Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c54.s12: § 8. Punā after the battle of Hadapsar
Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c54.s12
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§ 8. Punā after the battle of Hadapsar
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It was a decisive victory for Holkar; in one day Sindhia’s paramount power and prestige were destroyed beyond repair. The Maratha capital and its master lay prostrate before the victor. The news of the defeat came to Sindhia in Ujjain as a stunning blow; his courtiers cried out, “Our forces in the Deccan, both trained infantry and indigenous cavalry, have been totally ruined. The entire Peshwāi has come to an end”. “In Punā the naked eye could see that destruction had fallen on Sindhia’s army, and no part of it has been spared”.
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When the tide of battle showed the first sign of turning against them, the camp followers and tradesmen of Sindhia’s army made a rush into Punā for safety. But the ruffians of the city attacked and robbed them of all that they were carrying. Even the fugitive soldiers of the broken army found no shelter in the capital of the prince who had called them to his aid; they were stripped of their arms, dress and money by the Punā people, and driven out into the fields. Sindhia’s disciplined infantrymen were all North Indians by race, Rajputs and Hindustani Muslims; in Maratha eyes they were foreigners (*pardeshis*) and hence, in their hour of woe no one in Punā lent them a helping hand, no one even had pity for their wounded; they were refused food and shelter, stripped of their all, and left to perish in the streets like dogs.* As the agent of the Southern jāgirdārs observes, “Such a bad time has come to Sindhia’s soldiers that today they can find no saviour (*trātā*); none even gave them a place in which to lie down.”
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∗ Kharé, xiv. 6471. Narsingh Khanderao Vinchurkar (called Ānyā), the grandson of that Vithal Shivdev, who had served so well in Mahādji Sindhia’s campaigns in Rajputana, but was not an officer of Sindhia’s service. For his history, PRC. vi. No. 249.
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Throughout that eventful day, while the clash of arms sounded from the eastern plain, the citizens of Punā lay crouching in their homes, tremblingly waiting for the sack that was sure to follow, whichever side won. The ferocious Pathans of Holkar and the villainous Pindharis of Sindhia were equally a menace to that masterless city. All day long no fire was lighted in any kitchen; all ears were kept open for the news from the battlefield. It was the day of the Feast of Lamps (*Dipāvali*) according to the Hindu calendar; to the Punā population it proved a very merry Dipāvali indeed, as the Patwardhan’s local agent wrote in the bitterness of his heart.
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But their fears were belied. Jaswant Rao’s iron discipline succeeded in keeping his licentious horde of followers outside Punā, and no man there was robbed, no woman molested. He had proclaimed that if any of his soldiers entered the city of Punā or robbed even a *cowri*, the offender would be disembowelled and his body publicly exposed. He reserved the city for the more profitable game of squeezing the rich for heavy ransoms.
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∗ The holy Brāhman newswriter in Punā exults in the debacle of Sindhia’s army—“Nothing is wanting to complete Sindhia’s destruction. It is a fit retribution for the misdeeds of his Pindharis, who for some weeks before had ravaged the country round, allowed none to escape from the city to the villages, and broken the stone idol of Theur.” (*Kharé*, xiv. 6465. Gulgulé, 7 Nov.).
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§ 9. Ruin of the Maratha Homeland
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The war transferred to Maharashtra proper this year inflicted unspeakable misery on the people. A letter from Ujjain, written on 21st July 1802, says, “Holkar’s horsemen are in the Ahmadnagar district. In Desh all the cities have been devastated and the peasants are being subjected to extreme oppression”. The same tale is told in two letters of 22nd August and 24th October: “Holkar’s *fauj* are perpetrating a deluge (*pralay*) by extorting blackmail. . . . The famine is extreme. . . . The ryots have none to save them.” (Gulgulé D.)
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C. 25 June 1802—Holkar’s advanced division, on the north bank of the Godāvari, is levying ransom, looting east and west, digging up the floors of houses; they have left nothing standing. . . . Men are fleeing away from the track before Holkar’s troops.
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5 Sept.—Mir Khan is at Tokā-tirtha, where he greatly oppressed Brāhmans and Brāhman women, extorted money, and took away hostages for ransom. (Kharé, xiv. 6423.)
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13 Sept.—Jaswant Holkar came to Nāsik, invested it, divided the city by barriers, and confining the well-to-do to their houses without food or drink, is demanding forty lakhs as ransom. They offered him four lakhs, but he replied, “Pay down forty lakhs; or else I shall first sack your holy city and then set fire to it.” The people said, “We are present before you; our men, children, houses and city are at your disposal. Do what your heart desires”. . . . Seizing the well-to-do householders in the villages of this district, he has brought them to his camp, and is beating them for exacting money. . . . Fath Singh Māné has occupied Rasin, Bhosen, and Kārkomb, and is beating the *kārkun* for securing ransom. . . . At Kārkomb no man was spared, the habitations have been depopulated. . . Mangavidé was subjected to the same fate as Kārkomb”. (Kh. xiv. 6427, 6433.)
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2 Oct.—The Pathan’s soldiers came to Khed on the Bhimā (24 m.n. of Punā), where they did much destruction and slew one Brāhman and a woman . . . . Punā is breaking up, every one is fleeing where he can. No pony or litter can be had in the city.
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8 Oct.—Khed on the Bhimā was very much devastated for opposing the Pathans; the Brāhmans were severely beaten; women were beaten; one woman and one Brahman were killed . . . . Punā city has been greatly upset. For two days the barriers were closed (*nāké bandi*) and none was allowed to leave. A pony’s hire is one Rupee per *kos*, and even at this rate one is hardly available; a litter (*doli*) costs Rs. 45. All the three roads are filled with fugitives. (*Ibid.* 6440, ’45.)
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The British Resident, Col. Close wrote from Punā on 19th October,—“The Pindharis of both the armies lay waste the adjacent districts. I cannot describe the melancholy scene which this place at present exhibits. The assessments on the city are carried on with so much vigour that the inhabitants fly towards the neighbouring hills, in the hope of securing their property. On the road they are generally met by the Pindharis, who plunder and abuse them, and send them back empty.” (*PRC.* x. 65.)
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The Kotā agent in Punā, writing next day, tells the same sad tale:—“Punā is going to be totally devastated. Here rice is dear and (sometimes) cannot be had (at any price). The deluge that has overwhelmed the Deccan still continues. God does not let us see how mankind is to survive.” (Gulgulé D.)
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Such is civil war, miscalled conquest. For six months after Jaswant Rao Holkar’s coming south, the Desh districts of Maharashtra lay prostrate under the heels of ruthless invaders. As the many hordes of Holkar’s horsemen spread out like fans, their lines of advance could be known from afar by the flocks of vultures hovering over the dust clouds that hid these swarms of human locusts. Before them for many miles the roads were blocked by frantic crowds of men and women fleeing away to escape death, torture and outrage, abandoning their homes and fields. Behind the invaders were left only burning villages, ravished women, desecrated temples, polluted Brāhmans, mutilated corpses, and the living skeletons of the famished. Nothing green could be seen standing on the face of the earth.
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This was exactly the sight presented by the Maratha penetration into other provinces of India. A reflective historian can see only a vindication of divine justice in the Punā Brāhmans and their hireling soldiery now feeling in their own homes what they had done to other peoples of the same land of the Hindus. The wages of sin is death for tribes no less than for individuals.
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Jaswant Rao’s invasion brought down on Mahārāshtra a still greater curse than the desolation of fields and the slaughter of men. The last fruit of civil war is the loss of national liberty, and Holkar’s triumph made the Peshwā an English vassal. On 25th October, even before the battle joined outside Punā, Bāji Rāo had secretly sent to Resident Close a written agreement* to cede lands worth 25 lakhs of Rupees a year in return for a British protective force of six battalions of sepoys to be permanently stationed in his dominions. That afternoon, abandoning his capital long before the Sindhian army had ceased to resist, the last of the Peshwās fled to Konkan, wandered about for some weeks to avoid Holkar’s pursuing bands, and at last took refuge in an English ship, which landed him at their port of Bassein on 6th December 1802. Here, on the last day of the year he signed the Treaty of Bassein, by which he acknowledged British overlordship in full. It was now the lawful duty of the E. I. Company to restore Bāji Rāo to his throne in Punā, which city was then in Holkar’s occupation and where the victor had set up Amrit Rao Raghunāth as Peshwā in the place of Bāji Rao, whose flight to foreign parts was deemed as equivalent to abdication. British forces, under the leadership of the future Duke of Wellington entered Punā on 20th April 1803, and Bāji Rao was brought back and formally restored to his throne as a British puppet on 13th May, exactly like Mir Jafar who had been seated on the *masnad* of Bengal by Clive on 29th June 1757.*
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∗ Earlier proposal of the Peshwā to the Resident, in *Asiatic Annual Register for 1804*, State Papers, pp. 68-70 (secret midnight interview with Resident Close on 17 April 1802). Proposal of 25 Oct. *Ibid.* p. 79. Marquis Wellesley’s reply, *Ibid.* p. 80. He insists on the Peshwā making himself a British vassal (like the Nawāb Wazir and the Nizām) and objects to the proposal of a mere defensive alliance as between equals. He carried this point at Bassein. For Treaty of Bassein, full text in *Wellesley Despatches*, iii. 627-631. *As. An. Register for 1803*, State Papers, pp. 7-13.
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∗ Resident Close to Governor-General.—"The Peshwā has expressed his hope that his restoration to the *masnad* may be proclaimed by salutes at the different places in the British possessions in India." [PRC. vii. 67.]