Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c54.s9.2

v4.c54.s9.2

The Peshwā had no army worth the name. His best advisers had shown him how he was between two fires, and that whether Holkar or Sindhia triumphed he would be equally the helpless slave of his own victorious vassal, while if he sought British armed aid as his father had done 27 years ago, he would remove the last obstacle to the imposition of British paramountcy over all India, which Marquess Wellesley’s successful statesmanship had made imminent. So, they urged him to raise an adequate army of his own and assert his independence. No advice could have been more fatuous. Bāji Rao II had neither the money nor the dependable agents necessary for carrying out such a plan. He had already alienated all the hereditary supporters of his house by disgracing and spoliating the old feudatories and all decent people by his licentious and deceitful character. Himself a coward sunk in sadist vices, he could not personally lead troops into action, but was the first to flee away from Punā at the approach of danger. However, by large promises and small cash payments, some thousands of rabble horsemen and ragged infantry were got together and sent to Bārāmati to bar the path of Māné. Even this force could not be properly equipped and fed, as Bāji Rao would not loosen his purse-strings, but only issued lordly orders on his vassals to pay these levies! The hungry soldiers began to trickle back from the Bārāmati camp to Punā in despair. Even his household troopers (*huzurāt*), so necessary for stiffening the raw recruits, refused to march out of Punā unless their long-standing arrears were cleared and adequate munitions supplied to them.