The Military System of the Marathas, with a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities c10.17

c10.17

These repeated importunities on Shivaji’s part clearly indicate the extent of his need, and in spite of all the caution of the English factors, the resourceful Maratha chief did, at least once, succeed in securing some of their guns. In a Bombay letter dated 7 April 1673 (1671?), we read ‘the two gunns formerly mentioned, the Deputy Governor hath sold to a Frenchman, who sold them to a Fidalgo at Tannah and he sent them as wee since heare to Sevagy’.² These guns were sold by their weight and were naturally of very poor quality, for the English and the Portuguese would not, for very good reason, part with their best artillery. Of the two guns that Shivaji obtained from Bombay in 1671, through the assistance of his French and Portuguese agents, the English factors write: ‘they are very bad within, yet with their powder and stone shott they may last a good while’.³ In a letter dated Surat, 12 November 1672, we read of the defects of some guns disposed that year: ‘we have sold all the gunns sent up hither and what are not yet taken on per shoare, from the Loyall Merchant: at the price of 5¼ Rupees per maund: 4 months time, but coming to prove them there are 6 broake in the tryall; being old defective gunns, some of them with great holes in them: others that have had new mettall dopt into holes, which appeared plainly at their breaking’.⁴ In another Surat letter, written on 5 February 1673-74, some of the guns intended for sale are described as ‘old and defective many of them being honey combe’.⁵ Yet Shivaji was not the only potentate who was eager to purchase these machines. The Governor of Surat, the Raja of Sunda, the Generals of Bijapur, all vied with each other for their possession and Prince Shah Alam sent a *nishan* to the Bombay Government to supply ammunition to his fleet.¹ Familiar with artillery and ammunition, as Indian princes had been for more than a century, they had done very little or nothing for their improvement and manufacture. The guns of Indian manufacture were notoriously crude and clumsy.²