For a brief period British prestige vanished from Hindustan, and Jaswant Rao Holkar was the hero of the hour. Sindia forgot his wrongs against Jaswant Rao, and his defeats at Assaye and Argaum, and declared for Holkar. Fresh bodies of bandits and outlaws joined the standard of Holkar to share in the spoil of his successes. With Mahratta audacity Jaswant Rao pushed on to Delhi, to capture Shah Alam and plunder Hindustan in the name of the Great Mogul. He was beaten off from Delhi by the small garrison under Colonel Ochterlony, but the Jhat Raja of Bhurtpore received him with open arms in that huge clay fortress, the stronghold of the predatory system of the eighteenth century, which to this day is the wonder of Hindustan. Holkar left his guns in the fortress and went out to plunder; and Lake, instead of following him up, wasted four months in a futile attempt to capture the Bhurtpore fortress without a siege train. [Sidenote: Reversal of Lord Wellesley's policy, 1805.] §6. The retreat of Monson was not only a disastrous blow to British prestige, but ruined for a while the reputation of Lord Wellesley. Because a Mahratta freebooter had broken loose in Hindustan, the Home authorities imagined that all the Mahratta powers had risen against the imperial policy of the Governor-General. Lord Wellesley was recalled from his post, and Lord Cornwallis was sent out to take his place, to reverse the policy of his illustrious predecessor, to scuttle out of Western Hindustan, to restore all the ceded territories, to surrender all the captured fortresses, and to abandon large tracts of country to be plundered and devastated by the Mahrattas, as they had been from the days of Sivaji to those of Wellesley and Lake. [Sidenote: Death of Lord Cornwallis.] [Sidenote: Sir George Barlow's half measures, 1806.] Before Lord Cornwallis reached Bengal the political outlook had brightened. Jaswant Rao Holkar was flying into the Punjab from General Lake, and was soon brought to bay. Daulat Rao Sindia was repenting his desertion from the British alliance. The Jhat Raja of Bhurtpore had implored forgiveness and paid a heavy fine. But Lord Cornwallis was sixty-seven years of age, and had lost the nerve which he had displayed in his wars against Tippu; and he would have ignored the turn of the tide, and persisted in falling back on the old policy of conciliation and non-intervention, had not death cut short his career before he had been ten weeks in the country.