Administrative System of the Marathas c24.1

c24.1

The army of the Peshwa was organised on the model of the Mughal army, the famous Maratha tactics of harassing the rear of the enemy, plundering the convoy and cutting off the foragers, had also been tried with eminent success by the famous Abyssinian statesman and general Malik Ambar in pre-Maratha days. The famous Hindu rulers of Maharashtra boasted in their inscriptions of their huge elephants and strength in elephantry, their descendants in the 17th and 18th centuries, on the other hand, relied more on their horse than on those huge monsters whose courage could not be always counted on, specially when rockets and artillery were freely used. It is therefore certain that a wide departure had been made in the military organisation from the conventional rules of the old Hindu tacticians and theorists. But at the same time some of their practices and principles had survived in the Maratha army.