The Peshwah’s army flying from Brigadier Doveton’s division, was intercepted by Lieutenant-Colonel Adams, who immediately attacked with the cavalry and horse artillery, driving the enemy from position to position.[73] “Great praise,” says Colonel Blacker, “has been given to the horse artillery on this occasion, and, from a comparison of several accounts of this affair, whatever loss was sustained by the enemy is chiefly attributable to their fire. The ground was unfavourable for cavalry, yet the guns, by admirable exertion, were advanced and the cavalry may be said to have only covered them.”[74] It must be borne in mind, too, that these exertions were preceded by a march of unparalleled length. Captain Rodber was sent from Nagpoor to join Colonel Adams’s force, and in a letter written many years afterwards, he says, “I could not have gone less than ninety miles. At 1 A.M., on the 16th April, I commenced my march (after going the previous day eighteen miles over an execrable road, large loose stones and hills) to join Colonel Adams at Hingun ghat; on the road I received a letter, informing me that Colonel Adams had marched and encamped at Alundaboo; this information obliged me to retrace my road for some distance; I reached the colonel’s camp between 2 and 3 P.M. (I am quite positive to the time exactly); I could not have gone less than fifty-six miles, as I pushed on. At 8 P.M., same day, I mounted again, and moved with the detachment in pursuit of the Peshwah, and was not dismissed till between 12 and 1 next day. About six of the last miles were over a succession of wooded heights covered with large loose stones, and hollows deep and wide enough to hide both gun and horses in. From what we see of roads in any part of India I have visited, no notion can be formed of the ways here; in a march sometimes you have to cross seven or eight nullahs with swampy bottoms and difficult approaches.” In the same letter Captain Rodber, speaking of this service, says, “I dined with Jenkins (at Nagpoor) the night before I marched, and late some of his hurkarus came in and reported that the Peshwah’s army had got round Colonel Adams, and was in full march on Nagpoor, said to have eighty guns, and 10,000 Arabs, and a number of horse. It was not for me to say a word about my little party marching into the very jaws of this host, but I thought it very inconsiderate allowing me to move. I remember one morning, when quite dark, a trooper from the advance guard coming into the line, and declaring he heard the noise of horses’ feet, and when I had satisfied myself of the fact, I put all in the most defensible position, firmly believing it was the van of the Peshwah’s army; it proved, however, a large body of the Nizam’s horse, sent to me by the colonel; I do not know that I ever felt greater relief.”