Page:The Marquess of Hastings, K.G..djvu/118

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110
LORD HASTINGS

which were made simultaneously with the political arrangements just described.

It had been calculated that the following troops could be furnished by the native states, their allies and dependencies, against the British Government when engaged in restoring order in Central India:—

Horse. Foot. Guns.
Sindhia 14,000 16,000 140
Holkar 20,000 8,000 107
Peshwá 28,000 14,000 37
Bhonsla 16,000 18,000 85
Amír Khán 12,000 10,000 200
Pindárís 15,000 1,500 20
Nizám 25,000 20,000
—— —— ——
Total 130,000 87,500 589[1]
—— —— ——

In deciding to crush organised brigandage and all who aided and abetted it, Lord Hastings determined to provide himself with ample means for the purpose. For a long time he had been preparing for the struggle, maturing his plans, and accumulating his resources, and all through the summer of 1817 he was occupied in finally completing his arrangements. The Pindárís were to be rooted out of their haunts which lay in Málwá, somewhat to the east of Ujjain, north of the Narbadá and between Bhopál and the dominions of Sindhia and Holkar; to accomplish this it had been decided to surround them on all sides,—on the north and east from Bengal, on the south from the Deccan,

  1. Colonel V. Blacker's Memoir of the operations of the British Army in India during the Maráthá War of 1817–19, London, 1821, p. 19. (Hereafter quoted as Blacker.)