Balaji Bajirao

Balaji Bajirao, called Nanasaheb, was Peshwa for twenty-one years, presided over the greatest extent the Maratha empire ever reached, and died six months after Panipat destroyed it. He was Bajirao I and Kashibai's eldest son, appointed at nineteen when his father died in 1740, and confirmed by Shahu, whose death in 1749 left the Peshwa the effective sovereign - Balaji moved the real capital to Pune and the Chhatrapati at Satara became ceremonial. Under him Maratha authority ran from the Indus to Bengal: tribute was collected across northern India, Delhi was garrisoned, and the Mughal emperor was in practice a protected person. The administration was rebuilt, Pune was developed with the Katraj aqueduct and new quarters, and revenue farming expanded to pay for it - which also spread the semi-independent commanders whose houses later divided the empire. The overreach caught up at Panipat. He sent his cousin Sadashivrao Bhau north with his own teenage son Vishwasrao as nominal commander; both were killed, along with much of a generation of Maratha leadership, on 14 January 1761. He was moving north with reinforcements when the news reached him. He died at Parvati in Pune on 23 June 1761, aged forty. He built the Parvati temple complex overlooking Pune and died there. His third son Madhavrao I became Peshwa at sixteen and recovered much of the position within a decade before dying of tuberculosis at twenty-seven. The letter reporting Panipat is said to have described two pearls dissolved, twenty-seven gold pieces lost and the silver and copper beyond counting.

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