The Military System of the Marathas, with a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities c18.26

c18.26

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.