Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c51.s1.6

v4.c51.s1.6

When the fighting was not a skirmish but a grand field action or when the fate of a long campaign is considered, the worst defect of the indigenous type of Indian armies was found to be not its lack of superior fire-arms but the utter absence of integration among its various parts and the want of a brains trust among its leaders. As the French soldier-politician the Comte de Modave observed in 1776: “The army of an Indian prince does not form a regular whole as among us. The different bodies which compose them have no connection with one another. No staff officer, particular or general, is seen among them. Nor is there any subordination of the chiefs to the supreme chief of the army, or any connection or dependence of one to the other. . . Every individual body of soldiers provides itself as it can and as it pleases, with provisions and munitions. (*Journal du Voyage*, tr. by me in *Islamic Culture*, July 1937.)