The Military System of the Marathas, with a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities c5.1

c5.1

SPLENDID soldiers alone cannot make a splendid army and a nation of fighters does not necessarily rank as a military power. Military efficiency demands discipline in the men and imagination tempered with common sense in their leaders. A military power needs above all an ideal to defend, an ideal to fight for. The Marathas had earned the reputation of good soldiers as early as the first half of the seventh century A.D., but it was not before the second half of the seventeenth that they emerged from comparative insignificance and obtained a place among the great powers of India. Till then they were disunited, disorganised and a prey to petty dissension.