Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c47.s4.14

v4.c47.s4.14

When the throne ceased to be filled by a warrior-king, quarrels for acting as his regent and controlling the Government broke out among factions in the royal family or the barons. Besides, there were many disputed successions to the throne among brothers or adopted sons, and sometimes pretenders rose up claiming to be the late king’s posthumous sons. Their civil wars invited foreign intervention. The faction that had seized power appealed for support to the Peshwā or to the Peshwā’s local agent Holkar. The opposite faction immediately sent an embassy to punā—or more often to Holkar’s local rival Sindhia, offering a higher subsidy to deprive their rival of Maratha aid. Each side made frantic bids of money, like desperate gamblers, though they knew well that it was impossible for them to pay even a hundredth part of the promised sum out of the revenue of that war-ravaged small stony or desert country. Thus, each Rajput State in the last quarter of the 18th century had piled up on paper a debt to the Marathas which sold them like insolvents to their creditors. The Maratha Government had hired out their troops and undergone heavy expenditure in Rajputana and naturally expected payment of what was legally subsidy and not tribute. But the country was soon drained dry, and no part of these promised subsidies could be realised unless a Maratha army visited the State to enforce the claim. It was exactly the same phenomenon which was seen in Oudh under the decadent Nawabs, when the land revenue of a district could not be collected unless a battalion of troops with a couple of guns accompanied the tax-gatherer. These Maratha troops lived on the country and their salary became an addition to the originally promised subsidy, thus deepening the insolvency of the Rajput State.