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Nana Fadnavis : (1742-1800) was the name under which Bālāji Janārdan became known. By 1740, when Bāji Rao I died, the great Mahratta Confederacy that he had created had begun to weaken due to internecine squabbles. Nana Fadnavis was then the chief advisor of Bāji Rao’s son & successor, Bālāji Bāji Rao. His consummate statesmanship managed to hold together the weakened Confederacy until his Peshwa was sucked into the 3rd Battle of Pāṇīpat in 1760 & soon thereafter died heart-broken. His second son & successor Madhavrao I, not only maintained their territories in the south but added to it in the north but suddenly died in 1772. He was succeeded by his brother Nārāyana Rao who was murdered by his uncle Raghoba in 1773 in his bid to become the Peshwa. But Fadnavis forestalled him by supporting the cause of Nārāyaṇa Rao’s posthumous son Madhavrao II, whom he installed as the 6th Peshwa in 1774 & thereafter practically ran the affairs of the Confederacy until his death. From 1775 to 1783 he carried on the Anglo-Mahratta war & concluded it by the treaty of Salbai by which Raghoba was pensioned off & the Mahrattas lost no territory except Salsette. In 1784, he fought Tipoo Sultan, the son of Hyder Ali & regained territories Tippoo had annexed. In 1789, he fought alongside the British-Nizam alliance against Tippoo & obtained a portion of Tipoo’s territory. In 1794, the sudden death of Mahādāji Sindhia, his strongest opponent, brought him undisputed authority over the Confederacy. In 1795, he employed the combined strength of the Confederacy against the Nizam & obliged him to cede important territories to the Mahrattas. In 1796, his protégé, the Peshwa Madhavrao committed suicide & the Peshwaship went to his enemy Raghoba’s son Bājirao II giving rise to an unseemly hostility. However, as long as Nana Fadnavis was alive he managed to hold together the Mahratta Confederacy. “With his death,” writes the British historian Grant Duff, “departed all the wisdom & moderation of the Mahratta Confederacy”. One after the other, Bājirao II, the Bhonsle, the Sindhia, the Holkar & the Gaekwad signed fatal bi-lateral-treaties upon treaties with the British octopus which by 1818 reduced them to its pitiable feudatories with not even an iota of the freedom they had under the great Bājirao I. [Buckland & Bhattacharya]