The Military System of the Marathas, with a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities c12.58

c12.58

War is normally expected to be destructive and it brings forth the worst tendencies of human nature. This is borne out by universal experience and no people and no country offers an exception. Only nine decades ago the federal army of the United States committed excesses that sound incredible even when reported in simple uncoloured prose. Mr. B. J. Hendrick, the biographer of Walter Heine Page, writes, ‘Part of the cavalry encamped in the Page yard; their horses ate the bark of the mimosa trees; an army corps built its camp fires under the great oaks, and cut their emblems on the trunks; the officers took possession of the house, a colonel making his headquarters in the parlour. Several looting cavalrymen ran their swords through the beds, probably looking for hidden silver; the hearth was torn up in the same feverish quest; angry at their failure, they emptied sacks of flour and scattered the contents in the bedrooms and on the stairs; for days the flour, intermingled with feathers from the bayonetted beds, formed a carpet all over the house’. ³ Soldiers, like children, are the same all over the world. It was not for their ruthlessness that the Marathas lost their empire. The cause must be sought elsewhere.