Maj Gen Shashikant Pitre

Bajirao Peshwa Maj Gen Shashikant Pitre

Bajirao Peshwa (1800-1840 AD) was an outstanding cavalry leader who transformed the Maratha Swarajya founded by Chhatrapati Shivaji into Maratha Samrajya in a matter of twenty years. His military vision can be rightly compared to immortal cavalry leaders Napoleon Bonaparte and Frederik the Great. During the short span of twenty years of his military career, he fought about forty battles and remained unconquered without losing even one. When he was called to Peshwaship in 1720, the Maratha state was in a perilous condition. At his death, he left the Maratha nation strong and united, its friendship solicited by Rajputs, the Bundelas and its alliance courted by the Mughal rulers.

This is an account of Bajirao's life and times based on available chronicles and can be termed as a military biography. The main motive of the Author is to dissect the bewildering and ingenious strategy and tactics of Bajirao, a cavalry general of immense magnificence, whose unique vision of manoeuvre and subterfuge has remained largely unrecognised by the military historians. It is a book on a 'Soldiers' General' by another soldier who was immensely overawed by Bajirao's 'divine' generalship right from the young age. It is an apt eulogy to Bajirao's military brilliance and prodigious generalship.