to defend the wealth and the industry of the surrounding territories from their grasp.  As the industrious classes acquire and display their wealth in the countries around during a long peace, under a strong and settled government, these native chiefs, with their little disorderly armies, feel precisely as an English country gentleman would feel with a pack of foxhounds, in a country swarming with foxes, and without the privilege of hunting them.[1]

Their armies always took the auspices and set out kingdom taking (mulk giri) after the Dasahra,[2] in November, as regularly as English gentlemen go partridge-shooting on the 1st of September; and I may here give, as a specimen, the excursion of Jean Baptiste Filose,[3] who sallied forth on such an expedition, at the head of a division of Sindhia’s army, just before this Pindhari war commenced.  From Gwalior he proceeded to Karauli,[4] and took from that chief the district of Sabalgarh, yielding four lakhs of rupees yearly.[5] He then took the territory of the Raja of Chanderi,[6] Mor Pahlad, one of the oldest of the Bundelkhand chiefs, which then yielded about seven lakhs of rupees,[7] but now yields only four.  The Raja got an allowance of forty thousand rupees a year.  He then took the territories of the Rajas of Raghugarh and Bajranggarh,[8] yielding three lakhs a year; and Bahadurgarh, yielding two lakhs a year;[9] and the three princes got fifty thousand rupees a year for subsistence among them.  He then took Lopar, yielding two lakhs and a half, and assigned the Raja twenty-five thousand.  He then took Garha Kota,[10] whose chief gets subsistence from our Government.  Baptiste had just completed his kingdom taking expedition, when our armies took the field against the Pindharis; and, on the termination of that war in 1817, all these acquisitions were confirmed and guaranteed to his master Sindhia by our Government.  It cannot be supposed that either he or his army can ever feel any great attachment towards a paramount authority that has the power and the will to interpose, and prevent their indulging in such sporting excursions as these, or any great disinclination to take advantage of any occasion that may seem likely to unite all the native chiefs in a common effort to crush it.  The Nepalese have the same feeling as the Marathas in a still stronger degree, since their kingdom-taking excursions had been still greater and more successful; and, being all soldiers from the same soil, they were easily persuaded, by a long series of successful aggressions, that their courage was superior to that of all other men.[11]