The moment was recorded, for it marked what was recognised, even at the time, as a crucial turning point in the politics of eighteenth-century India. Shah Alam had now finally given up on the Company ever honouring its many promises to give him an army, or even just an armed escort, to help him reconquer his capital. If the Company would not help him then he would have to look for new allies – and this, by default, meant his ancestral enemies, the Marathas. But whatever the dangers, the Emperor was determined to gamble everything in the hope of regaining his rightful place on the Peacock
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