CHAPTER XI

The Marathas, 1650-1818

Rise of the Marathas

About the year 1634, a Maratha soldier of fortune, Shaji Bhonsla by name, began to play a conspicuous part in Southern India. He fought on the side of the two independent Muhammadan States, Ahmadnagar and Bijapur, against the Mughals; and left a band of followers, together with a military fief, to his son Sivaji, born in 1627. Sivaji formed a national party out of the Hindu tribes of the Deccan—a native Hindu party which was opposed alike to the imperial armies from the north, and to the independent Muhammadan kingdoms of the south. There were thus, from 1650 onwards, three powers in the Deccan,—first, the ever-invading troops of the Delhi Empire; second, the forces of the two remaining independent Muhammadan States of Southern India, namely, Ahmadnagar and Bijapur; third, the military organization of the local Hindu tribes, which ultimately grew into the Maratha Confederacy.

Their Growth as a ‘Third Party’ in the Deccan

During the eighty years’ war of Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb, with a view to the conquest of the independent Muhammadan kingdoms in Southern India (1627-1707), this third or Hindu party fought sometimes for the Delhi emperors, sometimes for the independent Muhammadan kingdoms, and obtained a constantly increasing importance. The Mughal armies from the north, and the independent Muhammadan kingdoms of the south, gradually exterminated each other. Being foreigners, they had to recruit their exhausted forces from outside. The Hindu or Maratha Confederacy drew its inexhaustible native levies from the wide tract known as Maharashtra, stretching from the Berars in Central India to near the south of the Bombay Presidency. The Marathas were therefore courted alike by the imperial generals from Delhi and by the independent Muhammadan kingdoms of the Deccan. Those kingdoms, with the help of the Marathas, long proved a match for the imperial troops. But no sooner were the Delhi armies driven back, than the Marathas proceeded to despoil the independent Musalman kingdoms. On the other hand, the Delhi generals, when allied with the Marathas, could overpower the Muhammadan States.

Sivaji, 1627-1680

Sivaji, the great Maratha leader, saw the strength of his position, and, by a life of treachery, assassination, and hard fighting, he won for the Marathas the practical supremacy in Southern India. As a basis for his operations, he perched himself safe in almost impregnable hill forts among the Western Ghats. His troops consisted of Hindu spearmen, mounted on hardy ponies. They were the peasant proprietors of Southern India, and they could be dispersed or promptly called together according to the season of the agricultural year. Except at seed time and harvest, they were always at leisure for war. Sivaji had therefore the command of an unlimited body of men, without the expense of a standing army. With these he swooped down upon his enemies, exacted tribute, or forced them to come to terms. He then paid off his soldiery by a part of the plunder, and retreated with the lion’s share to his hill forts. In 1659, he lured the general of the independent Muhammadan kingdom of Bijapur into an ambush, stabbed him at a friendly conference, and exterminated his army. In 1662, Sivaji pillaged as far as the extreme north of the Bombay Presidency, and sacked the imperial city of Surat. In 1664, he assumed the title of king (Raja), with the royal prerogative of coining money in his own name. The year 1668 found Sivaji helping the Mughal armies against the independent Musalman State of Bijapur. In 1666, he was induced to visit Delhi. Being coldly received by the Emperor Aurangzeb, and placed under restraint, he escaped to the south and raised the standard of revolt. In 1674, Sivaji enthroned himself with great pomp at Raigarh, weighing himself in a balance against gold, and distributing his weight in gold among his Brahmans. After sending forth his hosts as far as the Karnatik in 1676, he died in 1680.

Aurangzeb’s Mistaken Policy, 1688-1707

The Emperor Aurangzeb would have done wisely to have left the independent Musalman Kings of the Deccan alone, until he had crushed the rising Maratha power. Indeed, a great statesman would have buried the old quarrel between the Muhammadans of the north and south, and would have united the whole forces of Islam against the Hindu Confederacy, which was rapidly growing to be the strongest power in the Deccan. But the fixed resolve of Aurangzeb’s life was to annex to Delhi the Muhammadan kingdoms of Southern India. By the time he had carried out this scheme, he had wasted his armies, and left the Mughal Empire ready to break into pieces at the first touch of the Maratha spear.

The Line of Sivaji

Sambhaji succeeded his father, Sivaji, in 1680, and ruled till 1689. His reign was spent in wars against the Portuguese settlements on the south-western coast of India, and against the armies of the Mughal Empire. In 1689, Aurangzeb captured him, blinded his eyes with a red-hot iron, cut out the tongue which had blasphemed the Prophet, and struck off his head. His son, Sahu, then six years of age, was also captured and kept a prisoner till the death of Aurangzeb. In 1707 he was restored, on acknowledging allegiance to Delhi. But his long captivity among the Mughals left him only half a Maratha. He wasted his life in his seraglio, and resigned the government of his territories to his Brahman minister, Balaji Vishwanath, with the title of Peshwa. This office of Peshwa or prime minister became hereditary, and the power of the Peshwa superseded that of the Maratha kings. The royal family of Sivaji only retained the little principalities of Satara and Kolhapur. Satara lapsed to the British, for want of a direct heir, in 1849. Kolhapur has survived through British clemency, and is now ruled, under British control, by the representative of Sivaji’s line.

The Peshwas

Meanwhile the Peshwas were building up at Poona the great Maratha Confederacy. In 1718, Balaji, the first Peshwa, marched an army to Delhi in support of the Sayyid ‘king-makers.’ In 1720, he extorted an imperial grant of the chauth, or ‘one-fourth’ of the revenues of the Deccan. The Marathas were also confirmed in the sovereignty of their own Southern countries round Poona and Satara. The second Peshwa, Baji Rao (1721-40), converted the grant of the tribute of the Deccan, which had been given by the Delhi emperor in 1720, into a Maratha sovereignty over the Deccan. The second Peshwa also wrested the Province of Malwa from the Mughal Empire (1736), together with the country on the north-west of the Vindhyas, from the Narbada to the Chambal. In 1739, he captured Bassein from the Portuguese. Malwa was finally ceded by the Delhi Emperor to the Marathas in 1743.

Third Peshwa, 1740-1761

The third Peshwa, Balaji Baji Rao, succeeded in 1740, and carried the Maratha terror into the heart of the Mughal Empire. The Deccan became merely a starting-point for a vast series of their expeditions to the north and the east. Within the Deccan itself the Peshwa augmented his sovereignty, at the expense of the Muhammadan Nizam of Haidarabad, after two wars. The great centres of the Maratha power were now fixed at Poona in Bombay and Nagpur in the Central Provinces. In 1741-42, a general of the Nagpur branch of the Maratha Confederacy known as the Bhonslas, swept down upon Lower Bengal; but, after plundering to the suburbs of the Muhammadan capital of Murshidabad, he was driven back through Orissa by the Viceroy Ali Vardi Khan. The ‘Maratha Ditch,’ or semi-circular moat around part of Calcutta, records to this day the panic which then spread throughout Lower Bengal. Next year, 1743, the head of the Nagpur branch, Raghujii Bhonsla, invaded Lower Bengal in person. From this date, notwithstanding quarrels between the Poona and Nagpur Marathas over the spoil, the fertile Provinces of the Lower Ganges became a plundering ground of the Bhonslas. In 1751, they obtained a formal grant from the Viceroy Ali Vardi of the chauth, or ‘quarter revenue’ of Lower Bengal, together with the cession of Orissa. In Northern India, the Poona Marathas raided as far as the Punjab, and drew down upon them the wrath of Ahmad Shah Durani, the Afghan, who had already wrested that Province from Delhi. At the battle of Panipat in 1761, as we have seen, the Marathas were overthrown by the combined Muhammadan forces of the Afghans and of the northern Provinces which still nominally remained to the Mughal Empire.

The Five Maratha Houses

The fourth Peshwa, Madhu Rao, succeeded to the Maratha sovereignty in this moment of ruin (1761). The Hindu Confederacy seemed doomed to destruction, alike by internal dissensions and by the superior force of the Afghan arms. As early as 1742, the Poona and Nagpur branches had taken the field against each other, in their quarrels over the plunder of Bengal. Before 1761, two other branches, under Holkar and Sindhia, held independent sway in the old Mughal Province of Malwa and the neighbouring tracts, now divided between the States of Indore, and Gwalior. At Panipat, Holkar, the head of the Indore branch, deserted the line of battle the moment he saw the tide turn, and his treachery rendered the Maratha rout complete. The Peshwa was now little more than the nominal head of the five great Maratha houses. These five Maratha houses or dynasties had separate territories and armies. Their five capitals were at Poona, the seat of the Peshwas; at Nagpur, the capital of the Bhonslas, in the Central Provinces; at Gwalior, the residence of Sindhia; at Indore, the capital of Holkar; and at Baroda, the seat of the rising power of the Gaekwars. Madhu Rao, the fourth Peshwa, just managed to hold his own against the Muhammadan princes of Haidarabad and Mysore, and against the Bhonsla branch of the Marathas in Berar. His younger brother, Narayan Rao, succeeded him as fifth Peshwa in 1772, but was quickly assassinated. The Peshwas were the great Maratha power in Southern India; the other four or northern Maratha branches were Sindhia and Holkar, the Bhonslas of Nagpur, and the Gaekwars of Baroda. We shall briefly relate the fortunes of these four northern branches.

Sindhia and Holkar

The Peshwa’s power at Poona began to grow weak, as that of his nominal masters, the royal descendants of Sivaji, had faded out of sight. The Peshwas came of a high Brahman lineage, while the actual fighting force of the Marathas consisted of low-caste Hindus. It thus happened that each Maratha general who rose to independent territorial sway was inferior in caste to, although possessed of more real power, than the Peshwa, the titular head of the confederacy. Of the two great northern houses, Holkar was descended from a shepherd, and Sindhia from a slipper-bearer. The Marathas under Holkar and Sindhia lay quiet for a time after their crushing disaster at Panipat in 1761. But within ten years of that fatal field they had established themselves throughout Malwa, and proceeded to invade the Rajput, Jat, and Rohilla Provinces, from the Punjab on the west to Oudh in the east (1761-1771). In 1765, the titular emperor, Shah Alam, had sunk into a British pensioner, after his defeat by Sir Hector Munro at Baxar in 1764. In 1771, the emperor gave himself over to the Marathas. Sindhia and Holkar nominally maintained him on his throne at Delhi, but held him a virtual prisoner till 1803-4, when they were overthrown by our second Maratha war. The dynasties of both Sindhia and Holkar have preserved to the present day their rule over the most fertile portion of Malwa.

The Bhonslas of Nagpur, 1751-1863

The third of the northern Maratha houses, namely the Bhonslas of Berar and the Central Provinces, occupied themselves with raids to the east. Operating from their base at Nagpur, they had (as we have seen) extorted in 1751 the chauth, or ‘quarter revenue’ of Lower Bengal, together with the sovereignty of Orissa. The acquisition of Lower Bengal by the British (1756-1765) put a stop to their raids. In 1803, a division of our army drove the Bhonsla Marathas out of Orissa. In 1817, their power was finally broken by our last Maratha war. Their headquarter territories, now forming the Central Provinces, were administered under the guidance of British Residents from 1817 to 1853. On the death of the last Raghujii Bhonsla without a direct male heir, in 1853, the Nagpur Maratha territories (now known as the Central Provinces), lapsed to the British.

The Gaekwars of Baroda

The fourth of the northern Maratha houses, namely, Baroda, extended its power throughout Gujarat, on the north-western coast of Bombay, and the adjacent peninsula of Kathiawar. The scattered but wealthy dominions known as the territories of the Gaekwar were thus formed. Since our last Maratha war, in 1817, Baroda has been ruled by the Gaekwars, with the help of an English Resident. In 1874, the reigning Gaekwar was tried by a High Commission, composed of three European and three Native members, on the charge of attempting to poison the Resident, and deposed. But the British Government refrained from annexing the State, and raised a descendant of the founder of the family from obscure poverty to the State cushion.

First Maratha War with the British, 1779-1781

While the four northern houses of the Marathas were pursuing their separate careers, the Peshwa’s power was being broken to pieces by family intrigues. The sixth Peshwa, Madhu Rao Narayan, was born after his father’s death; and during his short life of twenty-one years the power remained in the hands of his minister, Nana Farnavis. Raghuba, the uncle of the late Peshwa, disputed the birth of the posthumous child (Madhu Rao), and claimed for himself the office of Peshwa. The infant’s guardian, Nana Farnavis, having called in the French, the British at Bombay sided with Raghuba. These alliances brought on the first Maratha war (1779-1781), ending with the treaty of Salbai (1782). That treaty ceded the islands of Salsette and Elephanta near Bombay, together with two others to the British, secured to Raghuba a handsome pension, and confirmed the child-Peshwa in his sovereignty. But the young Peshwa only reached manhood to commit suicide at the age of twenty-one.

Second Maratha War, 1802-1804

His cousin, Baji Rao II., succeeded him in 1795 as the seventh and last Peshwa. The northern Maratha house of Holkar now took the lead among the Marathas, and forced the Peshwa to seek protection from the English. By the treaty of Bassein in 1802, Baji Rao the Peshwa agreed to receive a British force to maintain him in his dominions. The northern Maratha houses combined to break down this treaty. The second Maratha war followed (1802-1804). General Wellesley (afterwards Duke of Wellington) crushed the forces of the Sindhia and Nagpur branches of the Marathas on the fields of Assaye and Argdum in the south, while Lord Lake disposed of the Maratha armies at Laswari and Delhi in the north. In 1804, Holkar was completely defeated at Dig. These campaigns led to large cessions of territory to the British, to the final overthrow of French influence in India, and to the restoration of the titular Delhi Emperor under the protection of the English.

Last Maratha War, 1817-1818

In 1817-1818, the Peshwa, Holkar, and the Bhonsla at Nagpur, took up arms, each on his own account, against the British, and were defeated in detail. That war broke the Maratha power for ever. The Peshwa, Baji Rao, surrendered himself to the British, and his territories were annexed to our Bombay Presidency. The Peshwa remained a British pensioner at Bithur, near Cawnpur in Northern India, on a magnificent allowance, till his death. His adopted son grew up into the infamous Nana Sahib of the Mutiny of 1857, when the last relic of the Peshwas disappeared from the eyes of men.