History. Moghal Pe. riod. Maratha and had been hemmed in at Elichpúr and thoroughly cowed. But they returned incessantly, levying chauth and sardeshmukhi, with the alternative of fire and sword; cutting off the sources of revenue, and wearying out the disorganized armies of the empire. Period of Double Government (Do Amli)-Marátha and Nizám. A.D. 1717. After Aurangzeb's death the Maráthas consolidated their predominance, and chauth and sardeshmukhi were formally granted by the Saiyad ministers of Farokhsír in 1717 upon the six and a half subahs of the Dakhan. But in 1720 Chín Khalich Khán, viceroy of the Dakhan under the title of Nizám-ul-Mulk, won his independence by three victories over the imperial lieutenants, or, rather, over the armies commanded by partizans of the Saiyad ministers, who governed in the emperor's name. Nizám-ul-Mulk had been joined by the subahdár of Berár. The first battle A.D. 1724. was near Burhánpúr, in A.D. 1721; the second at Bálápúr, soon after; and the last decisive victory was taken, in August A.D. 1724, at Shakar-Khelda, called Fate-* Khelda from that day, in the present Buldána district. From this date Berár has always been nominally subject to the Haidarábád dynasty. The Bhonslas posted their officers all over the province, they occupied it with their troops, they collected more than half the revenue, and they fought among themselves for possession of the right to collect; but, with the exception of a few parganas ceded to the Peshwa, the Nizám through all his misfortunes has constantly maintained his title as de jure sovereign of this country, and it was always admitted by the Maráthas. A.D. 1709. A.D. 1737. Parsoji Bhonsla, one of the Marátha captains, had been sent to Berár in military command to exact the chauth, and died there in A.D. 1709. His son Kánoji succeeded him, and established himself in the country, but was supplanted about A.D. 1734 by Raghoji Bhonsla, the founder of his family's independence. Raghoji got a regular commission to collect revenue from Berár and Gondwána in A.D. 1737; he seized Nágpúr, settled there, which then belonged to Chánda, in 1745, and Chánda itself from the Gond chiefs; in 1751 he also got possession of Gáwilgarh fort. In A.D. 1751, also, Raghoji laid under contribution the whole country down to the Godávari; and it would appear that hitherto the southern districts of Berár had only paid the regular tribute stipulated in A.D. 1741. But in A.D. 1755, when all the territory west of Berár was ceded to the Peshwa, Raghoji evacuated the tracts on the Godávari, and retired behind the Painganga. In A.D. 1759 Nizám Ali was governor; he marched up by Básim to Akola, and A.D. 1755. *Fath, victory. plundered the town. Jánoji Bhonsla beat him back to Burhánpúr, but Thus a continued struggle for territory and revenue went on between the two governors of Berár, the Marátha and the Moghal; though it seems that the Marátha chauth-gatherers did not settle themselves in Berár south of the Painganga until the Nizám was so grievously defeated by the Peshwa at Udgir in A.D. 1760, when he ceded Mehkar and other districts more to the southward. In A.D. 1763 he suffered another severe reverse on the Godávari, through the treachery of Jánoji Bhonsla, and the Nizám had to make large assignments of revenue to that notable rascal; but in 1766 the allied armies of the Nizám and the Peshwa recovered from Jánoji three-fourths of these cessions. And in 1769 the allies again attacked him, moving against him by Básim and Kárinja; they forced him to sue for peace, to disgorge the remainder of his acquisitions by the perfidy of 1763, and to acknowledge his subordination to A.D. 1766. A.D. 1769. the Peshwa as vicegerent for the Púna State. A.D. 1772. When Jánoji died in A.D. 1772, his brothers, Sábáji and Mudáji, fought for the succession. Sábáji defeated Mudáji at Kumbhári, near Akola, in A.D. 1773, but was afterwards killed in battle by Mudáji, who was forced nevertheless to cede Gáwilgarh and Narnála to the Nizám, by whom Sábáji had been supported. These forts were subsequently returned when the Nizám came to Elichpúr, on condition that Mudáji should keep in order the wild tribes of the Satpura hills. It was this Mudáji Bhonsla whom Warren Hastings tried to engage in a deep intrigue, tempting him with the offer of British aid for placing him at the head of the Marátha empire. Probably Hastings misunderstood Mudáji's exact political position as "Rajah of Berár;" at any rate Mudájí knew well enough that such a usurpation was impossible; and the whole plot only served to prepare one of Burke's sharpest charges against the ex-Governor General. A.D. 1795. In 1795 was fought the battle of Kardla, so disgraceful to the Nizám's army, and so calamitous to his State. He was forced to agree to liquidate hugo arrears of dues from Berár, claimed by the Bhonsla on account of ghás dána and so forth; and he ceded absolutely to the Peshwa Umarkher, Amrápúr, and other parganas now lying within the south-east boundary of this province. It appears that there is a holy place of the Hindús at Mantri Káleshwar, on the Godávari, which History. Marátha and Nizám Covernment. History. Marátha and Nizám Government. was then endowed by the Peshwa; but it lay within the Nizám's territory, and pilgrims were molested on their way to and fro. So after the Kardla battle the Peshwa exacted cession of the districts intermediate between Mantri and that part of Berár where Marátha authority prevailed, in order that Hindús might have a secure route from Púna to their place of worship. In 1796 died Mádho Ráo, the Peshwa; and the Bhonsla chief, with all the other great Marátha leaders, A.D. 1796-1803. went to Púna for counsel as to the succession. Báji Ráo, whom they placed on the musnud, had no control at all over the violent unscrupulous commanders of strong armies; he was driven from his capital, was brought back by the British, and looked on ruefully while we broke the Marátha powers in the Peshwa's name. The Rája of Berár is said by General Wellesley to have been the soul of the triple confederacy, in which he joined Sindia and Holkar against us. In April 1803 he marched down to meet Sindia at Malkapúr, still, as then, a town in Berár on the frontier between Berár and the Haidarábád country. There the Resident with Sindia demanded explanation of this meeting, and required the Marátha chiefs to withdraw from their menacing position. After much insolent fencing, they refused to retire beyond Burhánpúr (about thirty miles northward); and in August Wellesley marched up at them from Ahmadnagar, while the Marátha chiefs moved towards him into the Nizám's territory in September. This passage of our ally's frontier was their declaration. of war. At Assaye, just outside the Berár frontier, the allied army of Sindia and of the Bhonsla met the British General, and were routed. Raghoji Bhonsla fled the field early (not one of his line ever made a good soldier), and Sindia retired across the Tapti, where he manoeuvred about, threatening Berár. Raghoji also went down the Ajanta Ghát into Khandesh, but doubled back up the hills again, and made a dash southward to the Godávari for plunder. Wellesley, who had hastened down into the valley after his retreating foes, now turned sharp back in pursuit of the Bhonsla, and marched to Aurangábád. On the 9th November the situation was this-Sindia was marching eastward along the Púrna, advancing up the northern border of the Berár valley; Raghoji was also pushing eastward along the Godávari, on a line roughly parallel to Sindia, though with a wide interval separating them. Wellesley, starting from a point between Sindia and the Bhonsla, was pressing forward in the same direction across the Bálághát country, in order to overtake the Nágpúr army, or cut it off from Berár. So all three armies were moving eastward on lines to some degree parallel, the British force being on the centre line. About the 11th of November Raghoji turned northward, and being well ahead of Wellesley, he got across in front of him by Básim to the ridge of the hills above Pátúr,* which look down on the Berár valley. Wellesley moved after him by Wákad, when Raghoji descended the passes into the plain country, and Wellesley followed him by the Rájúra Ghát (near Pátúr) on the 24th November. Meanwhile, Colonel Stevenson was marching by Malkápúr along the middle of the * Akola district. Berár valley, straight for Gáwilgarh, and Sindia had agreed to suspend hostilities, by keeping twenty coss east of Elichpúr so long as the truce with him lasted, for the Gáwilgarh fort was the point which the two British armies were threatening. Stevenson was taking a siege train to besiege it, and Wellesley was to cover him by occupying the Nágpúr forces. Wellesley encamped at Akola on the 27th, effected a junction with Stevenson on the 29th at Andurna, and the united armies then marched straight at the Bhonsla, who with his back to the Gáwilgarh hills must fight, or lose the province. Sindia had broken the truce and joined him; so on the 28th November Wellesley viewed from the top of the high garhi or mud fort at Páthuldi the combined Marátha troops* retreating on Argaon. On that same afternoon, when the pickets were pushed forward, the General perceived that the enemy had taken up position in a long line in front of Argaon, about six miles from his own camp. He attacked them at once on the broad open plain before Argaon, and, after rallying his men out of some confusion at the first onset, he won an easy victory. On the 15th December Gáwilgarh was taken by storm (Sir John Malcolm got to Anjangaon only in time to hear the cannonade), and the brave commandant, Beni Sing, was killed; so on the 19th Raghoji Bhonsla signed at Deogaon (a hamlet below Gáwilgarh) the treaty which resigned all claim to territory and revenue west of the Wardha; Narnála and Gáwilgarh remaining in his possession, with a small tract afterwards exchanged.† A.D. 1803. Thus ended the Bhonsla family's connection with Berár, of which the nature has not always been clearly understood. In all political papers of the period, in the proceedings against Warren Hastings, in the treaties, and in some histories, the Bhonsla chief is termed the Rája of Berár-a title by which he was never known in Berár itself. This is the more remarkable, because Sindia and Holkar are always mentioned by their family names, although they held large territories by precisely the same tenure as that upon which Berár was occupied by the Bhonsla. Nor did the Bhonsla family ever pretend to anything like sovereignty in Berár. They quartered themselves on the country as military commanders, with authority (which soon became hereditary) to levy the Marátha dues, and to realize large assignments for support of their troops. But even in the exercise of this power they were nominally subject to the Peshwa, while the Nizám's share in the revenue was always formally admitted. Of course the Marátha exactions were measured by their power-they took just as much as they could get, nevertheless they pretended to keep regular accounts with * Commanded by Venkáji, Raghoji's brother. The Duke of Wellington, were he now alive, might be amused to learn that the Nizám gets from the present generation of Berár natives all the credit of the campaign. Well-informed people would tell him that the Maráthas were driven out in 1803 by the Nizám, whose officers are distinguished in the despatches by their sloth and incapacity for anything but plundering. But the country was held by the Nizám up to 1853, and half a century's incessant bragging seems to have overpowered the true knowledge possessed by cotemporaries. Recent travellers in the Peninsula tell us that the modern Spaniard treats His Grace in a manner precisely analogous. History. Marátha and History. Marátha and Nizám Government. the Nizám's officers, who were never openly ejected from their posts as from a conquered country, though they were often entirely set aside for a time. The districts were called Do Amli, that is, jointly administered; and in all the revenue papers the collections are divided, the Marátha share being usually sixty per cent. Even the south-eastern tracts, wrested by Raghoji from the Gond Chief of Chánda, were latterly held by the Maráthas as Do Amli, which shows, by the way, that the Chánda dominion was considered to have been mere usurpation by the Gond from the Moghal. But while the Nizám constantly made grants of rent-free land for endowments and maintenance in Berár, and while the Peshwa or his officers provided for numberless Bráhmans out of the tracts in Berár absolutely ceded to him in 1760 and 1795, it may be almost positively affirmed that the Bhonsla never attempted to make any such gifts of land, or of the whole land-tax on a given area, up to 1803; though he sometimes made over his share of the revenue of a given estate, and often gave charitable allowances charged against receipts. And even these grants were never guaranteed by treaty, as was done for the Peshwa's assignments on A.D. 1803. A.D, 1822. A.D. 1775. the districts restored in 1822 to the Nizám. On the other hand, Mudáji Bhonsla, the victor at Panchgaon in 1775, bought a rent-free village in Buldána district from the Mahomedan deshmukhs of Lonár, and the estate is still held by his descendants. The Bhonsla chiefs had the title of Sena Sáheb Subah (commander of the forces); they had been dubbed Rájas, but they were never Rájas of the land; and whether they flayed and lacerated the province by their violent incursions, or settled down to bleed it scientifically by a horde of Bráhman tax-gatherers-in their epidemic or their endemic phase-the Maráthas were equally unrecognized intruders within Berár.* * It is worth remarking that the title "Rája of Berár" bears in its style evidence of being an European misnomer. The history of India forcibly illustrates what is stated in Maine's Ancient Law, that during a large part of modern history no such conception was entertained as that of territorial sovereignty. Like the earliest Carlovingians, the Emperors of Delhi claimed universal dominion, and their imperial titles contained no allusion to the limits of their actual possessions. Neither the Bahmani kings, nor even the petty independent Imád Sháhi chiefs, ever put upon their coins the names of the provinces they governed, and the last Moghal Emperor who really possessed Berár styled himself A'lamgir, or World-taker. Nothing can better mark the characteristic ideas of sovereignty which Mr. Maine describes than a comparison of the inscription on the coins of the Indian Emperor in 1700 with that on the coins of his cotemporary chief of the Germanic Empire. On the former coin we read only that it was issued by Shah Aurangzeb A'lamgir; on the latter we have all the great provinces claimed by different feudal tenures. Then came the Nizám: the imperial firmans addressed him always as Subahdár of the Dakhan, and he was thus designated by the English Government. But he himself very soon abandoned this relic of dependence, though he continued to style himself the devoted servant (fidui) of the Delhi Emperor. The reigning prince has for some generations described himself by a string of honorific titles, of which Nizám-ul-Mulk is one (though his own subjects never call him the Nizám); and on stamped papers recently issued his State is named simply as the Asaphea Sarkár, the government of the house of Asaph Jáh. So also the Marátha conquerors never assumed territorial designations. The Bhonsla Chief's highest title (Sena Saheb) was official; and even if he had obtained undisturbed possession of Berár he would have put out of sight the badge of dependence, but he would never have styled himself Rája of Berár. |