Nana Fadnavis

Nana Fadnavis ran the Maratha confederacy for twenty-five years without ever being its head, and the British called him the Maratha Machiavelli. He survived Panipat as a boy of eighteen - he was in the camp and escaped - and rose through the secretariat to become the finance minister and, after the murder of Narayanrao in 1773, the central figure of the Barbhai council, the twelve-man regency formed to keep Raghunathrao off the throne and govern for the infant Peshwa Madhavrao II. What he did with that position was hold a decentralised alliance together by correspondence, money and patience. He kept Mahadaji Shinde, Tukoji Holkar and the Bhonsles of Nagpur inside the same system when each had reason to leave. He handled the First Anglo-Maratha War to a negotiated settlement at Salbai in 1782 that gave the Marathas twenty years without the English, which is arguably the most consequential piece of Indian diplomacy of the century. He also administered brutally and hoarded information; his rivals were imprisoned and his intelligence network was famous. When Madhavrao II killed himself in 1795 the system began collapsing, and Nana was himself imprisoned by Daulatrao Shinde. He died in 1800, and the British resident wrote that with him departed all the wisdom and moderation of the Maratha government. The Menavali wada he built near Wai still stands with its river ghat. His correspondence runs to many volumes and is a principal source for late Maratha politics. He married nine times, most of them alliances, and left no son.

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