Scindias of Gwalior

Rise

Ranoji Scindia was one of Bajirao I's commanders, granted territory in Malwa as the Marathas advanced north. His descendants built from it one of the four great houses of the Maratha confederacy.

Mahadji Scindia, who took over after Panipat, is the outstanding figure. He rebuilt Maratha power in the north, took Delhi in 1771 and restored Shah Alam II to the throne as a client, and from 1784 governed northern India in the emperor's name as regent of the empire.

The brigades

Mahadji's other innovation was military. He engaged the Savoyard officer Benoît de Boigne to raise infantry brigades trained, drilled and equipped on European lines, with their own artillery — and these forces beat Rajput and Mughal armies repeatedly and gave the British serious difficulty at Assaye and Laswari in 1803.

The Scindia arsenal at Agra was among the best in India, and the ordnance the British captured from it was of higher quality than some of their own.

The state

Defeat in the Second and Third Anglo-Maratha Wars reduced Gwalior to a princely state, though a large and wealthy one. It moved its capital to Gwalior fort in 1810 and built the Jai Vilas palace in the 1870s, with a durbar hall carrying two chandeliers said to be the heaviest ever hung.

In 1857 the Gwalior contingent joined the rebellion while the maharaja remained loyal to the British; Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi and Tatya Tope seized the fort, and Lakshmibai was killed nearby. The state acceded to India in 1948, and the family has remained prominent in Indian politics since.