The Amber prince no sooner heard of the approach of the Mahrattas to his capital than he quitted it to offer them battle. But their strength had been misrepresented, nor was it till he reached the castle of Bagru[10.4.10] that he was undeceived and surrounded. When too late, he saw that ‘treason had done its worst,’ and that the confidence he had placed in the successor of a minister whom he had murdered, met its natural reward. The bard has transmitted in a sloka the cause of his overthrow: _Jabhī chhodī Īsra Rāj karan kī ās, Mantrī moto māriyo Khatri Kesodās,_ ‘Isari forfeited all hopes of regality, when he slew that great minister Keshodas.’ =Jaipur forced to restore Ummed Singh.=—The sons of this minister, named Harsahai and Gursahai, betrayed their prince to the ‘Southron,’ by a false return of their numbers, and led him to the attack with means totally inadequate. Resistance to a vast numerical superiority would have been madness: he retreated to the castle of this fief of Amber, where, after a siege of ten days, he was forced not only to sign a deed for the surrender of Bundi, and the renunciation of all claims to it for himself and his descendants, but to put, in full acknowledgment of his rights, the _tika_ on the forehead of Ummeda. With this deed, and accompanied by the contingent of Kotah, they proceeded to Bundi; the traitor was expelled; and while rejoicings were making to celebrate the installation of Ummeda, the funereal pyre was lighted at Amber, to consume the mortal remains of his foe. Raja Isari could [492] not survive his disgrace, and terminated his existence and hostility by poison, thereby facilitating the designs both of Bundi and Mewar. Thus in S. 1805 (A.D. 1749) Ummeda regained his patrimony, after fourteen years of exile, during which a traitor had pressed the royal ‘cushion’ of Bundi. But this contest deprived it of many of its ornaments, and, combined with other causes, at length reduced it almost to its intrinsic worth, ‘a heap of cotton.’ Malhar Rao, the founder of the Holkar State, in virtue of his adoption as the brother of the widow-queen of Budh Singh, had the title of Mamu, or uncle, to young Ummeda. But true to the maxims of his race, he did not take his buckler to protect the oppressed, at the impulse of those chivalrous notions so familiar to the Rajput, but deemed a portion of the Bundi territory a better incentive, and a more unequivocal proof of gratitude, than the titles of brother and uncle. Accordingly, he demanded, and obtained by regular deed of surrender, the town and district of Patan on the left bank of the Chambal.[10.4.11]