The Military System of the Marathas, with a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities c8.61

c8.61

As the Maratha needed very little provision for his subsistence, he was not encumbered with much baggage and, before the introduction of the heavy field artillery, could move very swiftly. The English and Portuguese observers who wrote about the middle of the eighteenth century were all impressed with their celerity, but there was very little discipline among them. The Marquis of Alorna was of opinion that they were no better than rabble. ‘I would have no hesitation’, he wrote, ‘with a corps of five thousand regular soldiers to attack such an army though fifty thousand strong.’¹ Tone and Moor also adversely commented on the little discipline that they found in the Maratha army. The former observed: ‘That every man in a Mahratta camp is totally independent; he is the proprietor of the horse he rides which he is never inclinable to risk, since without it he can get no service.’²