tactics of rapid cavalry movements, systematic pillaging, and sudden harassing incursions, proved a very active and troublesome enemy. Colonel Monson advanced against him into Central India, and Holkar drew him onward by a simulated retreat, until Monson found himself at a long distance from his base, with only two days' supplies, and in front of an enemy numerically very superior. Then, when he attempted to retire, Holkar turned on him suddenly and destroyed nearly the whole of the British force as it struggled back toward Agra through some difficult country, intersected by rivers. A few months afterward, in November, 1804, Holkar fought a severe action against the British troops at Dig; and his ally, the Bhartpur raja, repulsed three attempts to carry by assault the strong fortress of Bhartpur, so that Lord Lake was obliged to retire with considerable loss. But Lake's flying columns pursued Holkar with indefatigable rapidity until his bands were surprised and at last dispersed, when he himself took refuge in the Panjab. He returned only to sign a treaty on terms similar to those on which peace had been made with the other belligerents.
The result of these operations was to establish beyond the possibility of future opposition the political and military superiority of the English throughout India. The campaigns of Wellesley and Lake dissolved the last of the trained armies which had been set on foot, in imitation of the European system, during the past twenty years by the native princes of India; and the weapon upon which the Marathas had been relying
