kill them. it Prince Manu Bappoo’s brother, the Rajah of Berar, was
not at the village of Argaum where the Lions of Allah now charged to
destroy the heart of the British attack. The Rajah did not like
battle. He liked the idea of conquest, he loved to see prisoners
paraded and he craved the loot that filled his storehouses, but he had
no belly for fighting.
Manu Bappoo had no such qualms. He was thirty-five years old, he had
fought since he was fifteen, and all he asked was the chance to go on
fighting for another twenty or forty years. He considered himself a
true Mahratta; a pirate, a rogue, a thief in armour, a looter, a
pestilence, a successor to the generations of Mahrattas who had
dominated western India by pouring from their hill fastnesses to
terrorize the plump princedoms and luxurious kingdoms in the plains. A
quick sword, a fast horse and a wealthy victim, what more could a man
want? And so Bappoo had ridden deep and far to bring plunder and
ransom back to the small land of Berar.
But now all the Mahratta lands were threatened. One British army was
conquering their northern territory, and another was here in the south.
It was this southern redcoat force that had broken the troops of
Scindia and Berar at Assaye, and the Rajah of Berar had summoned his
brother to bring his Lions of Allah to claw and kill the invader. This
was not a task for horsemen, the Rajah had warned Bappoo, but for
infantry. It was a task for the Arabs.
But Bappoo knew this was a task for horsemen. His Arabs would win, of
that he was sure, but they could only break the enemy on the immediate
battlefield. He had thought to let the British advance right up to his
cannon, then release the Arabs, but a whim, an intimation of triumph,
had decided him to advance the Arabs beyond the guns. Let the Lions of
Allah loose on the enemy’s centre and, when that centre was broken, the
rest of the British line would scatter and run in panic, and that was
when the Mahratta horsemen would have their slaughter. It was already
early evening, and the sun was sinking in the reddened west, but the
sky was cloudless and Bappoo was anticipating the joys of a moonlit
hunt across the flat Deccan Plain.
“We shall gallop through blood,” he said aloud, then led his aides
towards his army’s right flank so that he could charge past his Arabs
when they had finished their fight. He would let his victorious Lions
of Allah pillage the enemy’s camp while he led his horsemen on a wild
victorious gallop through the moon-touched darkness.
And the British would run. They would run like goats from the tiger.
But the tiger was clever. He had only kept a small number of horsemen
with the army, a mere fifteen thousand, while the greater part of his
cavalry had been sent southwards to raid the enemy’s long supply roads.
The British would flee straight into those men’s sabres.
Bappoo trotted his horse just behind the right flank of the Lions of
Allah. The British guns were firing canister and Bappoo saw how the
ground beside his Arabs was being flecked by the blasts of shot, and he
saw the robed men fall, but he saw how the others did not hesitate, but
hurried on towards the pitifully thin line of redcoats. The Arabs were
screaming defiance, the guns were hammering, and Bappoo’s soul soared
with the music. There was nothing finer in life, he thought, than this
sensation of imminent victory. It was like a drug that fired the mind
with noble visions.
He might have spared a moment’s thought and wondered why the British
did not use their muskets. They were holding their fire, waiting until
every shot could kill, but the Prince was not worrying about such
trifles. In his dreams he was scattering a broken army, slashing at
them with his tulwar, carving a bloody path south. A fast sword, a
quick horse and a broken enemy. It was the Mahratta paradise, and the