The Military System of the Marathas, with a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities c18.18

c18.18

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.