Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | 页面 714

674
UNSCIENTIFIC TACTICS IN
WARFARE
to pillage, ravage, and destroy all the villages in their way.
and to devastate the enemy's country. This idea they had
evidently borrowed from the Tartars, who had invaded their
country, and whose superiority in arms they had been forced
to
acknowledge to their
cost
rival powers who
for a long while disputed the supremacy of India, placed on
some occasions as many as 100.000 horse in the field. The
Mahratta princes combined could have commanded as many
But they never knew how to utilize this
as 300,000 horse.
The Moguls and Mahrattas, the two
unwieldy multitude to its full advantage, because they did
not understand how to manoeuvre it in a scientific manner.
The lessons which the European invaders gave them time
after time, for more than 300 years, seem hardly to have
taught them to appreciate their mistakes. Even at the end
of this long period, and when it was too late to mend matters,
there was a vast inferiority in their tactics compared with