Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c57.4

v4.c57.4

Lake's own force is put by his biographer Col. Pearse, who has consulted all regimental records, as “a total of about 8000 men on the ground” (p. 241). In this campaign, General Lake was accompanied by a force of Jat, Alwar and Barech Pathan auxiliaries, about whom the English despatches are totally silent, but whose exact work we can learn from the Marathi letters, two contemporary Persian narratives by Hindu clerks preserved in the British Museum (Or. Ms. 190 and 1699), and Powlett's *Alwar Gazetteer* (pub. in 1880). Their total strength was about 2300. These indigenous troops, no doubt, took no part in the assaults by which the British Indian troops gained the victory; but they were not altogether useless. First, they brought intelligence of the enemy movements. Then, their very presence neutralised the weaker Deccani horse on Sindhia's side (say, 2300 against 1250). And finally, these allies, by plundering and burning the baggage and camp of the Southern army in the village of Mālpur, effected the utter break down of the enemy's resistance and the cohesion of their retreating battalions, at a time when Lake's own soldiers were too weary to take one step more.