This watercolour from 1828 by Henry Alken (1785-1851) shows a Mahratta light horseman. Victory in the Second Anglo-Maratha War was not the end of the unrest in and around Pune. Fighting broke out again in 1817–1819, after Baji Rao, the Maratha Peshwa who had handed over the Confederacy to the Company, took a unilateral decision to increase the revenue by raising taxes, and was accused of maladministration. Despite his longstanding support for the English, the Peshwa was at last goaded into rebellion, but Governor Hastings extinguished it calmly enough and forced the Peshwa into retirement on a modest estate near Kanpur.
Part 1 of 2
WHEN, in the year 1803, the British overcame the Mahrattas,* and took possession of their territories, Ranjit Singh was prudent enough to acknowledge ostensibly the supremacy of the British;* but in the following year, on the occasion of the march of the united force of the Mahratta chiefs, Daulat Rao Sindhia* and Jaswant Rao Holkar,* against the British, he joined the Mahrattas, in gratitude for their former good will and regard for him. When, in the latter part of the year, the British, after reducing, through the wisdom of their policy and sagacity, the strong forts of Dig and Kishangarh, gallantly determined to take the fort of Bharatpur, he with a valiant body of Jats* marched boldly to resist them.
It is said that these Jats, in spite of the superior strength of the British, fell upon them regardless of life as moths [are] of fire, committed great slaughter, and thus displayed their valour to the admiration of all who witnessed or heard of the fact.*
* The Mahratta or Maratha Confederacy was an alliance of four senior princedoms: they were ruled by Anand Rao Gaekwad of Baroda, Daulat Rao of Gwalior, Jaswant Rao Holkar of Indore, and Raghoji II Bhonsle of Nagpur, and collectively administered by the Peshwa (Prime Minister) Baji Rao II at the capital city of Poona (Pune). Baji Rao signed the Confederacy’s territories over to the East India Company by the Treaty of Bassein in 1802, with Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, signing on behalf of the Company.
* Not the famous Ranjit Singh (1780-1839) known as the Lion of the Punjab, but Ranjit Singh of Bharatpur, who died in 1806. “At the commencement of the Mahratta war in 1803” the Foreign and Political Department of the Government of India confirmed in 1892 “the British Government concluded a Treaty (No. XCVIII) with Ranjit Singh, and in October 1803 conferred upon him the districts of Kishangarh, Kattawa, Rewari, Ookul, and Sahar.”
* Daulat Rao Sindhia (1779-1827), who on September 11th 1803 was defeated by Gerard Lake at Delhi, and on September 23rd by Arthur Wellesley at Assaye. That November, Lake defeated Sindiha once again at Laswari, and Wellesley overcame Raghoji II Bhonsle at Argaon (Adgaon).
* Jaswant Rao Holkar (1776-1811), Maharajah of Indore. He was defeated by Lake at the Battle of Farrukhabad on November 14th, 1804, and despite holding out in the Siege of Bharatpur for almost two months was at last yielded up by Ranjit Singh, and obliged to sign the Treaty of Rajghat on December 24th, 1805. To Lake’s dismay, the acting Governor-General, Sir George Barlow, granted Holkar considerable sovereign independence and an enlarged kingdom, which he nevertheless used as a base for further resistance to the Company, though he died before he could put his plans into effect.
* The Jats are a people of Pakistan and northern India, historically mostly herders and peasants. They put up fierce resistance to the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb in 1669, and also to the British.
* Even the British were impressed. “The fort was besieged” they recalled. “Ranjit Singh made a memorable defence and repelled four assaults with a loss to the besiegers of 3,000 men.” The siege lasted from January 2nd to February 22nd, 1805.
Précis
In 1803, the territory of the Maratha Confederacy fell into the lap of the East India Company through the perfidy of its prime minister. At once Holkar, Maharajah of Indore, gathered allies and fought to regain his independence, but contemporary observer Harsukh Rai recorded that he was unable to do any more than win the respect of his powerful enemy. (59 / 60 words)
Part Two
The eighteenth-century fort at Bharatpur in modern-day Rajasthan, some thirty miles west of Agra. It was here from January 2nd to February 22nd, 1805, that Holkar, Maharajah of Indore, holed up with Ranjit Singh and withstood a series of attacks from General Lake’s professional troops. Both Holkar and Singh actually did well out of the war, Ranjit Singh by playing both sides and knowing when to fold, Holkar by showing such courage and fighting spirit that far from humbling him the English enlarged his kingdom in exchange for a promise of neutrality which he did not take very seriously.
BUT when the rulers of Bengal and Bihar, the potentates of the Deccan such as Hyder and Tipu Sultan,* the Mahrattas and others equal to Rustam and Isfandiyar,* have been worsted by the British army, what could be expected from that poor and helpless body? Their fight with the English is just as that of a mosquito with an elephant, or of a moth with fire, a parrot with a hawk, or a goat with a lion! Indeed, these Englishmen emulate the great heroes who figure in ancient history.
The Mahratta chiefs were presumptuous enough to continue opposing and harassing the English, until such time as the most exalted General Lake,* by his prudent strokes of policy, and every sort of kindness and regard, gained over Ranjit Singh to espouse the interests of the British. He restored to Ranjit Singh the forts of Dig and Kishangarh,* and then made preparations for the expulsion of the Mahrattas.* Ranjit Singh enjoyed a high name in every direction of the world by his attachment to the English.* He died in the latter part of the year 1805, leaving his name immortal in the pages of history.
* In 1778, Mysore’s brilliant general Hyder Ali sidelined his king, and pledged Mysore to the support of French colonialism in India. He then marched in a fury of slaughter and destruction towards Madras, laying waste to central India, until his death in 1782. His no less dangerous son Tipu was defeated at Seringapatam in 1799. See Hyder Ali and Tipu.
* A reference to the epic Shahnameh by ancient Persian poet Abul-Qasem Ferdowsi Tusi (?940-?1019). In one of the most famous episodes of the tale, Isfandiyar and Rostam clash in single combat.
* Gerard Lake (1744-1808), 1st Viscount Lake, a distinguished military commander with experience in the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) and in the Irish Rebellion (1798). Harsukh does not mention Lake’s fellow-commander Major-General Sir Arthur Wellesley, later Duke of Wellington, but he was vital to the Company’s victory.
* “A new Treaty (No. XCIX) was concluded with him in 1805, by which he agreed to pay an indemnity of twenty lakhs of rupees, seven of which were subsequently remitted, and was guaranteed in the territories which he held previously to the accession of the British Government. The parganas [a group of villages or a subdivision of a district] which had been granted to him in 1808 were resumed.”
* That is, for the expulsion of Holkar and his men, holed up in the fort at Bharatpur.
* By the 1890s, this fact appeared to have slipped the collective memory of the Indian Department. “Notwithstanding the leniency with which he had been treated,” they said crossly, “and the protection secured to him by this alliance from the rapacity of the Mahrattas, neither Ranjit Singh nor his successor ever showed any attachment to the British Government.” Harsukh Rai thought the Marathas brave, but outclassed; he thought the British puissant, but chivalrous. The British bureaucrats of almost a century later were not so generous.
Précis
Harsukh Rai looked back over the catalogue of British victories in India, and consoled himself with the thought that even India’s legendary heroes would have failed against this newcomer. Holkar had been courageous, but Ranjit Singh had been wise: for he was the first to make peace with the English, and it harmed neither his wealth nor his reputation. (59 / 60 words)
