The British Conquest of India (1798-1806)
V. The 2nd 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 2nd 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 2nd 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 3rd 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 19th 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 18th 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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