas,
1760.
The Marasignal-
thas
defeated at Panipat, Tnd expel-
ly
led
CHAP. IV
tempo-
rarily from
Upper India,
7th
Jan.,
1761.
Maratha dreams of supremacy.The Durrani king marched from Baluchistan up the Indus to Peshawar, and thence across the Punjab. His presence caused Multan and Lahore to be evacuated by the Marathas, and his approach induced the Wazir Ghazi-ud-din to take the life of the emperor, while the young prince, afterwards Shah Alam, was absent endeavtDuring to gain strength by an alliance with the English, the new masters of Bengal. The Maratha commanders, Sindhia and Holkar, were separately overpowered; the Afghan king occupied Delhi, and then advanced towards the Ganges to engage Shuja-ud-daula, of Oudh, in the general confederacy against the southern Hindus, who were about to makd an effort for the final extinction of the Muhammadan rule. A new commander, untried in the northern war.s, but accompanied by the Peshwa's heir and by all th2 Maratha chiefs of name, was advancing from Poona-, confident in his fortune and in his superior numbers. Sedasheo Rao easily expelled the Afghan detachment from Delhi, while the main body was occupied in the Doab, and he vainly talked of proclaiming young Wiswas Rao to be the paramount of India. But Ahmad Shah gained his great victory of Panipat in the begin ning of 1761, and both the influence of the Peshwa among his own people, and the power of the Marathas in Hindustan, received a blow, from which neither fully recovered, and which, indirectly, aided the accomplishment of their desires by almost unheeded foreigners.^
The Afghan king returned to Kabul immediately the battle, leaving deputies in Sirhind and Lahore,^ and the Sikhs only appeared, during this camafter
1
Cf. Elphinstone, History of India,
ii.
669, 670.
Najib-ud-daula, and the Rohillas likewise, urged Ahmad to return, when »they saw their villages set on flames by the Marathas. (Elphinstone, India, ii. 670, and Browne, Tracts, ii. 2
20.)
Browne, India Tracts, ii. 20, 21; Elphinstone, History of and Murray, Ranjit Singh, pp. 17, 20. Elphinstone says the Maratha leader only delayed to proclaim Wiswas the paramount of Hindustan until the Durranis shoxild be driven across the Indus. See also Grant Duff, History oj the Marathas, ii. 142 and note. 4 Baland Khan in Lahore, and Zain Khan in Sirhind, according to Browne, India Tracts, ii. 21, 23. ^
India, ii. 670, &c.;