Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/336

292 ica, Asia, and Africa – from Braddock's defeat on the Ohio to the recent disasters in Afghanistan and the Transvaal – have always been in fighting against active irregulars, who used their own arms and methods.

Moreover, in proportion as the Marathas adopted the armament and tactics of European warfare, they lost the advantage that comes out of unanimity of national, religious, or tribal sentiment, out of the bond of a common country or tradition. The new system required professional soldiers, who must be enlisted wherever they could be found; and especially it needed foreign officers. In this manner the foreign or alien element grew rapidly, until the later Maratha armies became principally a miscellaneous collection of mercenaries, enlisted from all parts of India, with trained infantry and artillery commanded by adventurers of different races and countries.

From this time forward, indeed, it is a marked characteristic of the British battles with the Marathas, as afterwards with the Sikhs, that although they were always sharply contested and often gained at a heavy cost, yet the victories were decisive; the blows were crushing because they were delivered at close quarters upon compact and organized bodies of troops which, when they were once dispersed or destroyed, could not be replaced.

And inasmuch as all the Indian states and dynasties with whom we fought depended for their existence on success in war, an overthrow placed them entirely at our mercy. For in almost every case their territorial