With these views and intentions the GovernorGeneral issued his orders to General Wellesley, who was facing Sindia in western India, and to General Lake, who was moving upon Sindia's possessions in the north-west. The main objective was to be either the entire reduction of Sindia's power, or a peace that should transfer to the British government so much of his territory as should be sufficient to isolate him in central India, to cut him off from the western sea-coast, to expel him from Delhi (where he was still Vicegerent of the Empire), and to throw him back into central India by interposing a barrier between his provinces in that region and in the north country. At Delhi Monsieur Perron, one of Sindia's ablest French officers, commanded a large body of regular troops, with which he held the fortress, kept the Emperor Shah Alam in custody, and exercised authority in his name. This formidable standing army, which was well officered by Frenchmen, it was one of Lord Wellesley's principal objects to disband; and his anxiety to cross swords with Sindia was intensified by his knowledge of constant intrigues and correspondence between the Marathas and the agents of France.

Under the leadership of the two very able generals who led the English armies, and who were also invested with full diplomatic authority, the war which now began was brilliantly successful, and its objects were completely fulfilled. In July 1803 General Wellesley signified to Sindia and the Nágpore Rája that they must withdraw their army from its station upon the Nizam's frontier, or abide his attack. They replied by desiring him first to retire; but as this would have exposed the territory which their movements were threatening, the English army advanced, and war was formally declared.

The scene of the campaign that followed was in that part of central India where the northern frontiers of the Hyderabad State adjoined the possessions of the two Maratha chiefs. At Assaye, where the collision took place, Sindia's troops fought well and fiercely; the veteran battalions of De Boigne made a resolute stand, the artillery inflicted heavy loss on the English infantry, and died, stubbornly fighting, at their guns; but Wellesley's victory was decisive. Marching onward into Berar, he inflicted a severe defeat upon the troops of the Nágpore Rája at Argaon; he then took by storm the hill fort of Gawilghur; and before the year's end peace had been concluded with both the Maratha belligerents on terms dictated by the British commander.

General Lake's successes in the north-west were of equal importance. He took Aligarh by assault, dispersed Sindia's force before Delhi, occupied the town, and assumed charge of the Emperor's person. Agra was besieged and captured; and finally the British force met at Laswaree seventeen battalions of trained infantry with excellent artillery, the last of Sindia's regular army. These troops behaved so gallantly that the event (Lake wrote) would have been extremely doubtful if they had been still commanded by their French officers; but Perron and the Frenchmen had left the Maratha service. Nevertheless their vigorous resistance proved the high military spirit which the soldier of northern India has so often displayed; they held their ground until all their guns were lost, and finally suffered a most honourable defeat1.

The result of these well-contested and hardly won

1 Assaye, September, 1803: Argaon and Laswaree, November, 1803.

victories was to shatter the whole military organization upon which Sindia's predominance had been built up, to break down his connexion with the Moghul court in the north, and to destroy his influence at Poona as the most formidable member of the Maratha confederacy. At the beginning of the war Sindia's regular brigades had amounted to nearly forty thousand disciplined men, with a very large train of artillery, acting entirely under the control of a French commander, and supported by the revenues of the finest provinces in India1. This army had now ceased to exist; and both Sindia and the Nágpore Rája, finding themselves in imminent danger of losing all their possessions, acquiesced reluctantly in the terms that were dictated to them after the destruction of their armies. The Treaty of Bassein was formally recognized; they entered into defensive treaties and made large cessions of territory; Sindia gave up to the British all his northern districts lying along both sides of the Jumna river: he ceded his seaports and his conquests on the west coast; he made over to them the city of Delhi and the custody of the Moghul Emperor; he dismissed all his French officers, and accepted the establishment, at his cost, of a large British force to be stationed near his frontier. The Rája of Nágpore restored Berar to the Nizám, and surrendered to the British government the province of Cuttack, on the Bay of Bengal, which lay interposed between the upper districts of Madras and the southwestern districts of Bengal.

But Jeswant Rao Holkar, who had held aloof from the war in the hope of profiting by the discomfiture of Sindia, his rival and enemy, had been living at free quarters with a large Maratha horde in Rájputana, and 1 Malcolm's History of India, vol. i. p. 364.

had put to death the English officers in his service. As he now showed some intention of taking advantage of Sindia's defenceless condition, he was summoned by Lord Lake to retire within his own country, and on his refusal was attacked by the British troops. Holkar, who had always adhered to the traditional Maratha tactics of rapid cavalry movements, systematic pillaging, and sudden harassing incursions, proved a very active and troublesome enemy. Colonel Monson advanced against him into central India, and Holkar drew him onward by a simulated retreat, until Monson found himself at a long distance from his base, with only two days' supplies, in front of an enemy numerically very superior. Then when he attempted to retire Holkar turned on him suddenly and destroyed nearly the whole of the British force as it struggled back through some difficult country, intersected by rivers, toward Agra. A few months afterward Holkar fought a severe action against the British troops at Deig1; and his ally, the Bhurtpore Rája, repulsed three attempts to carry by assault the strong fortress of Bhurtpore, so that Lord Lake was obliged to retire with considerable loss. But Lake's flying columns pursued Holkar with indefatigable rapidity, until his bands were surprised and at last dispersed, when he himself took refuge in the Punjab. He returned only to sign a treaty on terms similar to those on which peace had been made with the other belligerents.

SECTION IV. Review of Lord Wellesley's Policy.

The result of these operations was to establish beyond the possibility of future opposition the political and military superiority of the English throughout India. 1 November, 1804.

The campaigns of Wellesley and Lake dissolved the last of the trained armies which had been set on foot, in imitation of the European system, during the past twenty years by the native princes of India; and the weapon upon which the Marathas had been relying for resistance in the field was thus broken in their hands. In the place of the numerous battalions, many thousands strong, that had been maintained under foreign officers by the foremost Mahomedan and Maratha States, Lord Wellesley's subsidiary treaties had now substituted several divisions of Anglo-Indian troops, amounting in all to 22,000 men, cantoned within the jurisdictions or on the borders of these very native States, and paid from their revenues. The employment of foreign officers, unless by permission, was thenceforward prohibited; while the effect of the treaties was to interdict any hostilities between State and Statesince all disputes must be referred to British arbitration-to fix down their rulers within the territorial limits authorized by the supreme Government, to prevent their future combination for any purpose injurious to British interests, and to block up finally all avenues of communication between these States and any foreign

power.

Up to this time the acquisitions of the Maratha chiefs in central India, which had been wrested bit by bit from different owners at various times, had been so intermixed with the lands of the Nizám, of the Peshwa, and of the Rajput princes, as to produce an entanglement of territorial and revenue rights that furnished, as it was intended to furnish, ample pretexts for further quarrel and encroachment. Lord Wellesley's policy was, in the first place, to rearrange the political map in this part of India so as to circumscribe each Maratha

S