Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/376

328 been extremely doubtful if they had still been commanded by their French officers; but Perron and the Frenchmen had left the Maratha service. Nevertheless, their vigorous resistance proved the high military spirit which the soldier of Northern India has so often displayed; they held their ground until all their guns were lost, and finally suffered a most honourable defeat.

A MOSQUE AT ALIGARH.

The result of these well-contested and hardly won victories was to shatter the whole military organization upon which Sindhia's predominance had been built up, to break down his connection with the Moghul court in the north, and to destroy his influence at Poona as the most formidable member of the Maratha confederacy. At the beginning of the war Sindhia's regular brigades had amounted to nearly forty thousand disciplined men, with a very large train of artillery, acting entirely under the control of a French commander, and supported by the revenues of the finest provinces in