The Military System of the Marathas, with a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities c10.34

c10.34

By the fifth Article of the treaty concluded between the Portuguese Government and the Peshwa on 9 January 1722, Baji Rao was entitled to purchase powder, ball, cannon and other military stores at a just price in the Portuguese territories.³ Another treaty was concluded between Krishna Rao Mahadev, Governor of Kalyan, and Martinho da Silveira de Menczes, Captain General of the Province of the North, on 30 January/10 February 1731-32, and Article 10 of this new treaty again permitted the Marathas to buy, as they had always done, what powder, ball, sulphur and lead they might require in the territories of the Portuguese Government.⁴ In 1786 the Poona authorities requested the Portuguese agent to furnish them with a few bronze guns of the latest type with all the necessary materials and they also wanted some powder and ball.⁵ The Portuguese Government generally complied with such requests as best as they could. In 1782 they had promptly found a quantity of sulphur for Anand Rao Dhulap the Maratha Admiral.¹ While engaged in the siege of Dharwar, Parashram Bhau Patwardhan had received from Goa 500 maunds of powder, and as this quantity was supplied from Government stock no price was charged.² During the first Maratha war, Mahadaji Sindhia³ also purchased ammunition from the Portuguese, and even in the nineties of the eighteenth century the Peshwa’s army was still dependent on the English for their heavy artillery and small firearms, although Sindhia had by that time established a fairly efficient factory for such articles under European supervision. As usual these guns and muskets purchased from the English and the Portuguese were neither of the best type nor in a very good condition. Only arms rejected as useless were offered for sale, and when the English authorities decided to stop this practice, Colonel Tone protested against the measure in very strong terms. ‘The late regulations of the Company’, he wrote, ‘respecting the return to Europe of all unserviceable arms, may for a time prevent the increase of infantry corps, but then it will drive them to the expedient of making their own firelocks, as Scindeah has done, and his are very excellent ones, far superior to the ordinary Europe arms to be met with in the bazars. I for my own part very much doubt the policy of the orders in question. In the first place, I lay it down as a postulatum, that arms will be sold while a good price is given for them in defiance of all the regulations that can be made; and if they must be disposed of, the Company had better receive the value than any individual. In the next place, the arms purchased in the interior, are of that description which is denominated unserviceable, and generally are so. In this case it is of very little consequence in whose hands they are, since if they are useless to the Company, who have excellent Karkonnas to repair them, they can be of no great use to a native power, which has not the same means of mending them.’¹ It may be asked why the Peshwas did not try to remove a deficiency, the danger of which was so obvious. Their financial difficulties do not fully explain this indifference. The feudal organisation of the army was not wholly responsible for it; the fact is that they always sought the easiest way out of every difficulty, forgetting that the easiest was not always the safest or the shortest.