The Military System of the Marathas, with a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities c9.25

c9.25

Besides the three principal officers every fort had one or more *Tat Sarnobat* according to its size. The *Tat Sarnobat* was in charge of the defence and supervision of the rampart, or a section of it, if it was too big for a single officer, and every unit of nine soldiers in the garrison was commanded by a petty officer called a *Naik*.² The size of the garrison varied according to the size and the importance of the fort and according to the exigencies of the times. In times of special danger a fort was reinforced with men, provision, and stores, but the nominal strength of a garrison probably did not go above five hundred.³ These men were armed with swords and spears, bows and arrows, matchlocks and muskets. Against their assailants they also used rockets, which probably caused little harm to men, except when they by some lucky chance set fire to their powder store, but frightened away the war elephants. A more effective missile was the bomb, which was used in the defence of Purandar. In artillery Shivaji’s forces must have been very poor, for he had to depend entirely upon the European merchants for his supply of guns and ammunition, and what cannons he purchased from his French and Portuguese friends were certainly not of the best type. When a particular fort was threatened, Shivaji had to supply it with artillery from other places. But while he was weak in firearms, his enemies were not better equipped, and the garrison could often repulse an assault by rolling down huge pieces of rock as their assailants laboriously climbed up the steep hillside. Fryer saw ‘on the tops of the Mountains, several Fortresses of Seva Gi’s, only defensible by Nature needing no other Artillery but stones, which they tumble down upon their Foes, carrying as certain destruction as Bullets where they alight’.⁴ The use of stones for defensive purposes was by no means confined to Southern India or to Shivaji’s times. Sir Hector Munro and his men were violently assailed by stones when they attempted to capture Chunar,⁵ and Lord Valentia mentions the use of stones in the first decade of the last century when he found a range of useless and decayed cannon left in neglect near the important fort of Lohagad.¹ Ten years later Fitzclarence still found stones heaped near the forts of the Deccan when he passed through the country on his way to Bombay during the Pendhari war.