small difficulty the mercenary troops of the two principal Mohammedan states, Oudh and Haidarabad. But the natural tendency of the commanders of separate armies to carve independent domains for themselves out of the provinces they had occupied, and to turn their camps into separate capitals, inevitably created great mutual jealousy and constantly embarrassed the common action of the confederation.
Mahadaji Sindhia, whose independence had been recognized in 1786, had since increased rapidly his possessions and his military armaments, and he now occupied the country round Delhi with a large and well-appointed army. The expediency of placing some check on Sindhia's aggrandizement, before it should bring him into collision with the British, had been pressed upon the Governor-General by his political agents. But in this case, as in others, Pitt's act, which strictly bound down the British government to non-interference unless war should be imminent, had the effect of holding the English in a position of enforced immobility that often encouraged a rash and ambitious prince to push forward to the point at which hostilities became inevitable. Sindhia's policy was now manifestly aiming at combinations against the English as against a foreign power which threatened the subjugation of all India. But his predominance alarmed the Maratha chiefs quite as much as the British government, so that the Peshwa was in no haste to follow his lead or to fall in with his projects.
In 1794, however, Mahadaji Sindhia died suddenly;
