Yashwantrao Holkar

Yashwantrao Holkar beat the Peshwa outside Pune, fought the East India Company to a negotiated peace when every other Maratha house had lost, and died at thirty-five having gone mad. He was an illegitimate son of Tukoji Holkar and spent his early years as a fugitive after his brother was trampled to death by an elephant on Daulatrao Shinde's orders. He rebuilt the Holkar army from nothing on light cavalry and speed, and in October 1802 defeated the combined forces of Shinde and Bajirao II at Hadapsar outside Pune. That victory is what sent Bajirao II into British arms and produced the Treaty of Bassein, which cost the confederacy its independence. In the war that followed, Holkar alone did not lose: he avoided pitched battles against Lake and Wellesley, destroyed a British detachment under Monson in 1804, and forced a treaty in 1805 that left him his territory - the only Maratha ruler to end the Second Anglo-Maratha War undefeated. He then tried and failed to build a coalition with the Sikhs and the northern powers. He set up his own cannon foundry at Bhanpura. His mental health broke down in his last years and he died in 1811. Indore remembers him as a national figure and there is a long argument in Indian historiography about why he is not better known. Monson s retreat in 1804 is one of the worst British reverses of the period and cost most of a brigade. He offered an alliance to Ranjit Singh, who declined it. Indore has a memorial and an airport named for the Holkar house. He was cremated at Bhanpura and his samadhi stands there.

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