In the end, Daulat Rao Scindia did not back down; instead, like Tipu, he began making preparations for hostilities. On 1 August 1803, he gave Collins a formal declaration of war and dismissed him from his camp.
It took a week for express couriers to carry the news to Calcutta; but only a few hours for Lord Wellesley to give the order for his carefully laid war plans to be immediately put into action on no less than four fronts — with minor thrusts along the coasts of Orissa and Gujarat as well as the two main assaults which were designed to take control of the entire Deccan and all of Hindustan.
To Scindia and Bhosle, the Governor General wrote a brief note: ‘While we have no desire to open war against you, you two chiefs have given a clear indication of your intention to attack us, since you have collected large forces on the Nizam’s frontiers and you have refused to move away from your positions. You have rejected the hand of friendship I have offered you, and I am now starting hostilities without further parleys. The responsibility is entirely yours.’
Major General Arthur Wellesley heard the news of Scindia’s declaration of war on 4 August. On the 6th he broke camp and with 40,000 troops headed off north towards the mighty fortress of Ahmadnagar which he captured on the 11th after a brief bombardment and the payment of a large bribe to the French and Arab mercenaries holding the fort for Scindia. Inside was found large amounts of gunpowder, part of Scindia’s remaining treasure and ample food supplies. Arthur Wellesley garrisoned the fort as his base while he sent scouts out to search for the main Maratha army.
Scindia and Bhosle, meanwhile, had succeeded in bringing their forces together; they then marched their confederated army south to plunder the Nizam’s territories around Aurangabad and draw Wellesley out of the safety of his fortifications. In this they succeeded. Leaving a large garrison behind to guard Ahmadnagar, Wellesley moved eastwards to defend his allies’ territory and stop the Maratha advance. The two armies finally came within sight of one another in the dusty alluvial plain to the north of the Ajanta Pass, in the early morning of 23 September, after Wellesley’s troops had just marched eighteen miles through the night.
The major general had broken his force in two the day before to avoid the delay that would have taken place in sending his whole army through the narrow Ajanta defile; half he had sent off to the west under his deputy, Colonel Stevenson. He therefore had less than 5,000 men — half of them Madrasi sepoys, the other half kilted Highlanders — when he heard from his scouts that Scindia’s camp was only five miles away and that the Marathas were about to move off. His small army was exhausted from their night march. But, worried that his quarry might escape if he waited, Wellesley made an immediate decision to head straight into the attack, without giving his troops time to rest or waiting for the other half of his force.
Reaching the crest of a low hill, the major general saw the two Maratha armies spread out before him, next to the fortified village of Assaye. Their tents and qanats (tented enclosures) extended for as much as six miles along the banks of the shallow Khelna River to near where it reached a confluence with another smaller stream, the Juah. He calculated that there were around 10,000 infantry and around five times that number of irregular cavalry. They were clearly not expecting an attack and their artillery bullocks were out grazing along the riverbank.
Leaving his baggage and stores behind him under guard, Wellesley marched straight forward, as if to make an immediate frontal attack over the river. Then at the last moment he turned eastwards to cross the meandering Khelna at an unguarded ford whose position he had guessed at due to the proximity of two small villages just before it. His guess was a lucky one: the water was between knee and waist high, and Wellesley just managed to get all his troops across without them getting their powder wet. Even so, his artillery had trouble crossing, and several guns got stuck in the mud, leaving his infantry to form up and face the opening salvos of the Maratha bombardment without the protection of artillery cover.
Arthur Wellesley had hoped that the speed and surprise of his movement would leave the Marathas in disarray and allow him to attack their unguarded right flank; but to his surprise he found that Scindia’s troops had managed not only to get themselves into full battle formation but had also skilfully wheeled around to the left in order to face his new direction of attack, all the while maintaining perfect order. This was a difficult manoeuvre that he presumed they would be incapable of, but which they instantly effected with parade-ground precision.
This was only the first in a whole series of surprises in a battle that Arthur Wellesley would later remember as one of the hardest he had ever fought, and altogether tougher than his later confrontation with Napoleon at Waterloo. ‘Their infantry is the best I have ever seen in India, excepting our own,’ he wrote afterwards to his friend John Malcolm. ‘I assure you that their fire was so heavy that I doubted at one time if I should be able to induce our troops to advance. All agree that the battle was the fiercest that has ever been seen in India. Our troops behaved admirably; the sepoys astonished me.’
A particular shock was Scindia’s heavy field guns which proved just as deadly as Collins had warned: ‘The fire of the enemy’s artillery became most dreadful,’ remembered Major John Blakiston. ‘In the space of less than a mile, 100 guns worked with skill and rapidity, vomited forth death into our feeble ranks. It cannot then be a matter of surprise if our sepoys should have taken advantage of any irregularities in the ground to shelter themselves from the deadly shower, or that even, in some few instances, not all the endeavours of the officers could persuade them to move forward.’ Major Thorn concurred: ‘It was acknowledged by all the officers present, who had witnessed the power of the French artillery in the wars of Europe, that the enemy’s guns at the Battle of Assaye were equally well-served.’
The major general himself had two horses shot under him and had several of his immediate staff killed around him by the clouds of grape the Maratha gunners sent in his direction. One large round shot just missed Wellesley as he was crossing the Khelna but decapitated his dragoon orderly as he paused midstream. The horrifying sight of the headless horseman features in many accounts of the battle, ‘the body being kept in its seat by the valise, holsters, and other appendages of a cavalry saddle, and it was some time before the terrified horse could rid himself of the ghastly burden’.
The Madras infantry sepoys in the centre and the Highlanders on the right wing of Wellesley’s front line were targeted with particular violence, as the Maratha gunners tried to blow away the core of Wellesley’s formation with large canisters of anti-personnel chain and grapeshot, fired at short range and at close quarters: whirring through the air with a terrifying screeching noise, ‘it knocked down men, horses and bullocks, every shot’.
Nevertheless, Wellesley’s infantry continued to advance at a steady pace, through the smoke. They fired a single volley, then charged the Maratha guns with bayonets, killing the gunners as they stood at the gun muzzles ‘and none quitted their posts until the bayonets were at their breasts … nothing could surpass the skill or bravery displayed by their golumdauze [gunners]’.
A final surprise awaited the British as they marched forward to drive Scindia’s men from their fallback position. Once the British infantry lines had safely passed by, many of the Maratha ‘dead’ around the cannons ‘suddenly arose, seized the cannon which had been left behind by the army, and began to reopen a fierce fire upon the rear of our troops, who, inattentive to what they were doing, were eagerly bent upon the pursuit of the flying enemy before them’. The British lines were raked with yet more canister shot until the major general personally led a desperate cavalry charge ‘against the resuscitated foe’, during which he had his second horse shot beneath him.
Two hours later, after a final stand in the village fort, Scindia’s Marathas were driven from the field and back over the Juah, leaving ninety-eight of their guns in British hands; but the casualties on both sides were appalling. The Marathas lost around 6,000 men. Wellesley lost fewer, but as the smoke cleared the major general found he had just left fully one-third of his army dead on the battlefield: 1,584 out of 4,500 of his troops were later burned or buried on the plains of Assaye. Indeed, so battered were his forces that Wellesley declared pursuit of Scindia and his fleeing men impossible, writing to his elder brother, ‘Scindia’s French[-trained] infantry were far better than Tipu’s, his artillery excellent, and his ordnance so good, and so well equipped, that it answers for our service. We never could use Tipu’s. Our loss is great, but the action, I believe, was the most severe that ever was fought in this country.’ As one of Wellesley’s senior officers wrote to the major general soon afterwards: ‘I hope you will not have occasion to purchase any more victories at such a high price.’
Arthur Wellesley went on to defeat Napoleon at Waterloo.