Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c56.s20: § 8. Sindhian army arrives near Agra
Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c56.s20
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§ 8. Sindhian army arrives near Agra
v4.c56.s20.1
When by the 18th of October, Aligarh Delhi and Agra had been won, General Lake was threatened by a new and pressing danger. Thirteen choice battalions of the original brigades trained by De Boigne had been sent by Daulat Rao Sindhia to Hindustan to maintain Maratha supremacy there. This detachment had started from the Deccan on 17th July, but meeting the full blast of the monsoon rains on the way, had marched so slowly as to reach the Agra district at the beginning of October, long after Aligarh and Delhi had been lost to Sindhia. Immediately afterwards its supreme commander, Chevalier Dudrenec deserted to the English with two other European officers, Smith and Larpent (1st October), and the command of this corps was thrown on the unworthy shoulders of Ambāji Inglé, who had been deputed with it to take Perron's place as Sindhia's viceroy of the north. Ambāji was no soldier and his one object in life was to create a State for himself in independence of Sindhia, as Sindhia had carved out a kingdom independently of his master the Peshwa. But this fine army was saved from breaking up as a derelict ship by the soldiers agreeing to accept the leadership of Sarwar Khan, a brave fighter and born organizer, who had forced Bourquien to give battle to the English at Patparganj, and after his defeat there had escaped with two unbroken battalions and joined Ambāji's corps in the Agra district. Here he sought the help of some local Maratha chiefs and the Raja of Bharatpur, but they all declined to rise against the triumphant English. Only Gulāb Rai Kadam and a few other petty Marātha captains, at the head of some 1,250 Deccani light horse, joined him, and he finally decided to set out for the Mewāt hills, where Vāman Rao (the nephew of Apā Khandé Rao) was holding his jagir of Kānud with a force of eight or nine thousand troopers. Their union would have created a formidable force, which a bold and enterprising general could have used in making a promising attempt at the recovery of Delhi while the main British army under Lake himself was entangled in the siege of Agra. But such a bold strategy was possible for Jaswant Rao Holkar alone, and not for Ambāji, who busied himself, instead in the more profitable task of looting the villages of the Bharatpur and Macheri States, and thus drove their Rajas more firmly into the arms of the English, and supplied the British general with most useful local allies* in the very theatre of his operations against Ambājī.
v4.c56.s20.2
∗ On 13th October, some 2,500 sepoys, the remnant of the seven battalions defeated on the 10th, came over to the English. Thorn, 182; Fraser, i. 302; Pester, 207.
v4.c56.s20.3
Agra fell on 18th October, and set Lake’s army free. On getting news of Ambājī’s presence on the western border of Bharatpur, he decided to crush the Maratha chief before he could threaten Delhi or escape with all his army and guns. General Lake set out from Agra on 27th October, and after being delayed by a tremendous hurricane and deluge of rain on the way, made two forced marches of twenty miles a day on the 30th and 31st and reached Katumbar (27 miles north-west of Bharatpur) in the evening. Here he learnt that the enemy had left the place that very morning and retreated northwards. Thus getting accurate news of Ambājī’s position and plan, Lake determined to make a supreme effort to intercept him before he could escape beyond his reach.