In many ways Shah Alam made a canny decision when deciding to seek Mahadji Scindia’s protection for the second time. Scindia’s power had grown enormously since he left Delhi and headed south in 1772 to sort out affairs in the Deccan. He was now, along with Tipu, one of the two most powerful Indian commanders in the country. Moreover, his troops had just begun to be trained in the latest French military techniques by one of the greatest military figures of eighteenth-century India, Comte Benoît de Boigne, who would transform them beyond recognition.
