appointed by Sindhia; and although His Highness's person and his councils were in some degree relieved from the previous constraint under which they had laboured for some years, no act of the government could be carried into execution without the consent of Sindhia's servants.

When Sindhia arrived in Hindustan with his army the contest between him and Holkar continued with increased violence; and at length Holkar was defeated in a great battle, which was fought at Indore, the capital of the possessions of the Holkar family, on the 14th October 1801. After this battle, Holkar was obliged to withdraw from Hindustan into the hilly countries between the Nerbudda and the Tapti, into which Sindhia was unable to carry the war, as his attention was still taken up by the settlement of his government in the north of Hindustan, and his armies were not reunited sufficiently, from the loss sustained in the different battles which had been fought. Holkar took advantage of this respite to carry the war across the Tapti into the Peshwa's country. In the course of the year 1802 he had several engagements with the Peshwa's troops in Kandeish and on the Godavery, in which he was uniformly successful, and at length, in the month of October 1802, he approached Poona. Sindhia had sent a small detachment of his regular infantry and a body of cavalry to join the remnant of the Peshwa's army; and on the 25th October 1802, a great battle was fought between these armies, almost within sight of the city of Poona, which ended in the complete defeat of the troops of the Peshwa and Sindhia. After this battle the Peshwa fled from Poona into the Konkan, or low country on the sea coast between Bombay and Goa. Having been pursued by Holkar's troops, he embarked at Severndrug, on board a ship which was sent from Bombay for his accommodation, and he arrived at Bassein, opposite to the Island of Salsette on the 16th December; and Holkar remained in possession of the authority of the government of Poona.

viii. The Treaty of Bassein.

During the progress of Holkar in his invasion of the Peshwa's territories, His Highness the Peshwa renewed the negotiations, which had been so frequently broken off, for the assistance of the British government. These negotiations, however, were not brought to a close on the day of the battle near Poona;

and after the result of that day was known, and immediately previous to his flight, His Highness signed a paper, by which he engaged to perform all the material stipulations required by the British government as the conditions on which they would consent to give him the assistance for which he asked. These were, principally, that His Highness would allot a territorial security for the payment of the troops which the Company would detach into his country; that those troops should occupy a position within his territories that the Company should arbitrate on the differences between him and the Nizam; and that the Peshwa should not enter into any treaty or correspondence with any foreign power excepting with the knowledge and consent of the Company.

The principle on which the negotiations at Poona had turned since the death of Tipu Sultan... had been, the necessity of introducing the arbitration of the British government in the disputes and claims which existed between the Peshwa and the Nizam. It was obvious that unless the British government should interfere, the Nizam must fall under the power of the Mahrattas; and for this reason the treaty of 1798 with the Nizam had been made generally defensive against all powers whatever by the treaty of October 1800. When this treaty was concluded there existed a necessity for continuing to urge the Peshwa to admit of the arbitration of the British government in the Mahratta claims, or the British government must have been prepared for, and must have expected, war with the Mahratta nation, whenever these claims should be made, and the Mahrattas should find themselves in a condition to enforce them. The attainment of this political object, therefore, was the only one likely to ensure the peace of the peninsula of India.

The cession of territory for subsidy was the best mode of avoiding the disputes and inconvenience which had invariably attended these subsidiary alliances in other instances; and the article respecting the intercourse of the Peshwa with foreign states was rendered necessary by the nature of the constitution of the two governments, the alliances by which each was bound, and the laws which regulated their intercourse with foreign states. The necessity for this connexion with the head of the Mahratta Empire was rather increased by the successful invasion of the Peshwa's territories, and by the usurpation of His Highness's authority, by Jeswant Rao Holkar.

...

Immediately after the flight of the Peshwa from Poona, Holkar took upon himself the government of the Peshwa's territories; but finding that this arrangement was not popular, and gave offence to the chiefs in the southern parts of the empire, he appointed the son of Amrat Rao, who was the adopted son of the father of the Peshwa, Baji Rao, to be the new Peshwa; and Amrat Rao to be his minister, and himself to be the head of his armies. He endeavoured to obtain the consent and acknowledgment of the Nizam and of the British government to this arrangement; and while the negotiations were going on upon this subject, it is well known that he was collecting about his person all the pretenders to authority, and the disaffected subjects of the Company and their allies, that could be found; and he was preparing the documents on which he intended to found the vexatious claims of the Mahratta government on the Nizam, the territories of Mysore and Arcot. He was at the same time urging the British government to acknowledge his new dynasty at Poona, and to interfere in the settlement of the Mahratta affairs. Sindhia, who had been informed by the Governor-General of the progress of the Peshwa's negotiations with the British government in the year 1802 . . . earnestly urged the British government to interfere in the Mahratta affairs, as the only mode of settling their actual confusion.

The animosity between Sindhia and Holkar still existed with the greatest violence; and in the operations which must be carried on to relieve the Peshwa and to restore his authority, there was every reason to expect that Holkar would find himself exposed singly to the hostility of all the great powers of India, and that he would withdraw from the Peshwa's territories.

Orders were therefore issued for the conclusion of a treaty with the Peshwa, upon the basis of the paper which had been delivered by His Highness to the Resident at Poona on the day preceding his flight; and the treaty was concluded accordingly on the 31st Dec. 1802. Sindhia's minister, who, as was before related, was the Peshwa's diwan, was privy to the whole transaction; and he on the part of Sindhia, engaged to make good to the Peshwa a part of the expense which he should incur in procuring the interference and assistance of the British government.

The treaty having been concluded ... the British troops marched from the frontiers of Mysore on the 12th March.

They were joined on their march by the principal of the Mahratta chiefs and of the Peshwa's officers in the southern parts of the Mahratta empire. The detachments of Holkar's army, which had been upon the Kistna and Godavery, successively fell back; and the British troops formed a junction with the Nizam's army and the subsidiary British troops in His Highness's service on the 15th April, within 100 miles of Poona. Nearly about the same time Holkar withdrew from Poona to the northward, and left that city to be occupied by the British army. A communication was immediately opened with the Peshwa, who was at Bassein, under the protection of a detachment of the army of Bombay, and His Highness entered Poona and took upon himself the government of his country on the 13th May.

In this manner this great arrangement was effected without the loss of a man. By a skilful and ready application of the forces and resources of the government, and by taking advantage of opportunities, the ally of the Company was restored to his dignity and to the exercise of his authority; the usurpation of a most rapacious freebooter was destroyed; and this dangerous neighbour was removed from the frontier of the Company's allies. At the same time an arrangement was made which was calculated to preserve peace between the Company's allies, and secure the weak government against the unjust claims of the strong.

ix. The Validity of the Treaty of Bassein.

From the knowledge which the British government possessed that Sindhia was aware of all the circumstances of the negotiations which the Peshwa was carrying on, that he had earnestly desired their interference in the Mahratta affairs, and, above all, because he must have known that they had acquired a most formidable position for their armies in the peninsula, of which nothing could deprive them excepting great military success, it was confidently expected that this arrangement would not have occasioned any subsequent hostilities.

But these were not the only grounds on which this expectation of the continuance of peace was founded. Sindhia had, in point of fact, no right to interfere in an arrangement between the Company and the Peshwa, particularly in one concluded under all the circumstances which had attended the treaty of Bassein.

The Mahratta empire has at times been considered as an institution, in some degree, of the same description with the Empire of Germany; 1 at others it has been considered as the union of a number of chiefs possessing territory and power, acknowledging the Peshwa as their nominal head; and at others, the Peshwa has been considered as the real head of a government of which Sindhia and others were only the powerful officers. Arguments have been drawn from the supposed existence of all these imaginary forms of government to prove that the Peshwa had no right to enter into the treaty of Bassein without the consent of Sindhia and other chiefs of the Mahratta empire.

Admitting the existence of all, or any, of these forms of government (and excepting the similarity to the Empire of Germany, all have in reality existed at different periods of the Mahratta history), the fact is, and cannot be denied, that the Peshwa has frequently made treaties, not only to which none of the Mahratta chiefs consented, but to which some of them objected. For instance, the Treaty of Triple Alliance, in 1792, was objected to by Mahdaji Sindhia and Tukaji Holkar. The treaty of peace in 1792, at Seringapatam, and of partition, was not consented to by any of the Mahratta chiefs. But if it be true that the Peshwa, who is acknowledged by those who reason upon all these different forms of government to be either the real or the nominal head of what is commonly called the Empire, cannot make a treaty without the consent of Sindhia and the other chiefs, it may be presumed that Sindhia and the other chiefs . cannot make a treaty without the consent of the Peshwa. How is this fact? They make war and peace in their own names against whom they please, when they please, and as they please; and never use the Peshwa's name, or refer to its authority, excepting as a last subterfuge in the discussions which may attend their negotiations. In point of fact, Sindhia, instead of being a powerful subject, and in that light a party to be consulted in an agreement to be entered into by the Peshwa with the British government, was himself the guarantee of the treaty of Salbai between the same parties.

In this very capacity of guarantee of a treaty he must have been considered, and must have been in fact, independent of the two powers contracting it. Before he became a guarantee, the history of those times shows that he was independent of

1 The Holy Roman Empire.