Sindhia remaining in the Deccan, in pursuance of his uncle's plan of managing both countries at once, the ax-Sergeant became very influential in Hindustan, where (jealousies with his Mahratta colleagues excepted) the independent career of George Thomas was the only serious difficulty with which he had to contend. For the present the two seamen did not come in contact, for Thomas confined his operations to the west and north-west, and found his domestic troubles and the resistance of the various neighbouring tribes sufficient to fully occupy his attention. Scarcely had he patched up a peace with his treacherous employer, and brought affairs in Mewat to something like a settlement, when his momentary quiet was once more disturbed by the intelligence that Appa had committed suicide by drowning himself, and that his son and successor, Vaman Rao, was showing signs of an intention to imitate the conduct of the deceased in its untruthful and unreliable character. With the exception of a brief campaign in the Upper Doab, in which the fortified towns of Shamli and Lakhnaoti had rebelled, Thomas does not appear to have had any active employment until he finally broke with Vaman Rao. The rebellion of the Governor of Shamli (which Thomas suppressed with vigour) seems to have been connected with the movements of the restless Rohillas of the Najibabad clan, whose chief was now Bhanbu Khan, brother of the late Gholam Kadir, and an exile among the Sikhs since the death of his brother and the destruction of the Fort of Ghausgarh. Profiting by the long-continued absence of Sindhia, he re-opened that correspondence with the Afghans which always formed part of a Mohamadan attempt in Hindustan, and appealed, at the same time, to the avarice of the Sikhs, which had abundantly recovered its temporary repulse by Mirza Najaf in 1779. The grandson of the famous Abdali soon appeared at Peshawar at the head of 33,000 Afghan horse. But the Sikhs and Afghans soon quarrelled; a desperate battle was fought between them at Amritsar, in which, after a futile cannonade, the Sikhs flung themselves upon Zaman's army in the most reckless manner. The aggregate losses were estimated at 35,000 men. The Shah retreated upon Lahor; and the disordered state of the Doab began to be reflected in the only half-subdued conquests of the Viceroy of Audh in Rohilkand.