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Updated: May 9, 2025
The impetuous old man thereon poured out a multitude of questions: "How many men are there in the fort?" said he; "how many women? Is it victualled? Have they ammunition? Did you see Gahagan Sahib, the commander? did you kill him?" All these questions Jeswunt Row Holkar puffed out with so many whiffs of tobacco.
As he was sitting on the platform over his cell, he heard a distant boom, and knew that Holkar was besieging Delhi. The next day, to his satisfaction, the sound of cannonading was again distinct. "At any rate," he said to himself, "Holkar has not carried the place by a sudden rush. There is a regularity about the fire that shows that it is deliberate. No doubt they are breaching one of the walls."
In 1804 a British force of 1,200 troops under Colonel Monson was lured away from its base of supplies by a feigned retreat and incurred a very serious reverse; scarcely a tenth of them, utterly broken, "straggled, a mere rabble, into Agra". This disaster was soon afterwards retrieved by other divisions of Lake's army, but three attempts to storm the strong fortress of Bhartpur were repulsed by the rájá, Ranjít Singh, an ally of Holkar.
It appears, nevertheless, from the Marquis's address to the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors of 19th April, 1803, that, up to that time, he still entertained hopes that Sindhia would remain inactive, and would see his advantage in giving his adhesion to the treaty of Bassein, if not from friendship for England, from hostility to Holkar, against whom that settlement was primarily and ostensibly directed.
Happily for Wellesley's purpose, they were often at feud with each other, and the Peshwá, though aided by Sindhia, was utterly defeated by Jaswant Ráo Holkar. He fled to Bassein near Bombay, where, on December 31, 1802, a treaty was signed by which not only the Peshwá but the Nizám of Haidarábád was placed under British protection.
No doubt it has been supposed, for weeks, that I and my escort have perished. And when the general hears of the kind treatment that we have received a treatment so different from that we should have met with, had we fallen into the hands of Holkar it will, I feel certain, have an effect on the terms that he will lay down."
"No; but that is of little consequence. Probably, by this time, Holkar will have marched away either to give battle or, what is more likely, to recruit; and for many miles round Delhi the country will be rejoicing, at having been spared the ruin that would have befallen it, had he taken the city.
On the 18th of October he returned to Allahabad, with the intention of going to Delhi to see what he could do with the Vizir, but as it might have been dangerous to disclose his object, he pretended he was going to march south to Bussy in the Deccan, and obtained a passport from the Maratha general, Holkar. This took some time, and it was not till March, 1758, that he started for Delhi.
"Matters are complicated, too, by the fact that Scindia has now in his service sixteen battalions of drilled infantry, commanded by French officers; and these have proved so valuable, in the various sieges he has undertaken, that Holkar has been obliged to imitate his example.
Many of the irregular cavalry had deserted; but the Sepoys stood firm, knowing how terrible were the cruelties perpetrated, by Holkar, on all who fell into his hands. Their number was small; but they were, to some extent, strengthened by the levies brought in by the zemindars.
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