Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c12.s1: § 1. Battle of Gangwāna, 1741; Last days of Jai Singh
Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c12.s1
- Language
- English
§ 1. Battle of Gangwāna, 1741; Last days of Jai Singh
v1.c12.s1.1
The invasion of Nādir Shah dealt such a shattering blow to the Empire of Delhi that after it the imperial authority was totally eliminated from Rājputana in all but the name. The Rājput princes were left entirely to themselves, to wrangle and fight within the confines of their own country, with the result of establishing a new master, the Marāthas, as the arbiter of their destinies. This change was rendered easier because in the course of the next eleven years all the last Rājput princes who had counted for anything in imperial politics were removed from the scene,—Sawāi Jai Singh in 1743, Abhay Singh in 1749, and Ishwari Singh in 1750. The smaller men who succeeded them and who could not look up to any great suzerain for support, were naturally powerless to make a stand against the Marāthas.
v1.c12.s1.2
Maharajah Abhay Singh of Jodhpur became in his later years intoxicated with pride from his defeat of Sarbuland Khan and accumulation of riches in the *subah* of Gujrāt of which he was viceroy. The Rajah of Bikānir, representing a junior but independent branch of the Rāthor clan, was nominally subordinate to the Maharajah of Mārwār as the head of his clan. Abhay Singh declared war on him for some slight offence and led an army to besiege his capital. Bakht Singh, the younger brother of Abhay Singh, ever on the watch for an opportunity to overthrow his brother, induced Jai Singh of Jaipur to champion the cause of Bikānir. Jai Singh in his cups sent a letter of threat to Abhay Singh, bidding him raise the siege, and the latter replied with defiance saying that it was a purely domestic quarrel between two Rāthor families and no business of the Kachhwā chieftain. War followed between the two States, and Jai Singh hastened from Agra to the defence of his own realm, because Bakht Singh had suddenly changed his policy out of regard for the honour of his own clan and made a raid into Jaipur territory, plundering many villages. A levee *en masse* of Jaipur vassals and allies, including Hādās, Jādavs of Kerāuli, Sisodias of Shāhpurā, Khichi Chauhāns and Jāts, as well as three Muslim generals who had been sent by the Emperor to Agra to assist Jai Singh in keeping the Marāthas out of the North, marched by way of Ajmir towards Mārwār. With this vast but disjointed host of a hundred thousand men, Jai Singh reached Gangwānā, 11 miles north-east of the Pushkar lake, and encamped, with his guns planted in front. The Marwar army was hopelessly outnumbered. But Bakht Singh, at the head of only one thousand Rāthor horsemen, desperate like himself, charged the enemy, swept through the line of guns, and fell upon Jai Singh’s troops, “like tigers among a flock of sheep.” Nothing could stand their onset.* Many thousands of the Jaipur troops were slain and many more wounded, mostly without fighting. The Kachhwā army fled away, and within four hours the field, covering some square miles, was entirely cleared as by magic of all save the dead and the wounded.
v1.c12.s1.3
Jai Singh fell back two miles and stood for some time almost alone and in perplexity. The three imperial generals, who had not been attacked, coolly kept their places in the field (‘near Pahāri’), though their followers had caught the panic and fled away, leaving only a hundred men out of nearly ten thousand to support them. By this time Bakht Singh’s gallant band had been reduced from a thousand to seventy men only and he himself was wounded. Just then the three imperial generals, who had formed a rallying centre for more of their men, fired their rockets on Bakht Singh and his group. This unexpected renewal of attack on a field which he believed to have been won and where he could see no enemy before him, was more than what he and his small remnant of Rāthors could bear; so he turned the rein for his stronghold of Nāgor. Jai Singh, thus miraculously saved from a field where his army had reaped nothing but shame, took the road to his capital. This battle was fought on 28th May 1741, and was shortly followed by peace between the two States.
v1.c12.s1.4
∗ The best account of this battle is by the eye-witness Harcharandas in *Chahār Gulzār*, 377b-379b. Date in *Vir Vinod*, (new style, which I have adjusted to old style.) *Vam. Bh.* 3304-3312, Tod, (ii. Marwar ch. 11.) Harcharan exaggerates the casualties as 12,000 slain and the same number wounded. He gives a horrid picture of the battlefield as it looked when he walked among the dead the next day. A similar desperate charge was made by Rathor horsemen upon the still more modern and powerful artillery of De Boigne near Mairta on 11 Sep. 1790, with the same butchery. (Tod, ii. Personal Narrative, ch. 29.)
v1.c12.s1.5
§ 2. Ishwari Singh’s struggles with his brother.
v1.c12.s1.6
This was the last battle at which Jai Singh was present. He died on 21st September 1743 and was succeeded by his eldest son Ishwari Singh, whose reign of seven years was one long struggle with his younger brother Mādho Singh and Mādho Singh’s supporters, Rajput and Marātha. Shortly after Jai Singh’s death Mahārānā Jagat Singh of Mewār took the field to wrest the Jaipur throne for his nephew Mādho Singh and advanced to the village of Jāmoli, 5 miles south-west of Jahājpur (which is 11 miles south of Deoli cantonment), at the end of 1743. Here he halted for 40 days, a Jaipur force facing him; but no battle took place and peace was finally made by Ishwari Singh promising to give his brother a large appanage. [*Vam. Bh.* 3328 puts the annual yield of the promised estate at 5 *lakhs* and the Marathi letters at 24 *lakhs* of Rupees.] But Mādho Singh would be content with nothing less than half his father's heritage, for we find him often afterwards rising against his elder brother. Early in February 1745 one such attempt was nipped in the bud, when the Maratha partisans of Ishwari Singh surprised the Mahārānā's camp at midnight, fired into it and put the Mewār troops to flight at dawn. Mādho Singh and his uncle escaped to Udaipur and Ishwari Singh repudiated his former agreement.*
v1.c12.s1.7
∗ *Vamsha Bhāskar*, 3380. This work (written about 1835) says that the Mahārānā was released by the Marāthas only on promising them 22 *lakhs* of Rupees. But Marāthi records show this to be an error. What the Mahārānā did was to send his agent Kanirām to Malhar, promising most solemnly to pay the Marāthas a reward of 20 *lakhs* of Rupees if they could secure for Mādho Singh a *jāgir* of 24 *lakhs* a year from Ishwari Singh. To induce the Peshwā to accept the offer, Malhar informed him that Safdar Jang and Āmir Khān were on the side of Mādho Singh, so that the Emperor and his Court were not likely to be antagonised towards the
v1.c12.s1.8
In 1747 an unprecedentedly severe famine raged throughout Rājputānā and Western India. There was an utter failure of the seasonal rains; no crop could grow; the water-courses dried up; not a green blade could be seen anywhere; month after month a dusty haze covered the horizon and never a drop of rain or dew. The cattle perished for want of fodder and men from the dearth of grain. As a Marātha observer wrote, "Men, it seems, cannot get even water for washing their faces. The whole country has been desolated. Even Udaipur is gone; the Mahārānā has decided to vacate his city and go to the bank of the Dhebār lake and live there" [S. P. D. xxi. 19.] Ummed Singh was driven to sell his best elephant to meet his wants. In Gujrāt this famine was popularly known as *Trilotra* (i.e., that of the Vikram year 1803) and the people ate up the seeds of grass and died of flux in consequence; many villages were utterly depopulated and remained untenanted for years afterwards. [*Mirāt-i-Ahmadi*, ii. 364—366. *Vam. Bh.*, 3446—'49.] And yet the Rājputs did not cease their fratricidal contests. Ishwari Singh kept up his army on a war footing on the strength
v1.c12.s1.9
Marāthas by their partisanship of Mādho Singh. [S.P.D., xxvii. 18 and 19. These letters are conjecturally dated by the editor August 1746, but seem to have been written several months earlier. The subject is continued in *Aiti. Patra*, ii. 68 and 76.]
v1.c12.s1.10
of his purse and the Mahārānā in reliance on the Peshwā’s backing. [S. P. D., ii. 4.]
v1.c12.s1.11
Ummed Singh Hādā (the dispossessed heir of Bundi) and Mādho Singh (the defeated claimant to the throne of Jaipur) met the Mahārānā at Nāthdwārā on 4th Oct. 1746, and formed plans for avenging their late defeats at the hands of Ishwari Singh. They sent agents to Kālpi to hire the troops of Malhar Rāo Holkar, offering him two lakhs of Rupees. Malhar, against the advice of his colleagues Rānoji Sindhia and Rāmchandra Bābā Shenvi, sent his son Khande Rāo at the head of a thousand horse to support these three Rājput chiefs and enforce the following demands which the allies were agreed upon, namely that Ishwari Singh should (i) cede the four parganas of Tonk Todā Mālpura and Newāi to Mādho Singh, (ii) restore Bundi to Ummed Singh Hādā on condition of his becoming an ally of Ishwari Singh in future and paying the war expenses of the Marāthas, and (iii) allow the three parganas of Nenvé Samidhi and Karwar to be held by Rāo Rajah Durjan Sāl of Kotā and Pratāp Singh Hādā (heir of Karwar.) [S. P. D., ii. 3.]
v1.c12.s1.12
§ 3. Battle of Rajmahal, March 1747.
v1.c12.s1.13
Marching from Kālpi into Rājputānā, Khande Rāo was joined at Udaipur by the contingent of Durjan Sāl of Kotā (patron of Ummed Singh) and the Mewār forces. The allied army, thus swollen to vast numbers, crossed the Jaipur frontier and reached Rājmahal (ten miles north of Deoli cantonment and south of a bend in the Banās river) where Ishwari Singh’s general Nārāyan-dās confronted it. The rival armies encamped two miles apart. Meantime efforts at peace were made both from Delhi and Jaipur. Ishwari Singh’s counsellors and even his general Nārāyandās,—who had hastened alone from the front to the capital at the pacific appeal of the Udaipur minister,—urged him to avoid an engagement and try negotiations for peace, lest the Mahārānā and the Marāthas should be made enemies for ever by an armed conflict. But Ishwari Singh decided to hasten to his frontier and beat the invaders before the Mahārānā could come up and swell their number. He transferred the command of his advanced division to Haragovind Nātāni, a tradesman by caste but an exceptionally brave and able general, and himself arrived with the reserve one day’s march behind the fighting front.
v1.c12.s1.14
The battle* began at noon on Sunday the 1st of March 1747 and ended at sunset the next day.
v1.c12.s1.15
∗ Rajmahal : S.P.D., ii. 3, 4, xxi. 24. Vam. Bh. 3460-'68 (year wrong.)
v1.c12.s1.16
The allies were completely defeated, though both sides suffered heavily. Each contingent of this ill-knit confederate army had been attacked and routed in succession through the skilful planning and personal leadership of Haragovind. The only stand was made by a Kotā vassal, the laird of Koilāpur-Patan. Mādho Singh’s standard-bearing elephant and band, all his artillery and camp-baggage, were captured by the Jaipur troops. At night the victors slept in the deserted camp of the Mewār army. During the battle, Khande Rāo, who in the usual Marātha manner had stood apart watching for an opportunity to plunder, fell upon the Jaipur camp in conjunction with Bhopat-rām Chāran, the Hādā general, but was repulsed by the Shekhāwat guard, though after looting some property.
v1.c12.s1.17
From the lost field, Durjan Sāl fled to Kotā, and Khande Rāo retreated to Bundelkhand. The Mahārānā who was coming up in support, turned rein from the way, on hearing of the disaster, and sought refuge in his capital.
v1.c12.s1.18
It was a great victory. Ishwari Singh arrived on the scene after the fight and took up the pursuit. Mewār now felt the heavy hand of the victor; its rich trade-centre at Bhilwārā was captured and the merchants held to ransom. The Mahārānā then begged for peace, which was granted and Ishwari Singh returned in triumph to his own capital (April 1747.) A continuation of the war was impossible; grain was selling at famine prices and even a bundle of grass cost a Rupee; the Mahārānā's war expenses had run up to Rs. 12,000 a day and his sterile dominion could not bear the burden longer. [Vam. Bh., 3472.]
v1.c12.s1.19
Towards the end of this year Ishwari Singh was appealed to by the Emperor to come to his aid for repelling the Abdāli invasion from the north-west. The Mahārājah demanded the imperial fort of Rantambhor as the price of his support, and when it was refused he lingered on the way at Mathura for weeks together, arriving at Delhi only on 24th December 1747. In the battle with the Abdāli at Mānupur (11th March 1748) he turned tail at the very beginning of the fighting and fled precipitately back to his own country, throwing his guns and kettledrums into wells to lighten his baggage! All the credit he had gained by his victory at Rajmahal was thus lost, and he shut himself up as if dumb-foundered in his capital. [S. P. D., xxvii. 30.]
Linked texts (2)
- Selections from the Peshwa Daftar — Marathi
- Vaṃśabhāskar — Sūryamall Miśraṇ 1840, raj