Third Anglo-Maratha War (1817-1818): End of Maratha Power

The Third Anglo-Maratha War (1817–1818) was the final conflict between the British East India Company and the Maratha Confederacy, the last major Indian power able to challenge it. What began as a campaign against Pindari raiders became a war with the Peshwa at Pune and the Maratha rulers of Nagpur and Indore. Within months the Marathas were defeated, the office of Peshwa was abolished, and the Company emerged as the paramount power across most of the subcontinent.

Background

The Marathas had dominated much of India in the eighteenth century, despite their great defeat at the Third Battle of Panipat in 1761. Their confederacy was led in name by the Peshwa at Pune, but powerful chiefs, the Scindia of Gwalior, the Holkar of Indore, the Bhonsle of Nagpur and the Gaekwad of Baroda, acted largely independently.

The First (1775–1782) and Second (1803–1805) Anglo-Maratha Wars had weakened them. In 1802 Peshwa Baji Rao II accepted the Treaty of Bassein, which placed a Company force at Pune, and other chiefs signed similar treaties.

Meanwhile the Pindaris, bands of mounted irregulars once attached to Maratha armies, raided widely across central India. Led by men such as Chitu, Karim Khan and Wasil Muhammad, they attacked Company territory in 1816. The Governor-General, Lord Moira, later Marquess of Hastings, fresh from the Anglo-Nepalese War, resolved to destroy them.

The Pindari campaign and the Treaty of Poona

In 1817 Hastings assembled one of the largest armies the Company had ever fielded, commonly put at around 110,000–120,000 men, in two forces: the Grand Army in the north and the Army of the Deccan in the south. He pressured the Maratha rulers to help. By the Treaty of Poona of 13 June 1817, Baji Rao II was forced to give up territory and renounce leadership of the confederacy. Daulat Rao Scindia agreed in November 1817 to stay neutral.

War with the Marathas

Baji Rao, humiliated, struck first. On 5 November 1817 his army attacked the Company force near Pune at Khadki (Kirkee) but was beaten off by troops under Colonel Charles Burr, guided by the British Resident, Mountstuart Elphinstone. The British occupied Pune on 17 November, and the Peshwa fled.

At Nagpur, Mudhoji II Bhonsle, known as Appa Sahib, attacked the British Residency, but his forces were defeated at Sitabuldi on 26–27 November 1817. On 21 December 1817 the Holkar army was defeated at Mahidpur by forces under Sir Thomas Hislop and John Malcolm, and the Treaty of Mandsaur in January 1818 made Indore a subordinate state.

On 1 January 1818, at Koregaon near Pune, a small Company detachment of around 800–900 men under Captain Francis Staunton, including many Mahar sepoys of the Bombay Native Infantry, held out for a day against the Peshwa’s much larger army. At Ashti on 20 February 1818 the Peshwa’s ablest general, Bapu Gokhale, was killed.

Pursued for months, Baji Rao II surrendered to Malcolm in June 1818. The Pindari bands were broken up during the same campaign: Karim Khan surrendered and received an estate, while Chitu fled into the jungle near Asirgarh, where he was reportedly killed by a tiger in 1819. The fortress of Asirgarh, the last centre of resistance, fell in April 1819.

Consequences

The war ended the Maratha Confederacy as an independent power:

• The office of Peshwa was abolished. Baji Rao II was pensioned and exiled to Bithur near Kanpur.
• Most of the Peshwa’s lands were annexed to the Bombay Presidency. A descendant of Shivaji was restored as raja of a small state at Satara.
• Nagpur, Indore and Gwalior remained princely states, but under Company protection and control.
• Rajput states also signed treaties placing themselves under British protection.

With no rival left able to field a large army, the Company controlled, directly or through subordinate princes, most of India south of the Sutlej. Only the Sikh kingdom of Punjab and a few regions remained outside its system.

Legacy

The defeat of the Peshwa had long echoes. His adopted son, Nana Sahib, became one of the leaders of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 after the Company refused to continue his father’s pension. The Koregaon memorial pillar, built by the Company, has become a symbol of Dalit pride, and large gatherings mark the anniversary each 1 January.

Timeline

• 1817, 13 June: Treaty of Poona imposed on Baji Rao II.
• 1817, 5 November: Battle of Khadki near Pune.
• 1817, 26–27 November: Battle of Sitabuldi at Nagpur.
• 1817, 21 December: Battle of Mahidpur against the Holkar army.
• 1818, 1 January: Battle of Koregaon.
• 1818, 20 February: Battle of Ashti; Bapu Gokhale killed.
• 1818, June: Baji Rao II surrenders to John Malcolm.
• 1819, April: Fall of Asirgarh, the last Maratha stronghold.

Why it matters

The Third Anglo-Maratha War destroyed the last great Indian power able to resist the East India Company. It made the Company master of most of India and set the political map that lasted until the Rebellion of 1857 and the creation of the British Raj.