Battle of Indore (1801)

01Ghatge’s revenge

Sarje Rao Ghatge, Daulatrao’s father-in-law and the most feared man at his court, brought the regular brigades north from the Deccan. Yashwantrao met them outside Indore and was beaten after a hard fight, his guns lost. Ghatge’s troops then sacked Indore. Malcolm, writing twenty years later from the accounts of people who saw it, describes the town stripped and many houses burnt.

02Yashwantrao recovers

The defeat did not finish Yashwantrao. He rebuilt his army from the Pathans of Amir Khan and the Pindaris, and in October 1802 he beat the combined armies of Scindia and the Peshwa at Hadapsar outside Poona. Bajirao II fled to the British at Bassein and signed the treaty that brought on the Second Anglo-Maratha War. Yashwantrao himself stayed out of that war until 1804.

Dynasty · 1731–1948 CEScindias (Shinde) of GwaliorRanoji Shinde rose as a commander under Bajirao I and was given northern Malwa. His son Mahadji, who survived Panipat, became the master of Delhi and the most powerful Indian ruler of the 1780s; the house later ruled Gwalior until 1948.Read →