The Military System of the Marathas, with a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities c14.57

c14.57

The island of Bombay played an important and unhappy part in this struggle. Every year the Sidi’s fleet came to ‘winter’¹ at Bombay. There they were provisioned and refreshed. But the Sidi’s sailors were an unruly, lawless band. They not only committed acts of violence in the island of their unwilling hosts, but from his safe retreat the Sidi led plundering raids against the mainland opposite, which belonged to Shivaji. Shivaji protested and so did the English authorities, as they entirely depended on Shivaji’s country for their fuel and food. The Maratha king quite rightly complained that the English were guilty of a violation of neutrality when they allowed the Sidi to make use of their port. He also complained that the provisions obtained from his country were being diverted to the benefit of his enemies. The Bombay authorities complained to their superiors at Surat, but they were absolutely helpless. They dared not disoblige the Mughal Government; they had to think of their masters’ interests in the Mughal’s country and counselled patience. Every year they promised to persuade the Governor of Surat of the unreasonableness of the Sidi’s conduct and every year they heard fresh complaints from their Bombay colleagues. Their position in truth was a difficult one. They dared not break with the Mughal, for they had so many factories in his empire; they dared not break with Shivaji, for Shivaji could stop their supplies of fuel and provisions. He would have been quite satisfied if the English had rendered him secret assistance in his attempts against Janjira by selling him artillery and ammunition; but they preferred the weaker Sidi as a neighbour to the stronger Maratha. They had definitely rejected Revington’s suggestion of assisting Shivaji to conquer Janjira when it belonged to Bijapur, and in 1669 Henry Young seriously thought of purchasing the island in order to save it from falling into Shivaji’s hands.¹ They tried to induce the Sidi to refrain from hostilities against Shivaji’s lands during his stay at Bombay but the Governor of Surat laughed at their protest and the Sidi paid no heed to their expostulations. These conditions continued even after Shivaji’s death and on 28 December 1680, the Surat Council wrote to Bombay: ‘We are sorry to finde you to be soe involved in troubles betwixt Sombajee Rajah and the Siddy and which wee here seriously considered how to advise you best to direct yourselves in soe knotty an affaire, tis true the countenance, assistance and harbour given to the Siddy to the prejudice of the Rajah being both our friends will heardly pass with the Law of Nations which wee should not be the least deviate from if necessity forced not, as wee feare in our case it will, our present condition being such that wee must be forced to disoblige one or the other, the choice of which is very disputable’.²