John Pester

To Fight the Mahrattas: The Journal of an Officer of the 2nd Bengal Native Infantry 1802-1806 John Pester

An essential account of the conquest of India

It is perhaps surprising that although India was the brightest jewel in the British Imperial Crown. there is comparatively little in print today about the many wars which were fought to win it. These had raged for nearly a century before the Sikhs of the Punjab were subjugated and the Sepoy Army rose in rebellion in the middle of the nineteenth century. The Duke of Wellington fought his hardest won victory, by his own assessment, in India at Assaye during the Second Mahratta War before he set foot in Iberia or bested Napoleon on the slopes of Waterloo. This is the story of a much more humble British soldier-an officer of the Bengal Army during the war against Scindia and Holkar. This is a substantial book-a diary-written in great detail by a man of the times. Pester takes us on campaign, onto the battlefield and to the assault in great sieges. His account of sporting life in the Indian jungles makes no less entertaining reading.