At the Point of the Bayonet: A Tale of the Mahratta War

At the Point of the Bayonet: A Tale of the Mahratta War by G. A. Henty is a historical adventure novel that is set in the period of the armed conflict that ended the rule of the Mahratta confederacy and established British rule in India at the beginning of the 18th century.When the conflict starts, the Mahratta confederacy rules over a huge empire that stretches from Delhi to Bombay and from Allahabad to Rajputana. Though the confederacy seems to run the empire with steady hands, disintegration starts from the inside, with the jealousy in its top ranks, especially between its two leaders, Scindia and Holkar. Their strife weakened the empire, providing the British an opportunity to interfere, aggravating the conflict between confederate leaders. The war against the British was a cruel and long one that claimed lots of lives, but the ultimate conclusion of Henty’s book is that the Mahrattas deserved their fate.At the Point of the Bayonet is only one out of the numerous great adventure stories by Henty – altogether he wrote more than 120 historical novels, his most famous books being The Dragon and the Raven published in 1886, Under Drake’s Flag published in 1883 and In Freedom’s Cause dating from 1885.He started writing while he was a volunteer at the Crimean front – it was his father who spotted his son’s literary talent in the letters that Henty sent home from the front and he submitted the letters for review to the Morning Adviser where they got published instantly. Later Henty became a war correspondent and he reported from the Austro-Italian War, from Abyssinia, from the Franco-Prussian War and from many other armed conflicts.In his books, Henty combined his war experience, his interest in history and his vivid imagination and created quick-paced, adventurous and historically accurate stories for adults and young readers.