The Military System of the Marathas, with a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities c8.30

c8.30

But the foreigners in the Maratha army were not always better soldiers than the country recruit. Robert Orme wrote very disparagingly of the Christian recruits from Goa serving not only in the Maratha infantry but also in the trained battalions of the English East India Company. He says: ‘They are little superior in courage to the lower castes of Indians, and greatly inferior to the higher castes, as well as the Northern Moors of Indostan; but because they learn the manual exercise and the duties of a parade with sufficient readiness, and are clad like Europeans they are incorporated with the European troops’.³