The Military System of the Marathas, with a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities c4: Introduction
The Military System of the Marathas, with a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities c4
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Introduction
c4.1
The Marathas were the last indigenous empire builders of India.¹ They leapt into prominence suddenly and swiftly; in the third decade of the seventeenth century the Maratha name was unknown to the world outside; three decades later it had become a terror to the rulers of the land. In the second decade of the next century the Emperor of Delhi had to recognise their defacto supremacy in the Deccan by granting them *chauth* and *sardeshmukhi* of six provinces of the South. But their activities were not long confined to the immediate neighbourhood of their home. Balaji Vishwanath entered Delhi in the train of Syed Husain Ali, his son appeared in its environs at the head of his victorious army, his grandsons became arbiters of the fate of the Mughal empire and carried the Maratha banner to the banks of the Indus, while their cavalry scoured the country from Lahore to Murshidabad, from Delhi to Seringapatam. The rapid expansion of their empire was once arrested by the defeat of Panipat, but the Marathas quickly recovered from the shock, and Mahadaji Sindhia founded a new empire in Hindustan. In 1794 they inflicted a crushing defeat on the Nizam at Kharda and compelled him to cede half his territories. Hardly eight years elapsed before the Peshwa became a feudatory of the British Government in India, the grand armies of Daulat Rao Sindhia and Raghuji Bhonsla were defeated and destroyed by Lake and Wellesley, and the Maratha empire collapsed like a house of cards. If their rise was sudden and swift, the fall of the Marathas was no less sudden and spectacular. The Empire was apparently at the zenith of its power, it had reached its greatest extent, its man-power was almost unlimited, yet it was destroyed by a foreign power with a small army after a brief campaign of fifteen weeks.
c4.2
¹ The later Sikh and Gurkha states never transcended the provincial limits of the Indus valley and the Himalayan region respectively.
c4.3
What led to this quick and complete collapse? The plea of accidents cannot be seriously considered. In History accident plays no prominent part, and seldom turns the tide of national fortunes. It is true that Mahadaji Sindhia died while still in the prime of life, and about the same date died a lesser person, Hari Pant Phadke. It is true that the early death of the first Madhav Rao, the murder of Narayan Rao, the unfortunate suicide of the second Madhav Rao were national calamities of no mean order and certainly accelerated the pace of the Maratha fall. It is also true that after Nana Fadnavis there was no one competent to unite the divergent forces that constituted the complex organisation called the Maratha empire. But why did the Maratha race suddenly grow barren of great men? If the Marathas could survive Shivaji’s death, why could they not survive Nana Fadnavis? If able leaders came forth to save the nation in 1690, why were they lacking in 1802? The death of Cavour did not arrest the progress of Italian unity; why should the death of Nana Fadnavis or Mahadaji Sindhia cause the downfall of the Maratha empire? Accidents offer no satisfactory explanation.
c4.4
Social reformers have attributed the misfortunes of the Marathas to their caste dissensions. Yet the Maratha empire came into being under the shadow of the caste system, it expanded and flourished while that system was in full operation. Shivaji, a Maratha, recruited his highest officers from the Brahman caste; the two greatest generals employed by the Brahman Peshwa in Northern India were both Marathas; Yamaji Shivdev, a Brahman, once intrigued against the Brahman Peshwa; the pretender Sadoba found an ardent supporter in the Chitpavan governor of Ratnagiri, while Jaswant Rao Holkar, a Maratha (more accurately a Dhangar), fought against Daulat Rao Sindhia, another Maratha. Govind Pant Bundele, a Karhada Brahman, complained that there was none in the Brahman Peshwa’s court to recommend his devoted services as he was only a Brahman servant of His Highness. The caste system has been responsible for many evils in India but for the real cause of the downfall of the Marathas we must look elsewhere.
c4.5
It has been suggested that the Marathas fell because they neglected their civil government; and they lived on plunder and did not encourage trade and industry, agriculture and commerce. Defective as their civil institutions were they were no worse than similar institutions in contemporary Europe.¹ Their government certainly degenerated in the closing years of the eighteenth century, but that was a result rather than the cause of the decline and fall that had already commenced.
c4.6
¹ The subject has been exhaustively treated in my *Administrative System of the Marathas*.
c4.7
Nor was their fall due to their policy of aggression. An imperial power in a country like India must be aggressive, until its supremacy is fairly established over the whole country. In pursuance of such a policy they had often recourse to diplomacy of a kind condemned by their critics. Whatever may happen in future, in the past abstract principles of morality played little or no part in diplomacy oriental or occidental. Neither Clive nor Cavour, nor Bismarck, nor Napoleon III would hesitate to hoodwink a rival or dupe an enemy. In the eighteenth century the standard of diplomatic morality in Europe was certainly not very high, as Albert Sorrel tells us. In India things were no better and no worse. If the Marathas coveted the lands of their neighbours, their neighbours on their part were not free from land hunger. Every envoy that the Bombay Government sent to Poona was instructed to take advantage of the disunion and dissension that existed among the Marathas. Vansitart seriously contemplated a general invasion of the Maratha empire from all sides when he learnt of the disaster of Panipat, although there was peace between the two powers at the time. It is true that had the issue of that battle been different, Vansitart’s protege at Murshidabad would almost immediately have felt the weight of the Maratha military power.
c4.8
But a policy of aggression proves futile if it is not provided with a proper implement. An imperial power with an aggressive programme must have an efficient instrument of war. So long as its army remained efficient the empire flourished and prospered; when the army grew weak and inefficient the Marathas naturally lost the pre-eminence and prestige they once enjoyed and had to make room for their better equipped rival. An enquiry into the causes of the decline and decay of the Maratha army may therefore reveal the real causes that led to the decline and decay of the Maratha empire.
c4.9
The army is an instrument of the State. Every change in the constitution and organisation of the State is therefore bound to be reflected in the organisation of the army. The rules and regulations by which an army is governed always bear an impress of the ideals by which the State is inspired. The history of the Maratha army does not offer any exception to this axiom.
c4.10
The Maratha state in its infancy was governed by an enlightened autocracy in the shape of a national monarchy. The army which gave expression to the ideals and aspirations of this state was naturally a national institution with strict rules and regulations. It formed a homogeneous body, commanded by a regular cadre of officers who had to obey one supreme commander. The monarchical autocracy was however soon replaced by a feudal despotism, and the national army had consequently to make room for a feudal force. Discipline in such a body is necessarily lax and homogeneity is impossible. During the Peshwa period therefore we no longer find a single army under one central organisation led and commanded by one supreme leader but a conglomeration of different armies led by different feudal chiefs who were not always inspired by common ideals or united by common interests. The total military strength of the State was under such circumstances not available at any given moment and one military officer of the State could be, and in fact was, often pitted against another. This necessarily reduced the general military resources of the State and rendered unity of command impossible.
c4.11
Unfortunately this was not all. With the change of its constitution the Maratha State gradually forsook its original ideal and the national elements in the army were in consequence largely replaced by foreign mercenaries. But this defect of the Maratha army, important as it is, does not explain its discomfiture; for the English army, against which it fought, was also composed of the same elements; and disunited as the Maratha chiefs were, some of them could and did bring to the field a much bigger force than the English could hope to muster. Their defeat must therefore be attributed to inferiority in discipline, equipment and command.
c4.12
The Marathas owed their early success against their Muslim rivals to superior discipline. But as their empire expanded and the hoarded wealth of Hindustan flowed into the saddle bags of the Maratha horsemen, they began to emulate the grandees of the Mughal empire in their military customs and ways of living. Discipline was in consequence sadly impaired and the Maratha army of the later Peshwa days suffered from the very defects that had led to the fall of their Muslim rivals.
c4.13
The arms and equipment of the Maratha army were of a heterogeneous character. While they adopted new arms they did not reject the old ones. Consequently the weapons used by the Maratha soldiers represented all stages of civilisation, and some of them were certainly handed down from the early stone age. In the battle of Udgir bows and arrows were employed with matchlocks and muskets and among the missiles hat dhonda or stones are mentioned.
c4.14
In their choice of weapons no evolution is perceptible but there was accretion. The same remark is applicable to their tactics. When they began to adopt the new tactics with which they had become familiar in their warfare against the Europeans, they did not reject their traditional system of fighting. The two methods were found in practice to be irreconcilable but they persisted in their useless efforts at hybridization in a way that inevitably led to disaster. The Maratha chiefs with their old cavalry force clung to the traditional ways without in any way improving them, while the new battalions consisted of foreign mercenaries commanded by foreign officers of doubtful character, diverse nationality and very little knowledge of their profession. Such an army had of course no chance against their English opponents.
c4.15
The inefficiency of the command in the Maratha army can be directly traced to its feudal organisation and their inability to improve their military and civil institutions were also due to the same cause.
c4.16
In short the decline and fall of the Maratha military power was due firstly to the revival of feudalism after the death of Sambhaji, which caused disunion and dissension from which Shivaji had tried to save his people; secondly to the rejection of Shivaji's ideal of racial amity on a religious basis in favour of the principle of personal aggrandisement which led to the denationalisation of the Maratha army, and thirdly and lastly to the failure of the Maratha leaders to keep pace with the scientific progress in other parts of the world, to learn and assimilate what others had to teach and improve upon what they had learnt. In Europe there was steady progress from feudalism to national monarchy and from national monarchy to democracy; in Maharashtra the process was reversed by the Peshwas, and the result was the decline, decay and fall of the Maratha empire.