01The fort of mud
Bharatpur was built from the 1730s, while his father still ruled from Deeg. Suraj Mal ran its works. Its walls were thick banks of rammed earth behind a deep moat; cannonballs sank into them instead of shattering them. In 1754 a Maratha army with Mughal allies besieged him at Kumher for months, and Khande Rao, son of Malhar Rao Holkar, was killed by a shot from its walls. Peace was made, and the fort stood. Half a century later the same walls threw back General Lake’s four assaults in 1805.
02Panipat and Agra
When Sadashivrao Bhau came north against Ahmad Shah Abdali in 1760, Suraj Mal marched with him to Delhi, then parted from the camp after they disagreed over how to fight the war. After the defeat at Panipat in January 1761 the starving Maratha survivors reached Jat country, and he and his queen Kishori had them fed, clothed and sent on south. In June 1761 he took Agra fort from its Mughal garrison. At Deeg he built the palaces and water gardens that still stand.
