The Military System of the Marathas, with a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities c18.28

c18.28

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.