Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/421

Rh seen that India was crowded in the eighteenth century with mercenary soldiers who followed the trade of war; and an incredibly large proportion of the population subsisted by freebooting, a flourishing profession that had now openly been practised in India for several generations. The annexations and conquests of Lord Wellesley's era and the enlargement of the British borders and of the British protectorate had led to an extensive disbandment of troops. It was reckoned by a competent authority that, at a moderate computation, this wide pacification of the country had turned loose half a million professional soldiers.

Many of these men, with most of the freebooting class, whose occupation was disappearing with the contraction of that field of private enterprise, had collected in Central India, where, instead of diminishing and settling down as had been expected, they increased to an alarming degree. Some of the native rulers encouraged them secretly, they intimidated the rest, and no power was strong enough to suppress them. The swarming of these predatory bands, which had been a comparatively transient and occasional evil when they could range over the whole Indian continent, became a mortal plague when it was hemmed in within set bounds, for the inland countries were exhausted by endemic brigandage. While the lesser principalities were thus being systematically bled to death, the great military chiefs were recruiting their forces, replenishing their treasuries, and enlarging the range of their operations, not without some prospect of recovering the formidable