Forty years after his decease, and after the murder or death of five intermediate princes, Mahommed Shah ascended the throne, and reigned twenty-seven years. The direction of the limited power he possessed was, during the whole of that period, an object of violent contention to the turbulent and ambitious nobles by whom he was surrounded; and, while these were engaged in intrigues and hostile struggles for the possession of the Emperor's person and his capital, others took advantage of their divisions, and of the general confusion, to usurp the fairest provinces of the empire, and to transmit them as an inheritance to their descendants. The Mahrattas, who had only fifty years before emerged from obscurity, were so powerful in the reign of Mahommed Shah, that they plundered the suburbs of Delhi; and that capital was, during the same unpropitious period, taken and sacked by Nadir Shah, who, after his terrible invasion, restored to the unhappy sovereign of India his degraded throne and distracted dominions. Mahommed Shah died in 1747. He was succeeded by Ahmed Shah, who reigned but a few years, when he was dethroned, and had his eyes put out in 1753. He was succeeded by Alumgeer the Second, with whom perished even that semblance of authority which his immediate predecessors had preserved. Soon after his accession, he became a mere instrument in the hands of his vizier (or minister) Ghazee-u-Deen[237], the grandson of the celebrated Nizam-ul-Mûlk. Shah Alum[238], the eldest son of the Emperor of Delhi, fled from that capital. His first object was emancipation from that thraldom in which his father and family were kept by the cruel and ambitious Ghazee-u-Deen. When at a distance from court, he began to collect followers. India, at this period, abounded with military adventurers; and the high name of Shah Alum, and the reputation of his minister Ali Murad Khan, brought many to his standard. He was kindly received by some of the principal chiefs in Hindustan; but, according to the reports at Moorshedabad, it was Sujah-u-Dowlah, the Vizier of Oude, who directed his views to the invasion of Bahar. That prince, however, artfully kept in the back-ground, until he saw the result of the attempt upon Patna, the capital of that province.