Shrimant Peshwa Baji Rao II, the 13th and final Peshwa of the Maratha Empire, was born on January 10th, 1775, and passed away on January 28th, 1851. He ruled from 1795 to 1818. The Maratha nobility put him as a puppet ruler, and as a result of their expanding influence, he was forced to leave his home city of Poona and conclude the Treaty of Bassein (1802) with the British. This led to the Second Anglo-Maratha War (1803 – 1805), which the British won and used to restore him to his rightful position as Peshwa. After learning that the British had sided with the Gaekwad nobles in a dispute over revenue-sharing, Baji Rao II engaged in the Third Anglo-Maratha War in the year 1817. The Peshwa decided to surrender to the British after losing several battles and consented to retire in exchange for an estate at Bithoor and a yearly pension.

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About Baji Rao II

The erstwhile Peshwa Raghunathrao and his spouse Anandibai had a son named Baji Rao. The First Anglo-Maratha War, which was concluded with the Treaty of Salbai, was started as a result of Raghunathrao’s defection to the English. When Baji Rao was born in 1775, the Peshwa administration that was in power at the time was keeping both of his parents imprisoned. Madhavrao II, Raghunathrao’s successor as Peshwa, committed suicide in 1795 and passed away without an heir. The Maratha nobles engaged in a war for dominance of the Confederacy. Baji Rao II was established as a puppet Peshwa by the powerful general Daulat Rao Scindia as well as minister Nana Fadnavis.

The sad legacy of Baji Rao II’s parents, who belonged to the same Brahman caste but were thought to have engaged in the 1774 killing of the young fifth Peshwa Narayanrao, had to be inherited by Baji Rao II. His ministers, the nobles, and even his subjects despised him since he was the son of alleged murderers. Every move he made was met with prejudice. He was chastised by Pandita Ramabai for marrying a girl who was just 9 or 10 years old, at the age of sixty in her writings.

Holkar’s Conquest of Poona

Nana Fadnavis passed away in 1800, and Daulat Rao Scindia assumed total command of the Peshwa government. Scindia began removing his competitors from the government, and Peshwa Baji Rao II started to worry about his own security. Colonel William Palmer, a resident of Britain, was approached for assistance. At the time, General Arthur Wellesley had previously finished a war against Dhondia Wagh and was in the southern Maratha region. Baji Rao was apprehensive about signing a pact with the British, though. In 1802, Yashwant Rao Holkar, a rival chief to Scindia, marched in the direction of Poona. He pledged his loyalty to the Peshwa and conveyed messages of assurance that his only goal was to liberate Poona from Scindia’s rule. However, Baji Rao was wary since he had previously authorised the murder of Yashwant Rao’s brother Vithoji Rao Holkar. He asked Scindia, who was not in Poona at the time, for assistance. On October 22, 1802, Scindia sent out an army that arrived in Poona. On October 25th, Holkar defeated the combined troops of Peshwa as well as Scindia at the Battle of Hadapsar.

Before the battle on October 25th, in the morning, Baji Rao had already sent the British the proposed treaty terms. When Holkar won the war, he retreated to Vasai and enlisted the help of the British in Bombay. Holkar controlled the Peshwa administration in Amrut Rao’s name by establishing an ad hoc council under the leadership of Baji Rao’s adopted brother Amrut Rao.

Treaty With the British

In December 1802, Baji Rao II signed the Treaty of Bassein, whereby the British agreed to restore Baji Rao II to his position as Peshwa in exchange for allowing 6,000 infantry soldiers armed with guns into the Maratha region, paying for their upkeep, and accepting the deployment of a permanent British political agent (Resident) at Poona. The 2nd Anglo-Maratha War of 1803 – 1805 was brought on by Holkar and Sindhia’s resistance to British meddling in Maratha affairs. Because of internal conflict between the Scindia and Holkar families, as well as treachery committed in every battle by Scindia’s French as well as other European officials, who primarily handled the foreign – made guns within the Maratha army due to the Marathas’ failure to teach their own men in large enough numbers to manage foreign – made guns, the British emerged victorious. The Marathas were compelled to accept losses of territories.

Third Anglo-Maratha War

The 3rd Anglo-Maratha War of 1817–1818, which resulted in the downfall of the Bhosles, Holkars, as well as other Maratha feudatories, was sparked by the Pindaris’ indiscriminate horsemen attacks into British territory. The British had gotten involved in a financial disagreement over revenue-sharing between the Peshwa and Gaekwads of Baroda in the middle of the 1810s. The Company coerced Baji Rao II into signing an agreement renouncing claims to Gaekwad’s revenues and relinquishing substantial portions of territory to the British on June 13th, 1817. The Maratha confederacy was formally dissolved by the Treaty of Poona, which also put an end to the Peshwa’s official rule over other Maratha leaders. Baji Rao II’s troops, under the command of his attorney Mor Dixit, attacked the British Resident in Poona on November 5, 1817. Had Bajirao II not given in to British Resident Elphinstone’s demand for a ceasefire, his men might have advanced and won this fight. From a peak that is now known as Parvati, Baji Rao observed the conflict that broke out between his soldiers and the British.

The Battle of Khadki, which took place on November 5, 1817, ended with Peshwa’s defeat. Then, to prevent the British troops from arriving from Jalna, his troops went to Garpir on the periphery along the modern-day Solapur Road. However, after one of Baji Rao’s chiefs, Sardar Ghorpade Sondurkar, betrayed him, his force withdrew. Following that, Baji Rao took control of Chakan Fort from the British forces. While a British force under the command of General Joseph Smith pursued the Peshwa, the British put Poona under Colonel Burr. Colonel Burr requested assistance from the Company troops stationed at Shirur after learning that the Peshwa planned to attack Pune before the end of December. The Shirur army encountered the Peshwa forces, leading to the Battle of Koregaon. The Peshwa was unable to defeat the Shirur contingent and was forced to flee in anticipation of a larger Company army under the command of General Smith.

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Surrender of Baji Rao II

Following Baji Rao II in full cry, five British columns were slavering at the notion of the “prize money” that lay at the conclusion of the pursuit. Baji Rao II submitted to Sir John Malcolm after evading capture for five months while waiting for the promised assistance from the Scindias, Holkars, as well as Bhosle which never materialised. Francis Rawdon-Hastings, 1st Marquess of Hastings, the company’s governor-general, was furious when Malcolm agreed to keep Baji Rao as a lifetime prince, permit him to keep his personal wealth and pay him a yearly pension of £80,000. In exchange, Baji Rao II would have to promise to never return to his native Poona and reside in a location designated by the British with his retainers. The only thing that was wrong with him calling himself “Maharaja” was that he would have to give up all of his claims to his ancestry. Francis Rawdon-Hastings only ratified Malcolm’s treaty because he believed Baji Rao II would not live very long because he was already over 40 and many of his forefathers did not survive very long after that age.

Retirement of Baji Rao II

The British chose a little village called Bithur adjoining Kanpur, where they had a sizable military presence at the time, to put Baji Rao II under constant observation. The area chosen was precisely six square miles, and there were roughly 15,000 people living there in addition to his relatives and other people who followed him out of Poona in 1818. He had formerly ruled over 50 million people. Baji Rao continued to live for another 33 years before passing away in 1851 at Bithur, contrary to the company’s desires. In the Court of Gwalior, where P. Baburao, the grandfather of Manohar Malgonkar, served as a minister, there were a lot of rumours going on about Baji Rao II. One such tale, which became well-known to many people as a result of Baji Rao II’s persistent attempts to evict the ghost, concerned the spirit of a murdered Peshwa named Narayan Rao who had followed Baji Rao throughout his life. As was mentioned earlier, Narayan Rao was the 9th Peshwa who was supposedly assassinated with the help of Baji Rao’s parents.

Baji Rao hired the priests of Pandharpur, a Maharashtrian temple town on the banks of the Chandrabhaga, to exorcise the spirit. When the priests initially succeeded in chasing the ghost away, Baji Rao II ordered the construction of a riverfront embankment at Pandharpur that now bears his name out of gratitude. However, the ghost returned and resumed haunting after Baji Rao II was banished to Bithur. Being prohibited from travelling to his native country, he undertook religious penances ordered by the priests of Benares (Varanasi) and lavished alms on Brahmins. He constructed temples, bathing ghats, innumerable poojas (religious prayers), through countless difficult fasts, bowed down to sadhus and fortune tellers, etc., yet the spirit refused to leave him. His line would cease with his successor, his home would burn to the ground, and his clan would perish, according to the prophecy that remained with him to the very end.

In any case, in July of that year, following the resurgence of the Indian Rebellion, Company troops, first under Major-General Henry Havelock and subsequently under Brigadier James Hope Grant, sacked and burned down Bithur, including the residence (wada) of Baji Rao II, where so many members of his extended family, with the exception of his adopted son, Nana Sahib, resided.

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