The end of the Peshwa
Shaniwar Wada, Pune
After Khadki and Koregaon, Baji Rao II surrenders in June 1818; the Peshwa's lands are annexed and the Maratha confederacy ends.
The third Anglo-Maratha war grew out of the Company's campaign against the Pindaris in 1817 and the Peshwa's attack on the British Residency at Pune. Baji Rao II was beaten at Khadki on 5 November 1817, and the Union Jack went up over his palace at Shaniwar Wada on 17 November. The Bhonsle of Nagpur and the Holkar army were defeated within weeks, at Sitabuldi and Mahidpur.
Baji Rao surrendered to John Malcolm on 3 June 1818 and was pensioned off to Bithur near Kanpur, where his adopted son Nana Sahib grew up. The Peshwa's territories went to the Bombay Presidency, and a small state was revived at Satara for the Chhatrapati. The map of western and central India was now the Company's to draw.
On 1 January 1818 about 800 Company sepoys, many of them Mahars, held the village of Koregaon on the Bhima against a much larger part of the Peshwa's army, which broke off that night as General Joseph Smith's division approached. The British obelisk there records a victory; whether it was one or a standoff is disputed. Since Ambedkar's visit in 1927 the site has been a place of Dalit commemoration, and what it stands for is contested.
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- colonial
- political