The Military System of the Marathas, with a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities c18: Chapter XIV: Conclusion
The Military System of the Marathas, with a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities c18
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Chapter XIV: Conclusion
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The Maratha empire suffered from many maladies. The principal chiefs professed to serve the same master and the same State but, divided by personal jealousy, they were seldom able to pursue resolutely a concerted plan or a coherent policy and common interests were frequently sacrificed to private ends. The irregular cavalry was slow to mobilise and not generally available for prompt action or prolonged services in distant parts and the personnel of the army, therefore, had to be largely changed; the non-Maratha recruits who replaced the Maratha horsemen were mercenaries of the worst type drawn by prospects of plunder and were not bound to their masters by racial or any other affinity. The policy of indiscriminate aggression for financial purposes initiated by Balaji Baji Rao led to incessant but incomplete and ineffective invasions, which naturally left bitter memories in the harassed principalities; the Marathas thus made many enemies, who were not without means and motives of retaliation and who waited for favourable circumstances, while they had very few firm friends to rely upon in any serious emergency. The proved superiority of trained sepoys commanded by European officers led to the employment of a large number of military adventurers of diverse nationalities, unknown antecedents and doubtful character. The great majority of these officers were either English or French, and they naturally sacrificed their masters’ interests to those of their own and of their respective nations. The craze for trained battalions of infantry led the Maratha chieftains to underestimate the value of cavalry which had formed in the past the greatest source of their strength. Cavalry was, therefore, neglected and allowed to degenerate. The Marathas had long been familiar with artillery and firearms, but they neglected to learn the science and technique of these invaluable weapons and continued till their final overthrow to rely for their supplies on the European settlements at Bombay and Goa. Nor was this all, the last decade of the eighteenth century found the Marathas without any able military leader, and it was no wonder that the ill-led, ill-organised, ill-equipped and ill-disciplined hordes with irreconcilable methods of fighting were easily discomfited and routed by Wellington and Lake.
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The first step in the wrong direction was the revival of feudalism. Shivaji knew the defects of Maratha character better than any of his predecessors or successors, and he deliberately set himself to undo the evils of that disintegrating system. He found his countrymen divided by mutual jealousy and inherited rivalry and left them fairly united under a ruler of their own race with a national banner and a common object to strive for. But his success was by no means complete. Even in his lifetime one of his principal ministers, Niraji Raoji, served as an agent of the English East India Company at his court.¹ Though the rivalry of Moro Trimbak Pingle and Annaji Datto did not find expression in any overt act of hostility while their great master was alive, lesser officials did not hesitate to let private feelings colour their public acts. When the Subhedar of Chaul quarrelled with the English of Bombay, seized their ships and threatened to stop their supply of fuel and provisions from the mainland, his colleague, the Subhedar of Kalyan, encouraged the English by every means in his power and assured them of his friendship and support.¹ It was, therefore, obviously necessary that the anti-feudal policy, so wisely initiated by Shivaji, should have been vigorously pursued by his successors, but unluckily it was abandoned by them. Feudalism was revived under unusual circumstances, first for the defence and later for the expansion of the Maratha kingdom, and it certainly served its immediate purpose. The Mughals were permanently expelled from Maharashtra, and the Marathas soon afterwards penetrated into Gujarat and Malwa. But in the very prosperity of the Maratha empire lay the germs of its degeneration, decline and decay. While engaged against a powerful external enemy, the Maratha generals could be expected to forget for the time being their private differences, but hardly was that crisis over when they recklessly prosecuted their quarrels, oblivious of everything else. The Mughal hordes of Aurangzib found them resolutely united, but the triumph of the Maratha cause was before long marred by the ugly spectacle of Shantaji and Dhanaji engaged in a war of extermination. The crisis that culminated at Panipat rallied the Maratha chiefs to the Peshwa’s banner, but the forces of disunion did not take long to assert themselves, and Bhonsla and Gopal Rao Patwardhan openly ranged themselves with the Nizam, the hereditary enemy of the Maratha empire. The inexcusable insult offered to the Peshwa and Nana Fadnavis again helped to bring together the principal chiefs at Kharda, but soon afterwards followed suicidal civil war which offered the English an effective opportunity of firmly establishing their suzerainty in India.
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¹ Sen, ‘The English Procurator at Shivaji’s Court’, *Calcutta Review*, May 1926.
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¹ Factory Records, Surat, Vol. 107, fols. 171-4.
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It is needless to say that their enemies always attempted to exploit the dissension and disunion of the Maratha chiefs. That astute diplomat, Nizam-ul-Mulk, not only took advantage of the rivalry between Kolhapur and Satara but further encouraged Trimbak Rao Dabhade to cross swords with the Peshwa Baji Rao. Nizam Ali profited by the difference between Madhav Rao and Raghunath Rao, and Hyder Ali pretended to espouse Raghoba's cause, not because he wished him success, but because it served his own interests best. It may appear strange that in the light of their past experience the Maratha chiefs did not improve their conduct. But feudalism is hardly conducive to unity, and it helped to accentuate that selfish individualism which was responsible for the political insignificance from which Shivaji had rescued them. As a matter of fact, they were often aware of the evil consequences of their selfish designs and yet they persisted in their policy of self-aggrandisement, for national honour and welfare of the State were of little value to them. It is said that Malhar Rao Holkar had saved Najib Khan, an inveterate enemy of the Marathas in Northern India, from imminent ruin because peace would necessarily reduce his own importance in the North. Raghoba feared that the English would make a puppet of him if he returned to Poona as their protege, for he had the significant example of Muhammad Ali before his eyes,¹ yet he preferred to remain under their protection. To him, as to many of his contemporaries, his personal interests were of much greater importance than national honour and national independence, because the idea of nationality was yet unknown. It is on this account that high officials of the State did not hesitate to serve as agents of foreign powers and openly receive rewards for such services as they might render. Bahiro Pant Mehendale² served as an agent of the Portuguese Government at Poona, Naro Ram Mantri³ and his adopted son, Ghanashyam Narayan, professed to be the friends of the Portuguese and Nana Fadnavis received a *jahgir* from the Nizam. It was quite in keeping with their own practice that Mahadaji Sindhia urged the Poona ministers to grant Anderson a *jahgir* worth 150,000 Rupees while peace was being negotiated.⁴
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¹ Officios dos Governadores (Archivo Ultramarino of Lisbon), Maco 5, No. 62.
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² Sen, *A Preliminary Report on the Historical Records at Goa*, p. 85.
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³ *Instruccao do Exmo Vice-Rei Marquez de Alorna*, p. 48.
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⁴ Sane, *Patre Yadi Bagaire*, p. 232.
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When self-interest prevailed so much over considerations of national welfare, it is no wonder that the Maratha chiefs should frequently fail to exploit the differences of their opponents by wise diplomacy and effective and timely aggression. We have already seen how Holkar was busy with some unimportant operations in Rajputana, while Abdali was destroying Sindhia’s army in detail. During the First Maratha War the fighting was invariably carried on in the Maratha territories while those of the English were left undisturbed. An invasion of Bengal from Nagpur was often talked of but never carried into effect because the Bhonsla judged it inexpedient to take any vigorous step when his personal interests were not at stake. When the English were involved in a war with Hyder Ali and eager to have peace on honourable terms, the Marathas failed to profit by their difficulties, because there were differences in their own ranks and Mahadaji Sindhia wanted early peace. The Second Maratha War again found the great chiefs divided and disunited; the English secured the moral advantage and the prestige of the Peshwa’s support, and while Sindhia and Bhonsla were beaten, Holkar still preferred to watch and wait, although the ultimate consequences of defeat were no longer obscure at that moment.
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Shivaji had urged racial unity on a religious basis. He had attempted to suppress all separatist tendencies by doing away with old feudal institutions. But new ideas require persistent propaganda before they are accepted and popularised. Such propaganda was ably carried on by Ramdas in Shivaji’s time, but as Shivaji stands unique among his countrymen so does Ramdas. Neither of them found able successors to carry on their work, and the idea of nationality, which might have one day taken root in Maharashtra, died away in the uncongenial environments of feudalism. When the Maratha empire expanded across the Narmada, things became still worse. The first settlers in Central India had still some sentimental tie with the Deccan, the home of their childhood, but chiefs like Daulat Rao Sindhia and Jaswant Rao Holkar were Marathas by birth but not by breeding, and they could not be expected to have that sentimental respect for Poona or Satara which characterised Mahadaji Sindhia and Malhar Rao Holkar. The cleavage between the different parts of the empire therefore became wider and wider until it became impossible to bridge.
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When feudalism caused dissension between different principalities of the empire, it could not have a different result within the principalities themselves. When the head of a ruling family strove to improve his own fortune at the expense of his lawful suzerain, it was futile to expect that his younger brothers and relatives should long remain contented with their subordinate position. Internal dissension weakened the empire and family dissension weakened the chiefs. During the First Maratha War the Nagpur and Baroda families were suffering from fratricidal wars, while the main war itself was the outcome of the inordinate and selfish ambition of a junior member of the Peshwa family. On the eve of the Second Maratha War the widows of Mahadaji were at open war with Daulat Rao Sindhia, while Jaswant Rao and Kashi Rao Holkar were contending for the headship of the Holkar family and the person of the infant Khande Rao. At the same time the Southern Maratha country was being sadly harassed by a series of internecine wars, as Arthur Wellesley observes in one of his letters. He writes: ‘In order, however, that the Commander-in-Chief may form a judgment respecting what has been done, it will be necessary to inform him, that since the year 1800, when I was in this country before, it has been one continued contest for power and plunder between the different chiefs who have armies under their command; between the Putwurdun’s (Purseram Bhow’s) family and Gocklah, in the countries bordering on the Toombuddra, Werdah, and Malpoorba; between the Putwurdun and the Rajah of Kolapoor in those bordering on the Gutpurba and the Kistna; between Bappojee Scindiah, the Killedar of Darwar, and the Rajah of Kittoor; between Gocklah and the Rajah of Kittoor, and Gocklah and Bappojee Scindiah; besides various others of inferior note, either immediately employed under these, or for themselves under their protection.’¹ A state so divided and disunited was doomed to destruction, and the Peshwas never made any serious effort to save it. Their own example of coalescing with a foreign power against Tulaji Angria was fraught with the worst consequences.
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¹ Gurwood, *Dispatches of Wellington*, Vol. I, p. 124.
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Dissension and disunion were not the only evils for which the Marathas were indebted to their love of feudalism. At the most critical period of its history the Maratha empire found itself without an able statesman who could put its undoubtedly great resources to the best use, as Sir Thomas Munro explained to the Governor-General: ‘It is not that they want resources, that they have not men and horses, but that there is no one amongst them possessed of those superior talent which are necessary to direct them to advantage’.¹ This lamentable dearth of talent must be ascribed to the feudal organisation of the empire, which confined the principal civil and military offices of the State to a few families with inalienable hereditary claims. No family can produce great men forever, and the direction of the Maratha empire inevitably passed into weak and inefficient hands in course of time. Shahu was the last member of the royal family who could claim to possess even average abilities. The Peshwa family was more fortunate; in the senior branch it produced four generations of able men; Sindhias were blessed with three generations of good soldiers in the eldest line; but Malhar Rao had no such good luck, and he did not stand alone in this misfortune. Baba Fadke could hardly be called the worthy son of a worthy father, and if the Bhanus had produced a Nana, they were responsible for a Moraba at the same time. In 1800 the Peshwa’s *musnad* was occupied by a weak intriguer who has rightly been described as the ‘offspring of the weakness of Raghunath Rao and the wickedness of Anandi Bai’; the vast resources of the Sindhia’s dominions were at the disposal of Daulat Rao, who was equally devoid of military ability and political foresight; Raghuji Bhonsla, who ruled at Nagpur, had inherited only the name of his grandfather, but he did not possess even the physical courage for which the Marathas were noted; Jaswant Rao Holkar was fully endowed with the warlike qualities of his family, but he was nothing better than a military adventurer, cruel, licentious and unscrupulous. These were the men in whose hands rested the fate of the Maratha empire, because military and civil offices had been made hereditary in opposition to the principles and practice of Shivaji.
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¹ G. R. Gleig, *Life of Sir Thomas Munro*, Vol. I, p. 461.
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Once we recognise the lack of national unity and patriotism on the part of the Marathas, it is not difficult to understand why men of all nationalities were indiscriminately employed in the Maratha army. Maratha soldiers were generally averse to prolonged service in distant parts and the feudal force was slow to mobilise. Every chief of any importance therefore decided to maintain a standing army, and Sikhs, Arabs, Rohillas and Rajputs, who had no objection to serving throughout the year, were naturally preferred. If these men had been recruited directly by the State, punctually paid and placed under strict discipline, the mercenaries from other parts of India might have proved a source of strength instead of being a danger to the empire, but, as we have already seen, they were attached to the recruiting officers of their own race, and discipline among them was conspicuous by its absence. Had they been well disciplined, remarks the Portuguese Viceroy, the Marquis of Alorna, they would form the most invincible army in the world. They possessed courage and hardihood, but as they had no common interest with their employers and were very irregularly paid, they were easily accessible to bribery and corruption, and they had no scruples in changing masters as often as it was convenient for them or their recruting officer.
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The preponderance of the non-Marathas in the army naturally reacted on the warlike traditions of the Marathas, and the number of professional Maratha soldiers inevitably declined. In 1818 they formed only a small proportion of the entire population, as Sir Thomas Munro informed Mountstuart Elphinstone from personal observation in the Southern Maratha country. ‘The number of horsemen’, he wrote, ‘who depend for their livelihood solely on military service is very small; it probably does not exceed the proportion of one-tenth of the whole horsemen usually employed under the southern jagheerdars.’¹ This explains why military traditions in Maharashtra died so quickly, for which Field Marshal Earl Roberts felt justified in classing the Marathas with the people of Bengal and Madras as a non-martial race.
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¹ G. R. Gleig, Life of Sir Thomas Munro, Vol. II, p. 270.
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The indiscriminate and unhesitating employment of English and French military adventurers was also quite in accordance with the traditions of India. Though they had long been familiar with the Europeans, even the ablest of the Maratha politicians felt no intellectual curiosity about Europe. The news of the War of American Independence and the French Revolution was brought to them by Europeans themselves. Of the traditional rivalry between France and England it was impossible to be ignorant, but they did not know anything about the constitution of those countries, about their social, political and educational institutions, about their geographical situation, and moral and material progress. The hatmen (topikar), as the Europeans were called, were reputed to be good sailors, good soldiers and very obstinate (hatti); and obstinacy perhaps satisfactorily explained that sense of patriotism which the Marathas (like other Indians) did not at that time understand. Foreigners from all parts of Europe and Asia had been readily admitted to the services of the State by Muhammadan princes before the rise of the Maratha power, and adventurers from Persia and Central Asia not only supplied loyal servants but formed the principal support of the Mughal Government in India. The Portuguese soldiers, who were the first Europeans to seek service in the Indian States, seldom hesitated to fight against the State of their origin on behalf of their employers; some French deserters were found in the English service and instances of Englishmen in French employ, though rare, were not unknown. Maratha chiefs in the Nizam's service identified themselves, as much as possible, with their master's cause and took a prominent part in his wars against the Maratha empire. Sindhia, Holkar and other Maratha chiefs, therefore, argued that they could expect as much loyalty and devotion from French and English adventurers as from their Sikh, Rajput, Arab, Sindhi or Gossain soldiers. The European officers came in search of fortune and obtained from their Maratha employers good pay and rich jahgirs; some of them married in the country (both De Boigne and George Thomas had Indian wives), and their masters probably expected that like the Persian and Tartar immigrants of Mughal days these foreigners would also permanently settle in the country and spend the rest of their lives in the service of those who treated them so well and generously. In this expectation, if it was ever entertained, they were sadly disappointed; not only the English subjects in Sindhia's army but the great majority of French officers also accepted the Governor-General's offer and deserted Daulat Rao when their services were needed most, while Pohlman, a German who was present at Assaye, behaved so despicably that Sir John Fortescue feels inclined to suspect disloyalty. The Marathas made a serious mistake in entrusting the defence of their empire to foreigners, and heavily did they pay for their mistake.
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The employment of European officers involved a serious change in the Maratha army. Their method of fighting was fundamentally opposed to the Maratha military traditions. Whether those two opposite methods could be profitably combined remains a doubtful question, but it is unanimously agreed that the Maratha military leaders never made a serious effort to find a satisfactory solution, and both at Panipat and at Assaye their discomfiture was largely due to their attempts to reconcile their old tactics with those they had recently introduced in their army but had not assimilated. In the meantime their reliance on trained infantry had led them to neglect their cavalry, and two competent military critics like Sir Thomas Munro and Sir John Fortescue agree that the defeat of Assaye was due to the degeneration of Maratha cavalry. Sir Thomas Munro wrote to his brother¹ on 12 February 1804: ‘I calculated, at the opening of the campaign, two years for the complete conquest of all the possessions of Scindia and the Berarman. I thought their cavalry would have shown a little more enterprise; but they ruined it and destroyed its spirit, by teaching the troopers that they did not depend upon cavalry, but upon infantry. By coming forward with regular infantry, they gave us every advantage we could desire. They opposed to us men that never could be made so good as our own, from the want of a national spirit among the officers, and of the support of European battalions; and they trusted the success of the war to the event of close engagements. More credit has been given to the firmness of their infantry than it deserved. They seem to have made but little opposition, except during the short time our army was forming, and to have relied more upon their artillery than their musketry, as is fully proved by our horse having suffered little loss, unless by round and grape-shot’. Sir John Fortescue’s criticism is not so detailed, but he is equally positive about the mistakes made by the Marathas. ‘Had Pohlman done his duty,' he remarks, 'he might at least have embarrassed Wellesley greatly; and if the Mahratta cavalry had behaved with even a show of spirit, the issue would have been certainly doubtful, and most probably disastrous to the British arms.'¹
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¹ Ibid, Vol. I, pp. 354-5.
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¹ Fortescue, *History of British Army*, Vol. V, p. 32.
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The degeneration of cavalry was also due to the departure from Shivaji's practice. Had the Peshwas continued to replace the *Silhedar* force by state-paid and state-equipped horse, the efficiency of their cavalry would certainly have been maintained. But the revival of feudalism naturally encouraged the employment of *Silhedars*, who were unwilling to risk their horses which formed their professional capital. At last even the *Jahgirdars* began to hire horses for their personal cavalry, as we learn from Sir Thomas Munro. 'A great part of the horses employed in the Mahratta armies', he wrote, 'are the property of men who do not belong to the military profession. Many of the wealthy inhabitants, most of the despandes, dessyes, and other hereditary civil officers of the potails and curnums of villages, and many even of the most substantial rayets, breed horses for the armies. They send them to the field mounted by their own domestics and labourers, and hire them to the jagheerdars or the Government. They are horse-dealers rather than soldiers.'² It is no wonder that untrained men mounted on hired steeds proved of little use in actual fighting.
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² G. R. Gleig, *Life of Sir Thomas Munro*, Vol. II, pp. 269-70.
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If some defects of their military system were due to feudalism, others must be associated with the intellectual limitations of the Marathas. They readily adopted new arms but did not reject the old ones. While in Europe the crossbow was replaced by the longbow, the longbow by hand-guns, the hand-guns by matchlocks, and matchlocks by firelocks, in the Maratha army and the Maratha fleet muskets, bows and stones were simultaneously in use. During the hundred and fifty years under review the Marathas borrowed freely from their European neighbours but failed to make any contribution to military science either in strategy or in weapons. Yet they were not intellectually deficient; the failure, therefore, must be attributed to defects in education.
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The Maratha Government did not recognise their responsibility of public instruction. Distinguished Brahman scholars and physicians of all castes and creeds were encouraged by liberal grants of rent-free lands and pensions, but private individuals were generally left to equip themselves as best they could for the professions of their choice. The great majority of the upper classes joined the army. They learnt to fight, but there was no systematic arrangement for any instruction in the science of war. Fighting was more or less a matter of experience, and the general education that was then available consisted wholly of cultural training in literature, grammar, politics, logic and philosophy. There was no treatise on the science of war, and if we except a single chronicle, that dealing with the campaign of Panipat, there was no record of the military experience of the Maratha generals. An officer never retired from service and had therefore no leisure for writing about the theories and practice of war. His experience was, therefore, lost to posterity and only his near relatives, who had the good fortune of serving with him, could profit by his teaching, and these could not always be expected to supply the best or the aptest pupils. The progress that Europe was making in the eighteenth century in theoretical science was absolutely unknown to the Indians of that age, and no Maratha chief ever attempted to master the superior military and nautical science of the west as Peter the Great did. The Maratha officers began their military careers too early, were much too tied to the time-honoured system to learn anything new and generally died early; if some of them had the good luck of attaining a ripe old age, they were too busy with their annual expeditions to leave a written account of their campaigns, and their limited education hardly qualified them for such work.
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At the same time the Maratha nobility had lost the simplicity of life that characterised their ancestors of Shivaji’s time. What was condemned as an inexcusable vice by the founder of the Maratha kingdom was regarded as a necessity of life by his successors in the latter part of the eighteenth century. When the Peshwa’s agent urged Tukoji Holkar to prohibit the sale of alcohol in his camp, he protested that alcohol was a necessity of life and soldiers could not be expected to dispense with it.¹ Shivaji never allowed ‘whores and dancing wenches’ in his army. Govind Pant Bundele had to send handsome dancing-girls from Hindustan for the Peshwa Balaji Baji Rao.² The degeneration was thus all-round and complete. The State degenerated from a national monarchy to a feudal confederacy, the army degenerated from a well-disciplined national force to an ill-disciplined band of mercenaries, and the military leaders degenerated from simple hardy soldiers to ease-loving voluptuaries. There could be but one result of such a general-sided decline both moral and material.
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¹ *Itihas Sangraha*, Holkar Darbarantli Hingnyanchi Vakili, p. 19.
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² Rajwade, *Marathyanchya Itihasachin Sadhanen*, Vol. I, p. 319; Vol. III, p. 150.
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A military empire cannot survive its military efficiency long, and unfortunately for the Marathas their rivals were endowed with those very qualities which they themselves lacked. The English were imbued with a strong sense of patriotism, they combined individual self-sacrifice with national ambition, their army was well-disciplined and scientifically trained, their generals were perfect masters of military science; and the badly led, badly armed and badly organised feudal army of the Maratha empire had to relinquish the unequal contest after a brief struggle. The Maratha chiefs were compelled to acknowledge their failure after two short wars, the Peshwa was pensioned off, the *Bargirs* converted their sword-blades into ploughshares, peace was restored throughout the length and breadth of India and the Maratha empire became a far-off memory.