The Military System of the Marathas, with a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities c7.2

c7.2

TRADITION dies hard. Reformers in every country and in every age have an uphill task. They are often far in advance of their contemporaries and the final success and ultimate acceptance of their ideals do not depend wholly on themselves. The gospel of Christ, the inspired utterances of Muhammad needed the Apostles and the Khalifas respectively for their dissemination and acceptance by the world. The ardent loyalty to the king which Shivaji had inspired in his people, the iron discipline which he had enforced in his army, the subordination of the military to the civil authority which he had striven to secure, were not in any way the result of orderly evolution from historic precedent, but were essentially new revolutionary ideas conceived by the mind of a born leader of men. Novel though his ideas were, they failed to shake the implicit trust of the people in him or to arouse their doubts as to the soundness of his policy. His successors, unfortunately, had neither the foresight nor the ability to carry on his unfinished work, and when the moral impetus which he had given to it was spent, old ideas regained their ascendancy and feudalism entered upon a new and vigorous life.