Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c47.s4.19

v4.c47.s4.19

The march of time had now brought another infliction down on the Rajput race. War is the only profession of the Rajput gentry. Even when the poorer men of their clans lived by agriculture, they had the manual labour done by lower castes and kept themselves ready to follow their landlords to battle. But the old Indian method of warfare in which the Rajputs charged in a tumultuous body and engaged in a desperate hand-to-hand fight with their swords, had proved futile before fire arms. Sindhia’s general De Boigne by his two victories in 1790—the first at Patan in Jaipur territory (20 June) and the second at Mertā in Jodhpur (10 September), had proved beyond doubt that the bravest Rajput cavalry was powerless before quick-firing guns and disciplined musketeers. Under the sense of their own military inferiority, the Rajput Rajas made a pathetic attempt to hire some thing to match Sindhia’s European-trained brigades.