Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/280

238 watered by the Ganges and the Jumna to harry the lands of the Oudh Vizir, of Rohilkhand, and of the Mohammedan chiefships about Delhi, Agra, and Allahabad. Although the Maratha armies subsisted by freebooting, and although their leaders were rough uneducated captains whose business it was to levy contributions and seize territory, their civil administration, especially the whole collection of revenue in conquered lands, was managed by Brahmans, by far the ablest class of officials then existing in India. The Maratha tactics were to overrun a country with swarms of light horsemen, harassing and exhausting their opponents, exacting heavy contributions if they retired, or rack-renting the land scientifically if they settled down on it.

By this combination of skilful irregularity in war and methodical absorption of a country's wealth, the leaders were able to keep on foot great roving armies, which were the terror of every other Indian power. The unwieldy State of Haidarabad, notwithstanding its size, was no match for them; they were too numerous and active even for such an eminent professor of their own predatory science as Hyder Ali of Mysore; and they descended annually, like a chronic plague, upon the Rohillas and the Oudh Vizir, who could barely hold against them the large provinces that they had secured out of the partition of the Empire. Everything pointed to the Marathas as destined to be the foremost rivals of the English in the impending contest for ascendency. And in fact no native power other than the Marathas did oppose any solid resistance to the spread of British