154 



are generally walled, and have a little gurry, or citadel, in the 

 centre. 



Battle of the. Mahrattas. 



I have heard but of two instances in which the forces of the 

 Mahratta empire may be said to have engaged in pitched battles; 

 one was at Panniput, where, being previously reduced to a strait 

 by the superior activity of the Patan and Mogul cavalry cutting 

 off their supplies, they were forced into a desperate attempt to 

 extricate themselves, and failing, were subjected to one of the 

 most bloody defeats recorded in history. The other was the battle 

 in which Trimbuck Mamma defeated Hyder Ally, not far from 

 Seringapatam; but I am unacquainted with the order of battle on 

 these occasions. It is reasonable to suppose that the introduction 

 of infantry and artillery, forming so large a part as they now do 

 in the Mahratta armies, must cause a material alteration, if not 

 a total change, in this part of their military service; while, 

 by giving to their army a kind of base, or centre of union, it 

 alters their former predatory and desultory style of warfare: 

 and while on the one hand it makes their invasions infinitely 

 more formidable to states unprovided with the means of op- 

 posing them with that increase of strength, I am not without 

 an idea, that as such an alteration is necessarily attended with 

 increasing incumbrances, hostile to rapidity, that an increase 

 of that description of strength may be disserviceable to their ope- 

 rations against a state like ours, in the degree that the increase 

 of strength is effectually inferior to the decrease of the effect of the 

 former desultory velocity. The decision of this point, in which I 



