170 MAHRATTA WAR. 



was entirely defeated, and some smaller detachments, whom 

 the English overtook, suffered so severely, that at length 

 they fled at the mere sight of their antagonists. This 

 chief, therefore, after being deserted by the Rajah of Bhurt- 

 pore, was reduced almost to the condition of a fugitive ; 

 and his situation seemed altogether desperate, when relief 

 came from an unexpected quarter. 



Sindia had been strongly affected on witnessing the 

 commencement of the war by Holkar, and the brilliant 

 successes with which he had opened the campaign. He 

 evidently conceived the idea of seizing this opportunity to 

 retrieve his fortunes ; but the indecisive character of Indian 

 councils caused him to advance towards his object only by 

 tardy and circuitous steps. He began by raising his 

 demands upon the British ; he marched his troops towards 

 their frontier, and when remonstrated with, delayed upon 

 various pretexts to withdraw them. At length, when Hol- 

 kar, after the peace made by the Bhurtpore rajah, was 

 retreating in a shattered and reduced condition, he received 

 him into his camp ; having already committed the almost 

 unprecedented outrage of plundering the abode and seizing 

 the person of the British resident. 



Lord Lake, as the rainy season now approached, could 

 not immediately follow the two hostile chiefs into the heart 

 of their territories. Their power, however, was so com- 

 pletely broken that he entertained no doubt of soon reducing 

 them to submission. But the entire system of British 

 policy respecting India underwent at this crisis a decided 

 change. 



The vast scheme of conquest and subsidiary alliance by 

 which Marquis Wellesley had studied to place the whole 

 of this eastern empire under British control, had excited in 

 the mother country a deep sensation. The public were, 

 to a certain degree, dazzled with its splendid success ; yet 

 a numerous body of politicians exclaimed that this course 

 was contrary to all true principles of policy, — that it formed 

 an interminable system of war, — that the company, in 

 seating themselves upon the throne of the Mogul, and 

 endeavouring to effect the conquest of all Hindostan, had 

 entirely relinquished the basis on which they had uniformly 

 professed to act. The contest with Holkar, breaking out 

 with so formidable an aspect after all the others had closed, 



