Peshwa Baji Rao I

The Story

Baji Rao was raised by his father, the first Peshwa Balaji Vishwanath, in the arts of war and statecraft. When his father died in 1720, the twenty-year-old Baji Rao persuaded the Maratha king Shahu to appoint him Peshwa — and immediately argued for the great policy: the Marathas must go north, for the Mughal empire was decaying and the field was open.

In the campaigns that followed — over twenty years and dozens of battles — Baji Rao crossed the Narmada, defeated the Nizam, and carried the Maratha flags from Gujarat to Bengal, from Delhi's environs to the coast. His cavalry moved with a speed that left his enemies breathless, and the Mughal capital itself felt his shadow.

He died suddenly in 1740, at just forty, on campaign with his beloved Mastani. His son, the third Peshwa, extended the Maratha power to its zenith — but it was Baji Rao who had won the empire its destiny, and the Maratha historian Grant Duff called his era the age of the Maratha hero.