ABSTRACT
The Third Anglo-Maratha War arose partly out of the drive to sweep up and finish the Pindaris, but its real causes lay in the utter chaos in which Central India had been left and in the long-drawn-out trouble between the British and the Peshwa. After the close of the Second Anglo-Maratha War, the Peshwa set himself to cut away all taller poppies and reduce his dominions to a dead level of humble dependence. The Peshwa's jealous sense of insecurity made him fly immediately to the thought of having his own British-officered force, distinct from his subsidiary force, to overawe his own feudatories. Trimbakji was his Piers Gaveston, and expressed his sense of devotion by assuring Elphinstone. Trimbakji, however, gave an almost equal proof of devotion when he was an accessory to the killing of a hardly less sacred object, a Brahman. The Brahman was Gangadhar Sastri, who was in effect, though not in name, the Gaekwar's Prime Minister.
