Baji Rao II

3 June 1818, near Asirgarh

After prolonged negotiations, Peshwa Baji Rao II surrendered on 3 June 1818 to Sir John Malcolm, an East India Company general and political officer, near Dholkot, close to Asirgarh.

It was a negotiated submission rather than a battlefield capture. Roughly 8,000 men were still with him, but Company forces had blocked his routes north and were closing in from several directions, and he was in country he did not know.

The terms Malcolm offered

Malcolm promised an annual maintenance of at least eight lakh rupees — 800,000 a year. In return Baji Rao gave up his sovereignty as peshwa and accepted removal from the Deccan.

Malcolm sent his political assistants John Low and John Macdonald to negotiate those points. The British had also demanded Trimbakji Dengle, the minister blamed for Gangadhar Shastri's murder; Baji Rao did not deliver him, and he was captured separately later in June.

Bithur, and what the surrender did not do

The governor-general ratified Malcolm's terms. Bithur, near Kanpur, was chosen as Baji Rao's residence, and he was conducted there under Company supervision.

The office of peshwa was extinguished, but every Maratha territory was not swept up at once: Satara, Nagpur, Indore and Gwalior each followed a different political settlement.

The terms were controversial among British officials at the time, who held that the defeated peshwa had been in no position to bargain at all.