SCRIPT - The British Conquest of India (1798-1806) V. The 2nd Anglo-Maratha War: Holkar

 

The British Conquest of India (1798-1806)

V. The 2^nd Anglo-Maratha War: Holkar

 

Hi, and welcome to Strategy Stuff. This is Part V of a five-part series on how Britain and its East India Company, between 1798 and 1807, established hegemony over India through conquest.

In the last Part, British India had, within a year, first vassalized the nominal Maratha leader or Peshwa, and then destroyed the Europeanized armies of the Maratha lords Shinde and Bhonsle. In the process, the British gained control of not just the core Maratha territories in central India, but also the northern regions of Hindustan and Rajputana, including the Mughal Emperor in Delhi.

At this point, the chief official of British India, Richard Wellesley the Earl of Mornington, might have finally considered his expansionist ambitions fulfilled. But conquering all this land was only half the equation: the new territories also had to be defended and held. And this was easier said than done, since British Indian forces were now stretched thin throughout the subcontinent, and Mornington’s bosses in the EIC refused to let him hire any more. This was especially dangerous, considering that the British had not actually defeated all the Maratha domains: there was still one left – that of Holkar.

 

11. The 2^nd Anglo-Maratha War: Holkar (1804-06)

The Holkars, under their leader Yashwantrao, had actually been the first to confront British India during this period: after all, it was their army that British Indian forces chased away, during the latter’s restoration of the Maratha Peshwa Bajirao. But when the British later fought Shinde and Bhonsle, Holkar stayed aloof from the fighting raging about his borders. Presumably – having no love for either the British or his dynastic rival Shinde – Holkar expected the two to lock themselves into an exhausting stalemate, at which point he would swoop in and take whatever he pleased.

As such, the sweeping and rapid British victory was an extremely unwelcome surprise for Holkar, who now not only lost the chance to profit at the expense of his rivals, but also faced the prospect of becoming subject to Mornington’s rule, through the vassalization of his nominal liege, the Maratha Peshwa. Already by December 1803, the British Bengal Army, which had just conquered Hindustan, was now pushing in from the north, both to secure the allegiance of the nearby Rajput rulers, and to pressure Holkar to formally submit, like Shinde and Bhonsle had already done.

Holkar refused to go quietly. On the contrary, in February 1804, a mere 2 months after Shinde and Bhonsle agreed to become ‘subsidiary allies’ of British India, Holkar issued an ultimatum to Mornington: give up both Hindustan and Rajputana to Holkar, and on top of that, pay a hefty sum as tribute! Unsurprisingly, the British refused, and so the next phase of the 2^nd Anglo-Maratha War began.

The theater of the new war was initially centered southwest of the former Hindustan theater. Unlike Hindustan’s plains, however, the hills and rivers of this new region were far more limiting to military movement. In particular, the city-state of Kota was a key point of control, whose possession would box Holkar in and eventually starve his domain out. But by now, it was not only the Marathas who would be starving, for the monsoonal drought and crop failure that had ravaged South Asia in 1803 was continuing into 1804, and already the British were having trouble collecting supplies for their planned operations.

Regardless, the British strategy was to be a regional version of what had worked in the previous Hindustan and Deccan campaigns. First, the British would box Holkar in, preventing him from launching the plunder raids needed to pay his soldiers. As mentioned, the main effort in this regard would center on Kota, which the 10-thousand-strong Bengal Army would secure from the north. After this was done, the Army, in conjunction with supporting forces from Gujarat in the west and the Deccan in the south, would march on Holkar’s capital, Indore, and force him to terms.

This was a fairly obvious strategy that Holkar would have anticipated. He also had the benefit of learning from Shinde and Bhonsle’s experiences, and from that, concluding that fighting an infantry battle with the British would likely only result in rapid defeat. So Holkar decided to return to traditional Indian warfighting methods: rather than relying on his 10-thousand-strong sepoys as he did in prior wars, Holkar instead recruited 15 thousand light cavalry, intending to use them to outmaneuver and raid the British until the latter gave up.

To get this to work, Holkar would have to abandon every fixed position that he had, up to and including his capital. Nevertheless, his strategy best exploited the overstretched condition of British Indian forces at the time. On the one hand, his cavalry could isolate and destroy overstretched enemy units; on the other, by riding into territories that Mornington had only recently conquered, Holkar hoped to trigger local rulers to re-defect to his banner and collapse the British position that way.

Holkar began implementing his strategy as soon as war broke out. In April 1804, he launched a demonstrative raid against Rajputana, showing his flag not just before local rulers, but also the Bengal Army itself. Stung, the commander of the Bengal Army, General Lake, responded by marching towards Kota, whose ruler submitted in June. At this point, likely assuming that Holkar’s forces had been safely contained,  Lake then took most of the Bengal Army back to monsoon quarters in Hindustan, leaving a 3-thousand sepoy column under a subordinate, Colonel Monson, to continue securing the area.

For the next month, Monson operated in the hills south of Kota, capturing local forts and trying to locate the British reinforcements that were supposed to be marching out from Gujarat. Unbeknownst to him, that force had been badly delayed thanks to logistics issues, so after much frustration, Monson finally decided to begin withdrawing back to Kota. That was when Holkar’s light cavalry suddenly reappeared behind him.

What happened next was a British catastrophe, reminiscent of Napoleon’s retreat from Russia 8 years later. Tailing the British rear, Holkar’s light cavalry began doing what they did best, picking off stragglers, plundering baggage, and stoking panic. As morale collapsed and his sepoy column dissolved into a desperate mob, Monson abandoned everything and dashed for Kota, only for the ruler to shut his gates and defect to Holkar. Over the next two months, this sequence of events repeated itself over and over again until Monson, almost by himself, finally limped into Agra, having lost all his men – a third of the Bengal Army – in the process. Equally importantly, his defeat had left a gaping hole within the British encirclement, which Holkar could now pour through to reach the rich and indefensible plains of Hindustan.

As soon as he heard of Monson’s disaster, Lake remobilized his Bengal Army, but until that process was complete, he could do little. In the meantime, the British were forced to perform strategic triage, abandoning almost everything in Hindustan to re-concentrate within the key cities of Delhi and Agra. Even the occupation of Holkar’s capital by the much-delayed Gujarat force, did little to stem Maratha momentum now.

Finally, in mid-September, Holkar erupted into Hindustan. He now led a horde of 60 thousand light cavalry, its ranks swollen by mercenaries, ex-sepoys and opportunists looking to exploit British weakness for profit. Knowing this, Holkar’s goals for this campaign were less about fighting the British, and more about getting local rulers to submit through paying tribute. In the latter, he was quite successful, with his massive force convincing much of Rajputana to re-defect to his side. With regards to the former, he was markedly less so, with most of his light cavalry unable – or unwilling – to fight. In early October, Holkar’s horde moved against Delhi, which only had a ragtag British garrison of about 2 thousand; nevertheless, over the next week, the Marathas repeatedly failed to take the city, and eventually withdrew in the face of Lake and his finally-mobilized Bengal Army.

Now that he actually had something on the field, Lake could finally start regaining control of the situation. Accordingly, he split the Bengal Army into its cavalry and infantry components, and sent them out on separate campaigns. First, Lake personally led the Bengal cavalry on a chase of Holkar, looking for any opportunity to disperse that force. That opportunity finally came in mid-November, when Lake managed to surprise and storm Holkar’s camp in a night battle, after which the Maratha cavalry decided to quit while the going was good and scattered with their loot.

Second, Lake tasked the Bengal infantry with mending the damage done in the wake of Monson’s defeat, and rebuilding the strategic encirclement of Holkar. One of the key objectives in this regard was the fortress-state of Bharatpur, barely 50 kilometers from Agra and a key link between Hindustan, Rajputana and Holkar’s domain. Formerly a British subsidiary ally, Bharatpur had defected to Holkar during the latter’s September invasion, and its recapture would do much to recover both British India’s borders, and its badly-tarnished prestige amongst the indigenous lords.

So in November, the Bengal infantry, under the command of Lake’s lieutenant, began the invasion of Bharatpur. But right from the start, it was clear that Indian resistance this time would be fiercer than anything before: perhaps because the British were not inclined to offer terms to whom they considered ‘traitors’, or perhaps because Bharatpur expected help from nearby Holkar. In any case, in their first clash of arms before the border fort of Deeg, the British came off quite badly, losing almost a tenth of their force as well as Lake’s lieutenant himself. He was succeeded by none other than Colonel Monson, who again tried to retreat, prompting an angry Lake to order him to stay put. The General arrived in mid-December, took Deeg, and proceeded towards Bharatpur itself, which he besieged as 1805 dawned.

The Siege of Bharatpur was yet another fiasco for the British. Two assaults in January cost another tenth of Lake’s army to little result. In mid-February, after being reinforced by the Bombay Army, Lake tried again twice, only to lose a fifth of his force this time, and on top of that, suffer an embarrassing mutiny of his European troops! All in all, the British lost almost 3 thousand men in the Siege of Bharatpur, and by late February, Lake had to partially admit defeat and pull back for a long-term blockade of the fortress. Wisely, Bharatpur took advantage of this to quit the war while it was still ahead, offering to re-submit and pay an indemnity in return for forgiveness. Lake accepted.

Like the dissolution of Holkar’s cavalry horde, Bharatpur’s rather mercenary behavior was made in the context of Holkar’s failure to make further inroads against British India. In January 1805, while the Bengal Army was still busy sieging Bharatpur, Holkar raided Hindustan again, hoping to trigger a second wave of defections. But, without any new battlefield victories or city captures to speak of since September, local rulers were no longer as sure of Holkar’s eventual victory as they were before, and as such they largely adopted a wait-and-see attitude instead. This, in turn, meant that Holkar’s cavalry had to operate without local support and so, within a few months, they were again dispersed by the British.

Holkar’s momentum was fizzling out, but British India still felt the need to make strategic concessions. Most significantly, the recently-defeated Maratha lord Shinde cleverly took advantage of British difficulties to inform them that he was preparing to defect, prompting the British to hurriedly agree to re-negotiate their peace treaty with him. This was desperate diplomacy, but it at least prevented Holkar from regaining momentum, especially important considering his domain was now under British occupation and his existing cavalry was no longer achieving either plunder or defections. It had taken Lake almost 2 years, and his lines were much further back than where he had intended them to be, but his original strategy was finally in place: slowly but surely, Holkar’s army, like Shinde or Bhonsle before him, began to wither from a lack of funds.

In October 1805, Holkar made his final bid for victory, as he crossed Rajputana and entered northern Hindustan. Fearing another assault on Delhi, Lake followed him closely, but Holkar continued onto the northwest, towards the last hope he had left – the emerging Empire of the Sikhs. By December, Holkar was in the Sikh holy city of Amritsar, petitioning its Maharaja for aid; Lake’s ‘counter-proposal’ came in the form of the Bengal Army camping right at the Sikh border. Ultimately, with no real reason to risk the safety of their Empire to help the Marathas, the Sikhs denied Holkar’s petition; and with his last hope gone, Holkar had no choice but to finally admit defeat and ask the British for peace.

The war with Holkar was a nasty shock for British India, and it’s not hard to imagine that, had more indigenous states – for example, the Sikhs or Afghans – taken advantage of Monson’s defeat to dogpile on British India, Mornington might have lost all of his recent northern conquests and perhaps more. It’s also interesting to see how – just as they had assumed all along – British Indian forces took far longer to defeat Holkar’s traditional cavalry raiders, compared to the sepoy armies of Shinde and Bhonsle. To an extent, this does reflect British unfamiliarity with Indian military methods, and Holkar likely also benefited from not relying on corruptible European mercenaries.

But it’s probably too much to extrapolate from this that Indian military modernization was pointless. Firstly, as mentioned before, indigenous sepoys were very effective against other indigenous forces, who were a far more prevalent threat than the EIC. Secondly, much of Holkar’s success came from his defeat of the rather incompetent Monson, and Maratha momentum quickly fizzled out once General Lake resumed command. And thirdly, compared with the Maratha sepoys who at least bloodied British Indian forces in pitched battle, Holkar’s light cavalry, despite their massive numerical superiority, failed to storm any defended city, nor inflict much damage on non-routing British forces. All they could do was harass the enemy and – like an insurgency – hope that the latter would eventually tire of upholding the status quo. Luckily for Holkar, the EIC was rapidly entering such a mood.

Eventually, the British managed to stabilize the situation and push back, but all this came too late to help Mornington. In July 1805, a letter arrived from EIC Headquarters in London, blaming the Governor-General for Monson’s disaster, and on that basis, removing him from office. What’s more, the Company made sure that his replacement was to be a Mercantilist solely focused on making profit, rather than on grand schemes of war and reform.

So by the time of the final peace negotiations in December 1805, British India had not only rejected further expansion, it was actively trying to get rid of unprofitable territories and political obligations. It therefore agreed to revoke the subsidiary alliances with Shinde, Bhonsle and the Rajput states, and at one point, even considered abandoning Delhi itself! In the end, despite all the trouble he had caused, Holkar was left with his domain fairly intact, an implied free hand in Rajputana, and the prestige of having repelled the British. But at least the EIC and the Indian subcontinent could finally enjoy some peace – at least, for the next few years.

 

12. Aftermath and Conclusion

The peace with Holkar marked the end of a tumultuous decade in South Asian history. Between 1799 and 1806 – a mere 7 years – British India had not only quadrupled in size, but had also seized control of the Mughal and Maratha rulers, formalizing its position as the sole hegemon on the subcontinent. All this came at the expense of the indigenous powers, most notably Hyderabad, Mysore and the great Maratha lords, who were respectively vassalized, conquered and neutralized as viable peer competitors.

Despite this, by the end of this period, the Reformist strategymakers who spearheaded this expansion had all been removed from office, victims of a Mercantilist EIC that had re-imposed its priorities onto British India. Governor-General Mornington, as mentioned, was fired in mid-1805 over the Monson debacle. His brother Wellington had already left India earlier that year, likely to avoid a similar fate. Even General Lake resigned his command shortly after the final peace with Holkar, partly to protest the abandonment of his conquests by the new EIC administration.

These men returned home to an indifferent Britain that was wholly focused on Napoleon and his domination of Europe: in fact, the British political elite initially cared more about Wellington and Mornington’s ‘improper’ use of patronage, than anything else they did in India! Nevertheless, the achievements of both men were soon recognized, and they would play leading roles in the key British effort of the time, which was the Peninsular War in Iberia.

As for British India: while the EIC and Mercantilism might have won in 1807, they could not completely turn the clock back, and imperial expansion gradually wormed its way back into colonial strategy. In 1817, Peshwa Bajirao rebelled unsuccessfully against British control in the 3^rd Anglo-Maratha War, and as a result the Maratha Empire was abolished, and the Maratha and Rajput states re-vassalized. To secure these gains in turn, British India was compelled to continue expanding into India’s borderlands, triggering future wars with the Nepalis, the Afghans, the Sikhs, and beyond.

Similarly, the EIC could not stem the growing popularity of Reformism within the British political and administrative elite, and future Governor-Generals would resume Mornington’s work to ‘Europeanize’ Indian society. In time, they would even go beyond the land reorganizations mentioned in Part III and begin dabbling in cultural reform, most notably in banning traditional widow-sacrifice. The EIC itself would not be spared from attack, as its monopolies would eventually be abolished in favor of free British trade. This unrelenting drive to reform India would come to a screeching halt with the Indian Rebellion of 1857, but the aftermath of that war also marked the culmination of the Reformist vision, as the Mughal Empire, and the feudal hierarchy it represented, was fully overthrown in favor of the culturally – and ethnically – Europeanized state order of the British Raj.

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In assessing the impact of the British conquest of India from 1798 to 1806, the popular literature tends to focus on Arthur Wellesley and how his experience as a ‘sepoy general’ shaped his military approach against Napoleonic France. Frankly, given Wellington’s rather spotty record on the subcontinent, he likely discounted much of what he had learned there. Instead, for his battles in Europe, the ‘Iron Duke’ would reject his highly-aggressive approach in India, and instead adopt a famously defensive and cautious style that would earn him glory from Portugal to Waterloo.

In fact, the most impactful military event of this period was probably the catastrophe of Monson’s retreat, which greatly intensified the infamous British neurosis regarding the security of their Indian Empire. But they had good reason to fear, as Monson demonstrated that any defeat could be seen as a sign of political change, and therefore turn into a signal for Indian lords to defect en masse. From here on out, every battlefield loss in the subcontinent – especially in the northwest – would send the British into a strategic panic; and to avoid this, they would adopt a ‘forward strategy’ to push the risk of battle as far away from India as possible, leading to the famous ‘Great Game’ in Central Asia.

Continuing with strategic analysis: despite the huge expansion of British India under his administration, it’s not clear that Mornington’s efforts were actually a net benefit for Britain, at least in the short-term. While, on paper, he did gain more resources, Mornington’s government was too overstretched to exploit them properly, and he never managed to increase the EIC’s profits. So Mornington’s wars didn’t actually add to British power: if anything, by risking the possibility of a Monson-esque battlefield defeat, the Governor-General was actively jeopardizing the existing benefits British India was already giving Britain! Of course, in the following decades, Britain would benefit hugely from exploiting India as a resource base and captive market, but it still might have made more sense to delay expansion until then.

As for the indigenous powers, their fates are a grim reminder of what often happens to non-aligned states in an era of great-power competition. With little political or ideological stake in the broader struggle between Britain and Revolutionary France, it was perfectly natural for indigenous Indian rulers to try and avoid committing themselves to either side, especially since being explicitly pro-French like Tipu Sultan guaranteed war with British India, while being a pro-British ‘subsidiary ally’ meant loss of independence. This likely explains why so many Indian rulers continued to accept French factions within their courts and militaries, despite Revolutionary France’s inability to do anything for them.

In theory, non-alignment gave indigenous states the most strategic freedom, allowing them to set their own agendas, and perhaps even access both British and French resources. But if that was the intention, then in reality, non-alignment could only be described as a major strategic mistake: far from securing their freedom to maneuver, it instead drove indigenous states into war with British India, as Mornington depicted their attempts to balance out British influence as support for Revolutionary France. To an extent, this outcome was unforeseeable, as Mornington was an unprecedentedly aggressive leader; but ultimately, he was appointed and supported by Parliament, which indicates that Britain, to some extent, was also no longer willing to tolerate Indian non-alignment.

The reason for this attitude can be found in the nature of the broader Anglo-French contest: locked in an ideologically-driven struggle where a compromise peace was deemed impossible, British strategy aimed to completely overpower France, which meant mobilizing and optimizing whatever resources were within its grasp. And as seen in Part I and unfortunately for the indigenous states, British Reformists by this time considered India within their ‘grasp’ as part of Britain’s ‘sphere of influence’, and as such, they expected Indian states to use their resources in a way that supported British strategy. So in this charged, uncompromising environment, by merely refusing to conform to British desires, non-aligned states effectively and perhaps unknowingly marked themselves out as British enemies. And while the inevitable reckoning could be postponed thanks to indigenous strength and resistance, in the end only Hyderabad – the power that most aligned itself with Britain – managed to survive this period with its starting position largely intact.

Interestingly enough, what Britain was doing in India mirrored what Revolutionary-Napoleonic France was doing in Europe at the same time, where states from Portugal to Sweden were also being attacked due to their failure to align with French strategy. This is only one of many parallels that can be drawn between the two regions: others include the frequent use and abuse of vassal states; the megalomania of both Mornington and Napoleon; and even their ultimate downfalls due to overextension and botched retreats. Crucially, both British India and Revolutionary France also saw themselves as vanguards for a developmentally-superior political order, which justified the conquest, exploitation and reorganization of their quote-unquote ‘backward’ neighbors. In this way, we can argue that both the French Revolutionary Wars and the hegemonic wars of British India – and the ideologies they represented, liberalism and imperialism – were actually manifestations of the same trend, which was the rise of Enlightenment political thought in Europe and its associated tendency to quote-unquote ‘scientifically’ categorize and rank societies based on material achievement.

So given the similarities between the British and French attempts at regional hegemony, why did Britain ultimately succeed in India, while France failed in Europe? A common explanation usually revolves around the lack of South Asian unity, but European states, notably Prussia, hardly coordinated any better during this period. Another explanation focuses on the military weaknesses of the indigenous Indian armies, but European forces were arguably just as disadvantaged before the military innovations of Revolutionary France. Nevertheless, despite the annihilation of major forces at Hohenlinden, Ulm, Austerlitz and Jena, neither Austria nor Prussia fell completely under France’s control, and in fact both countries were even strong enough to resume the struggle within a few years of their defeats!

This resilience – which contrasts with the near-collapse of every Indian power after one or two defeats – was the result of Europe’s intense bureaucratic development throughout the early modern period, which allowed states to mobilize resources at an exceptionally efficient rate. By the 1800s, Austria regularly had hundreds of thousands under arms, while the indigenous Indian powers, despite probably having larger GDPs, struggled to maintain forces in the tens of thousands. The sheer size of Austria’s armies meant that, unlike the Indian powers, it was never rendered completely helpless after a single battlefield defeat, and accordingly France was never able to fully control it and therefore establish complete hegemony over Europe. In their defence, the indigenous Indian powers were already some of the earliest non-European states to try and address this bureaucratic deficiency through centralization reforms. But they simply ran out of time, and in any case, plenty more pitfalls lay ahead before they would fully achieve the resilience needed to secure themselves against European imperialism.

One other difference that might have contributed to British success and French failure would be their contrasting approaches to governance. While as mentioned, both Britain and Revolutionary France sought to reorder conquered societies, the French appetite for change was far larger than that of the British Reformists. In particular, while Mornington’s government limited itself to land and elite reorganization – which was already disruptive enough – the French demanded wholesale redistribution, feudal abolition, and cultural change stretching down to even the very calendar itself! Unsurprisingly, this meant that French rule was constantly plagued by local resistance and rebellion, even in culturally-adjacent places like Belgium and Switzerland, which siphoned resources away from the primary hegemonic struggle. By contrast, colonial resistance was fairly manageable during Mornington’s time in office, and it’s no coincidence that the biggest challenge to British India during the 19^th Century – the Indian Rebellion of 1857 – occurred once the British also began meddling with local culture.

Lastly, we should also mention the ‘accidents of history’ that facilitated the British conquest of India between 1798 and 1806: the string of high-level deaths in the 1790s which ended cooperation amongst the powerful Maratha lords; the various succession crises that let Mornington seize large swathes of territory without a fight; and the fratricidal civil war that prevented Afghan intervention in the subcontinent. But while none of these events could have been accurately predicted or planned for, the dramatic impact they had on indigenous states is also a symptom of the aforementioned ‘bureaucratic deficiency’ in feudal India during this time. Without a strong bureaucracy to provide continuity in government, the replacement of an experienced ruler with an untested successor was always going to result in a period of extreme state weakness, making it extremely difficult for any feudal state to resist conquest for extended periods of time, especially against a post-feudal enemy that did not have such problems, like British India.

All in all, the story of the British conquest of India from 1798 to 1806 can be said to revolve around this theme of state capacity. By the late 18^th Century, the advantage that the post-feudal European states enjoyed here was so great that a new generation of British Reformists, exemplified by Governor-General Mornington, could plausibly push for hegemony over the Indian subcontinent, claiming that it was needed to maintain British power against Revolutionary France. And while the campaigns of Generals Harris, Wellington and Lake did much to make the Reformist vision a reality, they were very much helped by the fragility of the indigenous Indian states, whose feudal governments could neither muster nor sustain the level of resource mobilization needed for a successful resistance. So the end result was British hegemony and forced Europeanization, but in the process, the blueprints for a resilient, post-feudal state were also imparted to Indian society. The modern states of South Asia are direct descendants of this tradition, and so in this sense, the British conquest of feudal India also marks the beginning of their birth.

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SCRIPT - The British Conquest of India (1798-1806) IV. The 2nd Anglo-Maratha War: Shinde & Bhonsle

 

The British Conquest of India (1798-1806)

IV. The 2^nd Anglo-Maratha War: Shinde & Bhonsle

 

Hi, and welcome to Strategy Stuff. This is Part IV of a five-part series on how Britain and its East India Company, between 1798 and 1807, established a hegemony over South Asia through conquest.

In the last Part, the British had, for better or for worse, begun their reorganization of feudal Indian society, from the establishment of a landed gentry class, to the insistence that everybody follow European standards of political behavior. At the same time, British India continued acquiring and absorbing subsidiary allies, extending its reach further and further into the subcontinent.

Despite these ‘achievements’, however, the chief official of British India, Richard Wellesley the Earl of Mornington, remained unsatisfied. In fact, with the downfall of his political patron back in Britain, he was now under increasing time pressure to fulfill his ambitions, before his bosses in the East India Company removed him from office. This dynamic might have pushed Mornington to make his boldest move yet, and attempt to impose his authority over the great lords of the Maratha Empire.

 

8. Prelude (1802-03)

To be fair, Mornington’s aggression was not the sole cause of the 2^nd Anglo-Maratha War. Ever since the 1750s, the Maratha Empire, which dominated most of central, northern and inland India, had entered into a prolonged political decay: first, the Emperor lost power to his Prime Minister or ‘Peshwa’; then the Peshwa lost power to his subordinates, who became independent lords in all but name. By the 1800s, the Empire had practically broken up into 4 domains, each paying only the most nominal lip service to Maratha unity. The Peshwa controlled the Empire’s southwest, while to his northeast lay the lands of the Holkar dynasty. The north, including the city of Delhi, was ruled by the Shinde dynasty, while a branch of the Imperial House of Bhonsle dominated the Empire’s relatively-poor east.

This state of affairs has often been described as a ‘Maratha Confederacy’, but by the 1800s, this term had become misleading. Unlike contemporary confederacies like Switzerland, by this time the Peshwa and his central government had, basically, not even a sliver of authority over the lords, and in fact, were often bullied or even attacked by the latter!

Despite this, Mornington and his officials continued to see the Marathas as a ‘Confederacy’, and in doing so fell into a conceptual trap: by believing that the Maratha lords were still part of a political hierarchy under the Peshwa, it naturally followed that, by seizing the Peshwa, the British would get to control all the Maratha lords. This was a basic misunderstanding of Maratha politics that seems to have occurred in spite of the extensive British spy effort, as we will see, and it goes to show that no amount of intelligence will be helpful, if the interpretation of said intelligence is fundamentally flawed. This would not be the only time that the British made this mistake in the upcoming war.

Turning back to the Marathas: similar to the other indigenous powers, throughout the late 18^th Century, the relentless competition between the lords drove each to begin centralizing their governments, both to boost taxation and to create ‘Europeanized’ militaries with the help of European mercenaries. Out of the 4, Shinde and Holkar had made the most progress, thanks to the relative wealth of their lands: by 1800, both states could each field at least 10 thousand Europeanized sepoys, on top of an even larger number of traditional Indian light cavalry. Inevitably, the two became bitter rivals in the struggle for subcontinental hegemony.

A key part of this struggle centered around control over the domain of the young Peshwa, Bajirao II. Initially, the ruler or ‘Maharaja’ of the Shindes, Daulatrao, held sway thanks to his alliance with Bajirao’s regent; but in early 1800, said regent died, and a newly-freed Bajirao began to plot Shinde’s expulsion as well. Naturally, for this task the Peshwa sought out the Holkars and their Maharaja, Yashwantrao.

Holkar went to war with Shinde in early 1801. Initially, operations were limited to the traditional light cavalry raiding along their mutual ‘frontier zone’, but in 1802, the Peshwa abruptly defected back to Shinde’s side. In response, Holkar mobilized his sepoys and marched towards Bajirao’s capital of Pune, where he defeated the combined Peshwa and Shinde armies, chased Bajirao away, and installed his own candidate as the new Peshwa. Dethroned and in grave personal danger, Bajirao fled to the Maratha port of Bassein, near British Bombay, and petitioned Mornington to restore him to power.

On the surface, to have a ruler – or as Mornington saw it, the ruler – of the Marathas deep in Britain’s debt was the opportunity of a lifetime. But with the political winds changing back in London, everybody could see that the Governor-General might not be in office for much longer, and as such they began to voice different opinions. Even Mornington’s own brother, Arthur Wellesley the future Duke of Wellington, cautioned that the Maratha Empire was too quote-unquote ‘rebellious’ to be a useful ally, and stabilizing it would spread British Indian forces dangerously thin across the subcontinent. As mentioned before, neither the pro- nor anti-intervention factions really appreciated that vassalizing the Peshwa would only get them a limited chunk of western India, rather than the whole Empire.

Regardless of the strengthening domestic opposition, Mornington was still in charge and so, on the last day of 1802, he and Bajirao signed what was to be known as the Treaty of Bassein. In it, the British pledged to restore Bajirao as Peshwa, and in return, Bajirao pledged to expel all French personnel from the Maratha Empire, allow an EIC garrison at the capital Pune, and let the British dictate Maratha diplomacy. In so doing, the Treaty turned the Peshwa into a British ‘subsidiary ally’, and by Mornington’s reckoning, that gave him nominal control over the entire Empire and, by extension, almost all of South Asia. Whether this would become actual reality depended, of course, on the success of the upcoming intervention.

For this, Mornington asked the Madras Army to provide a 7-thousand-man contingent, including 2 thousand Europeans, and he further sent another 2 thousand sepoys from newly-vassalized Mysore. Once again, Wellington was put in command of this force: and while this decision was objectively sound, given Wellington’s experience of the region during the Dhondia Wagh campaign, Mornington’s blatant patronage was increasingly galling to senior officers, and as a result it triggered a cascade of resignations within the Madras Army, including its Commander-in-Chief himself!

Undeterred, in March 1803, Wellington set off to restore Bajirao as Peshwa. As expected, the connections he had built up with the local Maratha lords served him well, and the British met no resistance throughout their month-long campaign. Wellington even got the chance to demonstrate the power of his ‘Light and Quick’ strategy, as his cavalry dashed for Pune in the final stretch, surprising Holkar into abandoning the city without a fight! As a result, Bajirao effortlessly reclaimed his throne in May 1803, and the way was open for the British to, equally effortlessly, become the undisputed hegemons of India…

…at least, that was how the British assumed things would turn out. With Peshwa Bajirao restored in Pune, the British now had the displeasure of belatedly discovering that control over him meant very little when it came to vassalizing the other Maratha lords. Part of this was because the Peshwa himself had not regained his throne only to become a British puppet, and as such provided very little help. But in any case, the great lords of the Empire were hardly going to hand over their power at the command of Bajirao, whose authority they, at the best of times, barely acknowledged. Instead, with Holkar withdrawing back to his lands, Shinde and Bhonsle now began marshalling their armies near the Peshwa’s border, drawing out vassalization negotiations with the British in a bid to buy more time to prepare.

At first, Mornington played along, but his initial optimism eroded over the next two months of fruitless and increasingly-deceptive talk. Despite this, his overarching goal remained unchanged: if the Maratha lords could not be vassalized through diplomacy, then the British would impose it on them through force. So in August 1803, Mornington finally delivered an ultimatum to both Shinde and Bhonsle, demanding that they either demobilize immediately or else face war. Neither leader complied, and so a few days later, the 2^nd Anglo-Maratha War began.

 

9. The Deccan Campaign (Aug-Dec 1803)

The war between British India and the Marathas was to be fought across the entire Empire, but the decisive campaigns would occur within the two separate theaters of northern and west-central India respectively. The northern or Hindustani theater was dominated by the upper Ganges Plain and included the Mughal capital of Delhi, and would see the EIC’s Bengal Army advance against half of Shinde’s force. That campaign will be the subject of the next chapter.

The focus of this chapter will be on the west-central or Deccan theater. This was where the Peshwa’s capital of Pune was, as well as where half of Shinde’s force and all of Bhonsle’s had initially gathered. The region was the traditional military route between northern and southern India, and as such was dominated by some of the subcontinent’s most renowned forts, each overlooking one of the many rivers that criss-crossed the area. By 1803, however, these fortresses – mostly held by Shinde – had become quite obsolete to modern artillery, and a major monsoonal drought meant that the rivers were not as impassable as they typically were. Instead, the real limiting factor would be the spiking logistics costs due to drought-induced crop failure, which pushed both the Marathas and especially the British to seek a quick decision before the financial strain became unbearable.

As for forces, Wellington had with him the 10 thousand-strong EIC contingent that had restored the Peshwa, and on top of that, he now requested a further 10 thousand cavalry from Hyderabad. Opposing him was the combined army of Shinde and Bhonsle, consisting of 15 thousand sepoys and 40 thousand light cavalry. These impressive Maratha numbers, however, belied a serious problem that was rapidly atrophying their power: as the prospect of actual fighting loomed, many mercenaries, both British and non-British, began to resign from Maratha service. The EIC encouraged and even managed this process, with the most dramatic results occurring over the course of the Hindustan campaign; but even in the Deccan, the loss of mercenary officers sharply reduced the tactical cohesion of Maratha units, while Wellington benefited from the operational intelligence these defectors often provided.

But as mentioned before, all the intelligence in the world cannot help if the interpretation of said intelligence is flawed. Mornington made this mistake in the previous chapter; now, it was his brother’s turn to get the Marathas wrong. This time, the mistake was military: having never really observed Maratha forces in battle, Wellington assumed that they would just be like what he had seen at Mysore, with below-average infantry and artillery, and above-average light cavalry. Based on this, Wellington expected that the Marathas would deploy a light-cavalry-centric strategy, namely the wide-ranging plunder raids that the British had repeatedly insisted was the ‘best’ strategy for indigenous militaries.

Wellington devised his counter-strategy on that basis, which was a version of his ‘Light and Quick’ strategy. Fully expecting that catching the Marathas would be far more difficult than defeating them in battle, Wellington organized his primary force to prioritize speed and aggression, rather than firepower which was to be reserved for the siege train. His primary force would further split itself into 2 columns to cover as much land as possible, with the goal being to quickly identify and pin down enemy concentrations before defeating them in decisive battle.

It was a strategy that worked well against the likes of Dhondia Wagh. But that was precisely the problem: the Marathas were not like Dhondia Wagh. While Shinde and especially Bhonsle did plan to raid the British rear, they primarily sought to repel the British through victory in pitched battle. This reflected Maratha confidence in their mercenary-trained sepoys, who not only fought tenaciously as infantry but – significantly – often outperformed the British when it came to handling artillery. In retrospect, the two rulers probably underestimated the damage that the mercenary exodus was doing to their units, but – being on the strategic defensive – they probably assumed that they could train up adequate replacements while they waited for Wellington’s army to arrive.

The start of the war in August 1803 saw Wellington’s army opposite Ahmadnagar, the first major fort north of the Peshwa’s capital Pune. Historically formidable, Ahmadnagar was by now too obsolete and well-scouted out for Shinde to commit more than a token garrison to its defense, whom Wellington promptly ‘re-hired’ to serve British India after an initial show of force.

Following his ‘Light and Quick’ strategy, Wellington now split his army into 2 lightly-armed columns, and moved northeast towards the estimated position of the Maratha army near Aurangabad, and in the process, taking multiple detours to stop Maratha cavalry from raiding Peshwa or Hyderabad lands. As a result, for the next two months, the British grew dangerously comfortable with both the idea of dispersing their forces, and the belief that the Marathas would stick to traditional light-cavalry warfare.

Finally, in late September, Wellington had narrowed down the location of the Maratha army to the village of Bhokardan, and so his 2 columns, still marching separately, were ordered to re-concentrate there. But as his own column was moving towards Bhokardan, Wellington received updated intelligence that revealed that the 50-thousand-strong Maratha army, including Shinde’s 10 thousand sepoys, was actually concentrated not far from where he was, at the village of Assaye! At this point, Wellington only had about 10 thousand troops with him, half of whom were irregular cavalry unsuited for battle; but everything up to this point, from his preconceived notions to his campaign experience, had led Wellington to see the Maratha infantry as vastly inferior to British arms. He therefore boldly ordered his outnumbered column to attack.

The resulting Battle of Assaye shattered Wellington’s delusions regarding the Marathas. He first tried a flanking approach, only for the Maratha sepoys to redeploy and force him into a frontal assault instead. The Maratha artillery then opened fire, silencing the light British cannon before turning their fury upon the advancing infantry. The Europeans on the right flank, in particular, were decimated, and only by throwing in his entire reserve, and dashing around to rally his troops, did Wellington stabilize his lines enough to get them to the Maratha positions. At that point, the quality of the British Indian troops finally began to tell, and the Marathas were eventually forced to retreat.

In the end, almost 15% of Wellington’s column – or one and a half thousand men – became casualties in the battle; Shinde and Bhonsle lost about 6 thousand total, mostly from the routing baggage train rather than the sepoys themselves. Had the Marathas been in less disarray due to the mercenary exodus, or had Wellington shown poorer crisis leadership, it’s possible that the British would have been defeated outright. But in any event, the Battle of Assaye was an entirely unnecessary risk, one that Wellington took only because he had the wrong idea of how his enemy fought.

Wellington learnt from the experience, and in the weeks after Assaye, he adjusted his strategy to his updated assessment of Maratha capabilities. No longer would he rush to battle the enemy; instead, Wellington’s light forces would now re-focus their efforts on intercepting Maratha raiders, denying them the plunder needed to pay for the rest of Shinde and Bhonsle’s force. At the same time, Wellington would also send the un-bloodied half of his force to capture more of Shinde’s forts, seizing the treasures within and extorting the local population to neutralize them as a resource base. All the while, the EIC’s offer to ‘re-hire’ Maratha sepoys would remain open, and as Shinde and Bhonsle’s funds drained away, more and more of their former soldiers would decide to accept the British deal.

By late November, Shinde had to resort to the same diplomatic ruse that he had used at the start of the war: he asked Wellington for an armistice, hoping to use it to relocate the Marathas to better logistical ground. Wellington agreed, but the British were not to be fooled twice. Taking his entire army this time, Wellington marched towards Shinde’s position, and found the latter army joined up with Bhonsle’s at Argaon, in contravention of armistice terms. The British accordingly attacked, and while they were initially handled roughly by the Maratha artillery again, this time, with better numbers on their side, the result was a definitive victory that shattered Shinde’s force in the Deccan. All that was left to do was for Wellington to press the advance up to Bhonsle’s fortress at Gawilghur, which was quickly stormed and emptied of all its treasures. Not long after, with few resources left to maintain their existing force – to say nothing of replacing past losses – Shinde and Bhonsle finally decided to sue for peace.

The Deccan Campaign marked the height of Wellington’s career in India, though as we’ve seen, it was hardly a stellar performance from the future ‘Iron Duke’. Nevertheless, his strategy achieved what it needed to do in the theater: in 5 months, British India had seized overall control of the Deccan and its military routes, strengthening its protection – and domination – of both Hyderabad and the Maratha Peshwa. Mornington had no greater ambitions for this region which, after all, was meant to be a sideshow to the main event occurring up north…

 

10. The Hindustan Campaign (1803)

As implied in the previous chapters, when Mornington pondered whether to vassalize the Maratha Peshwa or not, he was not really focused on the value of the Peshwa’s fairly-marginal and war-torn domain. Instead, he was far more interested in the Maratha holdings in the upper Ganges Plain, especially the region around Delhi, then known as Hindustan.

Fabled for its wealth and splendor, Mornington expected that Hindustan’s capture would more than cover all the extra costs incurred during his Governor-Generalship, and therefore finally redeem his Reformist policies in the eyes of his Mercantilist bosses back in London. Equally importantly, Delhi was also where the Mughal Emperor was, and while – as mentioned in Part I – the Emperor wielded little actual power, controlling him would let the British channel his great prestige to legitimize their rule throughout the subcontinent. Furthermore – though the British didn’t know this at the time – controlling Hindustan would also allow the British to dominate the petty kings of neighboring Rajputana, whose tribute, fueled by the regional caravan trade network, was actually an easier source of income than Hindustan, whose wealth was largely dispersed amongst the feudal aristocracy.

At the start of August 1803, Hindustan was held by the great Maratha lord, Daulatrao Shinde, who used its aforementioned advantages to field a formidable sepoy army, half of which we’ve already seen in the Deccan. The other half of Shinde’s force – numbering 15 thousand sepoys and 20 thousand light cavalry – was under the command of the French mercenary general Perron, who was now tasked with defending the region against the invasion of the EIC’s Bengal Army.

Led by General Gerard Lake, the Bengal Army – numbering about 10 thousand soldiers, including several thousand Europeans – had spent much of 1802 suppressing a rebellion right on the Hindustani border, so the outbreak of war saw it well-positioned for an immediate attack, just like in the Deccan. But unlike Wellington, Lake seems to have held a respectful opinion of Maratha capabilities from the start. This is not too surprising, given that both his and Shinde’s sepoys basically came from the same population, and in many cases had even served in the opposing army! But no matter where it came from, Lake’s realistic enemy assessment would do much to create an effective strategy for the upcoming campaign.

True to its name, the upper Ganges Plain is relatively flat throughout, with deserts or hills only emerging at the edges. The great rivers of the region – the Ganges in the north, the Yamuna in the center, and the Chambal to the south – were therefore the main obstacles to movement, but the monsoonal drought that was afflicting the Deccan at this time was also afflicting the region, which meant that the rivers posed no real challenge for either side. Similarly, the defenses of the region – including the famous Red Forts of Delhi and Agra – were hopelessly obsolete, given modern artillery and the limited number of troops fielded by both sides. So there was little stopping Lake from going where he pleased, but the same also held for the other side, with the Marathas – or any other opportunistic ruler on the borderlands – potentially able to strike wherever, whenever.

Mornington had already given Lake a potential out, by allowing the Bengal Army to prioritize capturing Delhi over the defense of even Bengal itself. Nevertheless – similar to the underlying logic behind Wellington’s ‘Light and Quick’ strategy – Lake ultimately decided that aggression, right from the start, would give him the best chance to drive events towards a quick decision, rather than a long, expensive stalemate. Unlike Wellington’s initial instincts, however, Lake was not about to charge straight at the Maratha army. Rather, more like Wellington’s later instincts, Lake would focus first on the denial of Maratha raiding and the capture of local forts, pinning down and starving out Shinde’s soldiers in the process, until the Bengal Army could easily defeat them with minimal risk.

Lake’s strategy would be helped by a truly impressive example of military subversion from Mornington. Despite pushing for the ‘Europeanization’ of the subcontinent, the Governor-General was nevertheless interested in exploiting the mercenary attitude prevalent in South Asian military culture at the time, especially the practice of ‘re-hiring’ soldiers to fight for a new side! And of course, the people who most exemplified this attitude were… the European mercenaries, in fact, for whom profit was the sole purpose of their service.

Mornington had used subversion from the moment he arrived in India. But what he was about to do in Hindustan dwarfed anything done previously: even before the Maratha war broke out, and while his emissaries were still negotiating with Shinde, Mornington’s spies had already made secret offers to the mercenary leaders of Hindustan, up to and including the Maratha commander, General Perron himself!

Raising the real fear of an unprofitable death on one hand, while offering a wad of EIC shares to be sold back in Europe on the other, Mornington had, in fact, secured Perron’s allegiance a full two months before hostilities began! Similar efforts occurred at all levels of the mercenary hierarchy, triggering a cascade of defections and self-sabotage that a bewildered Shinde, despite his best efforts, was unable to stop. Like in the Deccan Campaign, the results severely compromised Maratha tactical cohesion, but this was not the only outcome of Mornington’s subversion in Hindustan.

After war broke out in August 1803, Lake spent a month finalizing his preparations before advancing first against the major fort of Aligarh. On the way, he clashed with Shinde’s army under the compromised General Perron, who put up a token resistance before falling back. This behavior finally confirmed Perron’s unreliability to Shinde, and in response, the Maratha lord hastily appointed a new French mercenary, Bourquin, to command. But unbeknownst to Shinde, this introduced an entirely new dynamic into the Maratha army: that of the French Revolution, since Bourquin supported the Revolution while most of his compatriots remained Royalist. As a result, the Maratha army in Hindustan split into pro- and anti-Bourquin factions, stoking mutual suspicion and hostility amongst the sepoys that persisted even after the French had left.

Meanwhile, Lake had taken advantage of all this to storm Aligarh in a tough fight, after which he steadily proceeded up the road to Delhi. By mid-September, Bourquin was finally forced to offer battle before the city’s gates: and while the individual Maratha sepoy and especially artilleryman fought capably, their tattered command hardly exercised any overall control, and the British were able to use a feigned retreat to lure the Marathas out and then decimate them. Delhi surrendered a few days later, and with it, British India not only became the new regents for the Mughal Emperor, but also obtained the surrender of a few sepoy units and even Bourquin himself, who was now sent back to Europe along with Perron.

Lake remained in Delhi for a while longer, ‘re-hiring’ Shinde sepoys to serve in the garrisons while also conducting diplomacy with neighboring Rajput rulers. Finally, in early October, he marched to capture the second city of Hindustan, Agra. There, he was again met with a Maratha army in chaos, as the sepoys inside Agra’s Red Fort locked out the reinforcements sent to strengthen them. Inevitably, both armies were soon defeated in detail, and with Agra’s fall, Lake was now in overall control of Hindustan, having suffered barely more casualties than Wellington had done at the Battle of Assaye alone.

All that was left to do was to remove the remnants of Shinde’s army from the region, which occurred a few days later, as Lake located and attacked the retreating Marathas at Laswari. Once again, the individual Maratha soldier fought hard, but by this time, they were far too small and demoralized to do anything more than delay the inevitable. With their defeat and subsequent dispersal, Shinde’s power was definitively broken, not just in Hindustan, but also in Rajputana, whose petty rulers now flocked to place themselves under EIC protection.

*

The bulk of British India’s military effort during the 2^nd Anglo-Maratha War was made in the Deccan and Hindustan Campaigns, but all across central India, small detachments also launched their own attacks, particularly on the coasts, which Mornington wanted sealed off from non-British influence. By the end of December 1803, British India had reached a territorial extent not seen since the height of Mughal rule a century before: it directly or indirectly controlled almost everything between Delhi and the subcontinent’s southern tip; and between Gujarat to Bengal. This represented more than a quadrupling of EIC territory, and all this was achieved within a mere 6 years.

At this point, it must have seemed that all there was left for Mornington to do was to formally declare the EIC’s full hegemony. With the might of Shinde and Bhonsle broken, both rulers had no choice but to sign subsidiary alliance treaties with British India. And despite the stated casus belli of the 2^nd Anglo-Maratha War – which was to get the Maratha lords to submit to the authority of the vassalized Peshwa – the treaties also formalized the breakup of the Maratha Empire, as they sharply limited the Peshwa’s power over the defeated lords, while mandating that all future communication between them be conducted via the British. And with the vassalization of the Marathas, there was really nobody else on the subcontinent with the ability to even approach the power that Mornington now wielded.

But all was not as it seemed, and in fact, Mornington was slowly being overwhelmed by a multitude of problems. First, he was increasingly at odds with his officials and even his brother Wellington, who by now were fully opposed to further expansion and the overextension of EIC resources that it entailed. Second, the first reports on Hindustan were also coming in, and they definitely did not show the region as the land of easy tax and tribute that Mornington portrayed it as. This directly led to the third problem, as the enraged Directors of the EIC, furious at being duped again, were now lobbying the new Prime Minister to remove Mornington, and slowly but surely, they were succeeding.

But fourth and perhaps most ominously, the British were rather mistaken in assuming that they had secured full control over the entire Maratha Empire. After all, there was still one domain that they had not formally subjugated yet – that of Holkar.

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Thanks for watching the video, and please like, subscribe and hit the bell button! If you have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them in the comments section. This is Part IV of a five-part series: Part V will go over the war with Holkar, as well as provide a conclusion to things.