Yashwantrao Holkar

Yashwantrao Holkar was a Maratha ruler and commander who resisted both rival Maratha leaders and the British East India Company. He defeated forces of Scindia and the peshwa, occupied Pune and fought the British during the Second Anglo-Maratha War before negotiating peace.

Yashwantrao Holkar was born in Malwa and died in Bhanpura. Holkar’s 1802 victory at Poona displaced Peshwa Baji Rao II and helped trigger the Treaty of Bassein and wider Anglo-Maratha conflict; he remained one of the few major Maratha leaders to resist British power successfully for several years.

Anthony Morland’s The Maratha Checkmate places Yashwantrao Holkar within the unstable Maratha politics confronting Arthur Wellesley and the East India Company during the Second Anglo-Maratha War. As the fictional William Culpepper moves with Wellesley’s army from the restoration of the Peshwa towards Assaye and Gawilghur, Holkar represents one of the major independent Maratha powers whose shifting interests prevent the conflict from becoming a simple contest between a single Indian state and the Company.