RAJPUTS AND THE HISTORY OF RAJPUTANA. 



85 



of Eajputana when the British first became intimately connected 

 with it. 



Broughton, in his letters from a Mahratta camp, describes 

 how the army of Sindeah passed systematically over the lands 

 of all the villages which did not buy him off. His troops 

 deliberately traversed the fields of wheat and barley where the 

 ear was just ripening, with no more remorse than if it had been 

 a desert, the Mahrattas tearing up the corn and loading 

 themselves and their cattle with it. Risalas (troops of cavalry) 

 occasionally halted in the midst of a particularly flourishing 

 spot to allow their horses to get a good feed. Even the beams 

 and thatch of the houses were carried away. They tore and 

 destroyed that which they did not want, so that it was 

 no wonder that the peasantry were raised against them 

 and cut off all they could. These miscreants, if they had 

 a grudge against a village, would march over and trample down 

 the growing crops. He laments the degeneracy of the Bajputs, 

 who were formerly so eminently distinguished for their 

 chivalrous courage and high sense of honour, which now 

 seemed to have quite deserted them, and, as an instance of the 

 spirit which formerly animated them, he mentions that when 

 the Chief of Bhurtpore marched in defiance through the Jeypore 

 country, the nobles rose up and with their followers drove him 

 off with fearful loss. This writer, and many others at the time, 

 refer to the manner in which the English abandoned the Rajputs 

 under the most unfortunate and disastrous policy of the East 

 India Company that was carried out by Sir George Barlow, 

 at which time, for our own convenience, we abandoned this 

 brave race, not only to the Mahrattas, but even to those still 

 worse foes, the awful Pindaris, who are described as despotic 

 marauders and savage barbarians, who were prowling about 

 the country in immense hordes, being composed of the worst men 

 of the Mahrattas and Musalman armies, and of all other 

 scoundrels of the lowest class whom the civil wars and troubles 

 of the period had driven to obtain a livelihood by preying upon 

 their fellow creatures. These Pindaris, another writer says, 

 ranged over the countries of Malwa and Eajputana as if they 

 were their common prey. Miserable indeed was the condition 

 of the land, not only from the ravages of these savages, but from 

 the excesses of the no less ferocious chiefs and princes who 

 disputed for power upon their soil, so that the greater portion 

 of them was utterly ruined and depopulated ; and the natives 

 have given to that period (1800-1818) the expressive name of 

 gardi-ka-wakt, that is, the time of trouble. " The poor Bhils, 



