The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c21.176

v4.c21.176

The rains were now over; the Dasara festival was at hand,¹ and both sides prepared to take the field. The Bhāo Sāhib moved upstream, leaving Nāro Shankar with about 7000 Marāthās to garrison Delhi. The Abdālī was on the other side of the river: his army was slightly superior in numbers to that of his opponents, and the Durrānīs were men of great bodily strength, mounted on swift Turkī horses.² About seventy-eight miles north of Delhi lay the fortified post of Kunjpura, well-stocked with money and provisions, of which the Marāthās were in sore need, and commanding an important ford over the Jumna. It was held by Nijābat Khān with 10,000 picked Rohillas, and on 17 October the Bhāo Sāhib determined to attack it. It was taken by storm after a fierce bombardment by Ibrāhīm Khān’s heavy guns, and the garrison was put to the sword on the pretext that Nijābat Khān had been responsible for the death of Dattājī Sindia at Badāūn Ghāt. The Jumna was still in full flood and impassable, and Ahmad Shāh was forced to look on helplessly while his troops were cut to pieces. The bad discipline and the notorious love of plunder of the Marāthās now proved their undoing. While they were engaged in ransacking Kunjpura for treasure and celebrating the Dasara feast, they failed to keep the enemy on the further bank under observation. Ahmad Shāh cleverly slipped away and marched down stream. With the help of Shujā‘-ud-daula, he found a ford at Bāghpat, about twenty-five miles north of Delhi, and in spite of the flood, in two days he pushed his whole army across at all costs, losing numbers of men in the process. By this masterly stroke he placed himself between his opponents and their base. This was on 25 October. The Marāthās came up soon after and were repulsed with loss: had they arrived a little while earlier, they would have had the Afghāns at their mercy. Now that it was too late, the Marāthās attacked, but were driven off with loss, and fell back fighting on the little town of Pānīpat, about sixty miles north of Delhi. Holkar once more begged the Bhāo Sāhib to resume the old guerrilla tactics of the Marāthās, but Ibrāhīm Khān Gārdī threatened to turn his guns upon his own side if they deserted him. The Bhāo Sāhib therefore threw himself into Pānīpat, where with the help of Ibrāhīm Khān he proceeded to "dig himself in" in approved European fashion, throwing up a broad rampart with a ditch in front of it and mounting his cannon at regular intervals. He hoped to provoke the Durrānī to attack him, by means of raids upon his lines of communications, but the Afghān artillery was inferior to that of the Marāthās, and Ahmad Shāh was too old a soldier to be drawn into a conflict except on his own terms. He therefore proceeded to entrench himself also in a fortified camp with an *abattis* of felled trees, about eight miles away, between the enemy and the Jumna. By this fatal move, the Marāthās permanently lost the initiative, sacrificing also their mobility, which was their most valuable asset. But the Bhāo Sāhib made a still graver blunder. He had taken into the field his own wife and the wives of his officers, instead of leaving them behind at Delhi. The vast crowd of retainers and camp followers were bound to eat up the provisions of Pānīpat in a short time. Meanwhile, negotiations were proceeding behind the scenes. Shujā‘-ud-daula was still inclined towards peace, but Najib Khān, the sworn enemy of the Marāthās, again dissuaded Ahmad Shāh. "The Marāthās", he said, "are the thorn of Hindūstān: if they were out of the way, this empire might be Your Majesty's whenever you should please." The Bhāo Sāhib would not have been averse from an arrangement by which he should fall back behind the Chambal leaving northern India in the hands of the Abdālī. But such an idea met with strong opposition in Poona from Raghunāth Rāo, who was not unnaturally reluctant to see the fruits of his conquests abandoned.¹