The Military System of the Marathas, with a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities c18.15

c18.15

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.