ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the nineteenth century the Marathas and the British confronted each other in India like two finalists after a series of elimination bouts. The East India Company had reduced the native princes of Bengal and the Carnatic to ciphers, crushed Mysore and emasculated Oudh and Hyberabad. The Marathas, under the leadership of the Sindia dynasty, of Ujjain, had extinguished the last pretensions of the Mughal emperor and reduced the Rajput states to surly submission. The defeat of Sindia and the confederated Maratha princes of Nagpur and Indore in the Anglo-Maratha war of 1803–1805 was therefore historic. Traditional methods had paid off in the past; but things had changed by 1803, and had those methods been used in the second Maratha war the margin of defeat would probably have been much wider. As it was, the British victory must be described as hard won.
