began to levy troops, and raise the whole country against the English.
This was the unsatisfactory state of our relations with the Court of Poonah, occasioned by a murder not only atrocious in its character, but the source and origin of some of the greatest political changes in the modern history of India, at a period when the most active exertions were called for by our troops, to suppress the outrages committed upon our own territories and those of our allies, by one of the most remarkable confederacies of robbers that ever existed.
The Pindarries[1] were not composed of any peculiar people or tribe, but of a variety of the refuse of all tribes, denominations, and creeds. The ancestors of their chiefs are regarded as of Patan extraction; their followers were a motley multitude, brought together by the common impulse of necessity. "Every horseman," says Captain Sydenham, "who is discharged from the service of a regular government, or who wants employment and subsistence, joins one of the durras[2] of the Pindarries; so that no vagabond who has a horse and a sword at his command can be at a loss for employment. Thus the Pindarries are continually receiving an accession of associates from the most desperate and profligate of mankind. Every villain who escapes from his creditors, who is expelled from the community for some flagrant crime, who has been discarded from employment, or who is disgusted with an honest and peaceable life, flies to Hindostan, and enrols himself among the Pindarries."
The Pindarries were generally armed with spears, in the use of which they were very expert; a proportion of them were provided with matchlocks, and all were mounted. The mode of warfare adopted by these bandits, if warfare it may be called, was distinguished by the precision with which it was directed to one object –
