The British Conquest of India (1798-1806)
IV. The 2nd 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 2nd 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 18th 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 2nd 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.
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The bulk of British India’s military effort during the 2nd 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 2nd 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.