224 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
among whom was the well known General Comte de 
Boigne, who, with that activity and restless energy for 
which they are so remarkable, and excited moreover 
by their feelings of national rivalry towards that go- 
vernment which had crushed their power in the East, 
exerted every effort of their military skill to raise the 
army of the Mahratta chieftain to an equality with 
that of his European rivals. As, however, he was now 
at peace with the Company’s government, which alone 
could arrest his progress in any military enterprise, 
he made himself master of Delhi and Agra, obtain- 
ing possession of the person of the feeble representative 
of the Mogul dynasty, by whom he was appointed 
nominal vicegerent, but actual sovereign, of the empire. 
Thus, in the course of a few years, he became a 
professed slave but the severe master of the unfortunate 
Emperor Shah Allum ; the pretended friend but co- 
vert rival of the house of Holcar ; the acknowledged 
retainer but actual plunderer of the family of the 
Paishwa. Though Mahadajee was in the main a 
humane and even a benevolent man for one of his 
quick and fiery race, his career was not unmarked by 
violence. His ambition was unbounded, and this fre- 
quently betrayed him into acts of arbitrary oppression. 
The almost entire dissolution of the Mogul empire, 
and the disunion among the Mahratta confederacy, 
enabled him so to extend his territorial acquisitions, 
that before his death, which happened in 1794, he 
had acquired by the mere ascendancy of his military 
genius, a greater extent of dominion than any prince 
since the death of Aurungzebe. 
Among the peculiarities of this extraordinary man, 
