Before the war he had 18000 horse, mostly Marathas of the Poona country, and 25000 infantry, of which 11000 were of regular battalions; besides these he entertained a body of 4000 Arab mercenaries. His artillery counted ninety guns, but of these thirty-eight were lost at Argaon. His cavalry were also much reduced after that battle, and after the ensuing peace the regular infantry were never replaced. During the campaign which Raghuji had undertaken with Sindhia, the Nawab of Bhopal had seized on Hoshangabad. This the Raja recovered in 1807. Sambalpur with its dependencies was restored to him by the English in 1806, but some of the zamindars were opposed to the transfer, and their resistance was not overcome until 1808. His kingdom now comprised the Nagpur Districts, Chanda, Chhattisgarh with its appendages, Sambalpur, and the Districtsion the Nerbudda. From this time Raghuji, nicknamed by his people ‘The Big Bania’, threw off all restraint in his unwillingness to show a reduced front to the world. Not only did he rackrent and screw the farming and cultivating classes but he took advantage of the necessities which is own acts had created, to lend them money at high interest. He withheld the pay of his troops, advancing them money on exorbitant terms through his own banking establishments, and when he paid them at last, giving a third in clothes from his own shops at most exaggerated price. When all other means failed he organized regular house-breaking expeditions against the stores of men whom his spies had reported to be wealthy. He owned whole rows of shops in the bazaar and the same spirit of avarice and rapacity pervaded his family and his court. Coarse and vulgar in person, he was jealous of every one and so prying into the minute details of Government that no one served him heartily. The Nagpur portion of his dominions now became the scene of frequent contests with the Pindaris and the robber hordes of Amir Khan. For security against these marauders most of the village forts were built, the remains of which stud the whole of the District. Insignificant as they may now appear many of them have been the scenes of struggles where the peasant fought for bare life, all he possessed outside the walls being already lost to him. Old men spoke forty years afterwards of the hard lot of that day, how they sowed in sorrow, with little hope of seeing the harvest, and how, whenever they did reap, they buried the corn at once in the ground. Te boldness of these robber bands became so great that in November 1811 they advanced under Amir Khan’s leadership up to Nagpur, burned one of the suburbs and only retired when they knew that two British columns were approaching from the Nizam’s dominions to drive them back.
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