The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c27.5

c27.5

Furthermore, the constitution of the army was radically unsound. Each man was, there can be no doubt, individually brave, even to recklessness. Why then do we find them so ready to retreat from a battle-field, so anxious to make off after the slightest reverse? Simply because they had so much to lose and so very little to gain. A trooper rode his own horse, and if it was killed he was ruined irretrievably. As a European writer of the middle of the 18th century justly enough says: “Their cavalry (which are among them very respectable, and also well paid) though not backward to engage with sabres, are extremely unwilling to bring their horses within the reach of our guns; so that they do not decline so much through fear of their lives, as for their fortunes, which are all laid out in the horse they ride on”, Cambridge, “War”, Introd. viii. In 1791-2 Moor, 204, noticed among the Mahratta cavalry that the same cause produced the same effect. “A reluctance to charge will be frequently observed; which does not proceed from any deficiency in personal courage, but from this cause: a great part of the horses in the Mahratta service are, we have understood, the property of the riders, who receive a certain monthly pay, according to the goodness of the horse, for their own and their beast’s services. If a man has his horse killed or wounded, no equivalent is made him by the Sirkar, but he loses his animal and his allowance; he will therefore, of course, be as careful as possible to preserve both”. See also *Seir*, i, 315, note 250, Orme, “Hist. Frag.”, 418, Fitzclarence, “Journal”, 73, Blacker, “War”, 21.