A History of the Mahrattas v2.c56.7

v2.c56.7

These plunderers, especially the Pindharees, were always gaining an accession of strength as the countries around them became exhausted; for not only did every lawless man who could command a horse and a spear join them, but the more peaceable part of the community were driven for subsistence into the same course of life; so that additional wants and accumulating strength tended of themselves to enlarge the sphere of Pindharee operations, without other less apparent sources of augmentation, derived from the secret support and encouragement of various principal chiefs of the Mahratta empire.