Fall of the Mughal Empire v3.c40.s11.3

v3.c40.s11.3

Considered in its strategy, the Lalsot campaign as a whole was a failure for Mahadji; and the failure was due to his lack of a single clear objective steadily pursued, and his blunder in concentrating every available soldier for the field fight, which left his line of communication with Kerauli fatally unprotected and made it impossible for him to spare an adequate escort for the vitally necessary grain convoys. He was truly starved out of Rajputana. For this failure he alone was to blame. He had begun the campaign in the expectation that time was on his side and that the Rajput confederacy would automatically break up if he kept facing it long enough. But such a waiting game presupposed that during that interval of inaction the food supply of his own camp would be assured and his communications with his base near Agra kept open. He had no doubt of the result in an actual clash of arms with the raw feudal levies opposed to him, but how was he to meet his incomparably larger army bill and keep up his munition supply in that distant and backward country? On this point he made a miscalculation and he paid the price of his mistake by one full year of loss of power and fame. Indeed, his clearness of vision, unfailing sense of reality and practical skill seem to have deserted him from the commencement of May 1787, otherwise how could such a veteran leader forget that a modern army marches on its stomach?