पान:आंग्ल प्रभा.djvu/12

拍 entrenching themselves before the enemy and risking a pitched battle with the Afgans. The calamitous result of this over-confindence did mot deter the Maratha Commanders from valuing highly the superior advantages of trained battalions disciplined in the European ways of war. Within ten years of the defeat at Panipat the Gardis, strengthened by this time by recruits from Arabs,Siddisor Abyssinians.Sheikhs, and other foreigners, were enlisted in large numbers at rates of pay often nearly equal to what was paid to the shilledar Cavalry for horse and man. The mercenary character of these men exhibited itself in the cruel death of Narayanrao Peishwa at their hands, and there was, for a time, reaction against their employment. The advantages were, however, so obvious that the old scruple soon vanished away, and in the new armies, created by Mahadaji Scindia in Hindustan, trained battalions of foreign mercenaries, officered by Europeans, outnumbered the old Cavalry, which was permitted to occupy only a secondary place. The success, which attended this effort, induced Holkar, Gaikwad, Bhosle, and lastly the Peish was themselves, to engage foreign mercenaries and to rely chiefly on their support. Arabs, Gosawies, Sheikhs, and Portuguese battalions, were thus formed, and Bajirao II himself engaged two battalions, officered by English adventurers, towards the close of the century. Even the Hill-forts, which had been hitherto guarded by Mavales, were placed in charge of these mercenaries. The Infantry and the Cavalry elements in the native armies were thus elbowed out of their importance, and the army, instead of being national, became mercenary in the worst sense of the word. Attached to the regular armies, there was a licensed host of free-booters, called Pendharies, who accompanied them, and made a living by pillage of the enemy, and ultimately of their own people If the innovation of employing trained battalions had been accompanied by the acquisition of the requisite knowledge of military strategy and the scientific processes necessary to command success in the usef and manufacture of superior arms, the helplessness, which, in the absence o such knowledge, generally paralyzed the native armies, when their European officers left them, might have been avoided; but no care seems to have been bestowed in this direction, so that, when the actual crisis came and the European officers left them, they were more helpless than ever on the field. In the meanwhile, the martial instincts of the neglected Infantry and Cavalry forces underwent a change for the Worse, so that when General Wellesly and Lord Lake broke down the strength of the battalions opposed to them, there was no power left in the country which could resist, the conquest that followed as a matter of course. The old Infantry atd. Cavalry had lost their stamina, and the new mercenaries,