The Seven Cities of Delhi
for the Shahlimar Gardens, the first stage on his return to Persia. The total value of the plunder has been estimated at eighty crores of rupees, and the famous Peacock Throne was carried off; the territory west of the Indus was ceded, and two hundred thousand people altogether are said to have lost their lives.
Heavily mulcted as the inhabitants of Delhi had been, it must have been with feelings of relief that they saw the departure of the invader; his efforts to awake Mahomed Shah to a better judgment cannot have been more acceptable than the expedition of the Powers to Pekin, to help the Chinese rulers against the " Boxers," can have been to the Chinese nation. But the lesson was of little use to Mahomed Shah. Saadat Khan of Oudh had died, on the 9th of March, of an illness which looked uncommonly like the effects of poison, and the Nizam had returned to the Deccan and become independent. There is a story that both these nobles were bitterly upbraided by Nadir Shah for their unpatriotic conduct in calling him in, that they retired from the audience and agreed to take poison, but that the Nizam took a harmless draught and pretended to die, coming to life again when Saadat Khan was reported to have really carried out his part of the compact.236
