The 2nd of December 1802 marked the beginning of the end for the Maratha Empire, not through a grand battlefield defeat, but through a treaty signed in the shadow of fear. Baji Rao II, the Peshwa and nominal overlord of the Maratha Confederacy, had fled to British protection after his combined armies were crushed by Yashwantrao Holkar at the Battle of Poona. This desperate ruler, described by historians as a past master in deceit and intrigue, had a cruel streak that had already provoked the enmity of powerful rivals like Holkar. In a move that would be called the death knell of the Maratha Empire, Baji Rao II signed the Treaty of Bassein with the British East India Company. He ceded territory to maintain a subsidiary force and agreed to treaty with no other power, effectively making the British the arbiters of Maratha foreign policy. This act horrified the other Maratha chieftains, particularly the Scindia rulers of Gwalior and the Bhonsale rulers of Nagpur and Berar, who viewed the treaty as a betrayal of their sovereignty. The British had long supported the Peshwa, first backing Raghunathrao in the First Anglo-Maratha War and then his son, but the internal quarrels among the five major chiefs, the Gaekwad of Baroda, the Scindia of Gwalior, the Holkar of Indore, and the Bhonsle of Nagpur, had left the confederacy vulnerable to such a maneuver. Lord Mornington, the Governor-General of British India, had repeatedly offered a subsidiary treaty to the Peshwa and Scindia, but Nana Fadnavis, a powerful statesman, had refused strongly until the political landscape shifted irrevocably.
The Deccan Campaign
The 8th of August 1803 began a relentless campaign that would shatter the military might of the Maratha Confederacy. Major General Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington, led a force of 24,000 men to break camp and attack the nearest Maratha fort. On that same day, he took the walled Pettah of Ahmednagar, the town adjacent to the fort, by escalade. The Ahmednagar Fort itself surrendered on the 12th of August after an infantry attack exploited an artillery-made breach in the wall. With the pettah and fort now in British control, Wellesley was able to extend control southwards to the river Godavari. The British strategy was a multi-pronged assault involving over 53,000 men, with Lieutenant General Gerard Lake tasked with taking Doab and then Delhi, while Powell entered Bundelkhand and Murray took Badoch. Harcourt was assigned to neutralize Bihar, creating a pincer movement that the Marathas could not withstand. In September 1803, Scindia forces lost to Lake at Delhi and to Wellesley at Assaye, a battle where the 1st Battalion 8th Regiment of Native Infantry charged the cannon led by Captain Hugh Macintosh. The British artillery pounded ancient ruins used by Scindia forces as forward operating bases, eroding their control and morale. By the 18th of October, British forces took the pettah of Asirgarh Fort with a loss of only two killed and five wounded, and the fort's garrison subsequently surrendered on the 21st after the attackers had erected a battery. The momentum was undeniable, and the British were now in a position to dictate terms to the fractured Maratha leadership.