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A Brief History of the Bhopal Principality in Central India
A Brief History of the Bhopal Principality in Central India Author:William Hough Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: but his country was their professed asylum. He was, in consequence, at this period, in imminent hazard from the British forces, which advanced under Colonel Barr... more »y Close across the Nerbuddah (69). That army acted in co-operation with the Rajah of Nagpoor against Ameer Khan ; but, Colonel Close had discretionary orders with regard to Bhopal. (69) Vizier Mahomed had been compelled to call in the aid of certain Pindarry chiefs (chiefly Mahomedan leaders) when he found protection denied him from a higher quarter. The unsettled state of Central India had allowed of the formation of Pindarry Durrahs, under various chiefs. Sindiah and the other Mahrattahs were compelled to assign them villages, to save their own territories from plunder ! When the Marquess of Hastings in 1817 took the field against the Pindarries, he had reason to know that either the Mahrattah powers would support the Pindarries, or that they could not put them down; which ever cause it may have been, it was the clear policy of the Governor General, to take the field with large divisions amounting altogether to 116,464 men, regulars and irregulars. If, therefore, it required such a force to put down about 20,000 Pindarries—rated at one time at 40,000—how could the Bhopal state, having been obliged to call them in, speedily get rid of them ! Ameer Khan first aided Bhopal, then attacked its territory, and lastly solicited the assistance of Vizier Mahomed ! Lieut-Col. Blacker, dr. Mr. General Madras army—Memoir of the Operations of the British Army in the Mahrattah War of 1817, 1818, and 1819—published in 1821, (quarto,) gives the British force (regulars) at 87,591, but with irregulars, at 116,464, p. 25, and 295 guns. At p. 19, he gives the forces of Sindiah, Holkar, Peshwah, Bhonslah, Ameer Khan, Nizam, and Pindarries,...« less