Capture of Hooly Honore

01A river fort on the Bhadra

Holehonnur means ‘Honnur on the river’. The small fort guarded a crossing of the Bhadra a few miles above its meeting with the Tunga, on the road from the Maratha country into the Malnad. Parashuram Bhau’s army arrived before it on 19 December 1791, with Captain Little’s Bombay sepoys and their guns. A breach was made quickly and the garrison, cut off from help, gave up on 21 December.

02On to Shimoga

The quick fall of Holehonnur opened the road west. Eight days later the same army met Reza Sahib’s field force outside Shimoga and beat it. For Pune these were not new conquests but the recovery of lands Haidar Ali had taken from the Peshwas in 1776–78, and under the treaty of March 1792 the Marathas kept most of what they had won north of the Tungabhadra.