The ousted proprietors fight "to the death" to recover possession; and the new man forms a gang of the most atrocious ruffians he can collect, to defend his possession.

He cannot afford to pay them, and permits them to subsist on plunder.

In the contest the estate itself and many around it become waste, and the fellow who has usurped it, often--nolens-volens--becomes a systematic leader of banditti; and converts the deserted villages into strongholds and dens of robbers.

I shall have occasion to describe many instances of this kind as I proceed in my Diary.
Dursung Sing was strong both in troops and Court favour, and he systematically plundered and kept down the great landholders throughout the districts under his charge, but protected the cultivators, and even the smaller land proprietors, whose estates could not be conveniently added to his own.

When the Court found the barons in any district grow refractory, under weak governors, they gave the contract of it to Dursun Sing, as the only officer who could plunder and reduce them to order.