Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c27.s14: § 16. How Shuja-ud-daulah was won over to Abdali's side
Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c27.s14
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§ 16. How Shuja-ud-daulah was won over to Abdali's side
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The Nawāb of Oudh possessed by far the strongest army and best artillery in Northern India. His Gosain troops were the most reckless fighters among the Hindus and formed a compact brotherly corps of ten thousand horse and foot, and he had besides a number of able and devoted Shia officers in his service. Each side held out to Shujā the bait of making him the wazir of Delhi after placing Shah Alam on the imperial throne.* On behalf of Abdāli, Mālika-i-Zamāni, the honoured widow of the Emperor Muhammad Shah, visited Shujā, and later Jahān Khan (the Durrāni commander-in-chief) and Najib Khan (the invader's plenipotentiary in his Indian diplomacy.) The Bhāu tried hard, by means of special ambassadors (Shyāmji Ranganath) and personal letters to counteract this move. He assured Shujā that it was the duty of both of them to bring about the restoration of the Timurid dynasty at Delhi and that the Marathas' sole aim was to administer the empire in concert with him in the way best for all. But it was well known that Maratha support alone had enabled Imād-ul-mulk to murder two Emperors and all but succeed in killing a third ; hence, the Bhāu's present anxiety for the glory and welfare of the Delhi royalty was hardly convincing. He next appealed to Shujā's mother in the name of the old friendship that had existed between the Marathas and her husband. But she could not forget that they had, ever since his expulsion from the wazirship, backed Imād, the mortal enemy of the house of Oudh and of the Shia sect in general.
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∗ Raj. i. 187, 179, 189, 191, 196, 215, 236. SPD. ii. 127. Imād. 75, 79-81. Mux. 179. Husain Shahi, 53. Mujmil. 127.
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Shujā's clear-sighted advisers saw that the victory of the Abdāli king would in no way injure their master's interests, while a Maratha triumph would be ruinous to him. Ahmad Shah, as every one knew, was determined not to live in India nor create an Indian empire of his own; he was sure to go away after his Indian expeditions, leaving Delhi and its government in the hands of his Indo-Muslim supporters. But the Marathas were natives of the land, their northern ambition was boundless and had been fully unmasked since their Delhi expedition of August 1757. They had been openly demanding the surrender of Shujā’s most lucrative cities, Allahabad and Benares, and he had barely managed to evade compliance with this demand up to now, but could not hope to practise his delaying tactics for ever. Their design to annex Bihār as soon as they would be free from their entanglement with Abdālī, had been publicly avowed in 1759, and once in possession Bihār, they were sure to seize Shujā’s province of Allahabad, which would otherwise have interposed a troublesome alien wedge between their territories east and west of it. It was therefore Shujā’s true interest to defeat the Maratha designs in the North.
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When Najib Khan on his diplomatic mission from Abdālī reached Qānauj on the Ganges, Shujā came to the opposite bank at Mahdiganj. An envoy of such exalted rank was entitled to the highest respect and attention on personal grounds. Najib waited on Shujā and presented Abdālī’s letter soliciting an alliance with him. In reply the Nawāb showed him the Bhāu’s letter which pointed out the friendship of the Peshwā with Shujā’s late father and urged the duty of the two to reinstate the Emperor of Delhi by expelling the foreign invader from India and giving the imperial Chancellorship to Shujā, as the ex-wazir’s son. Najib, on the other hand, pressed the Nawāb of Oudh to side with Ahmad Shah in this conflict between Islam and infidelity. Shujā was at first loth to commit himself, and proposed to remain neutral. He was a notorious profligate and drunkard, nursed in the lap of unimaginable luxury and extravagance from his childhood upwards, and he naturally preferred ease and enjoyment at Lucknow to the hardships of a campaign. His family feared lest Abdālī should still be harbouring vindictive feelings towards the House of Oudh for Safdar Jang’s victory over him at Manupur in 1748, or that the Durrānī nobles should insult him when he was once in their power. He was India-born, and such men are regarded with contempt by the natives of Persia and Afghanistan (vilāyet-zā.) Above all, he was a Shia, while the Abdālī was a Sunni champion. Therefore, life in the Abdālī camp threatened to be intolerable for him.
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These misgivings were answered by Najib, who pledged his honour and took the most solemn oaths to assure Shujā of the fullest safety and honour if he visited Abdālī. The ambassador warmed up and exclaimed, “What have you to do with the nobles in Abdālī’s camp? God be my witness that if the Shāh himself frowns at your Highness, I shall immediately dig his two eyes out. If I do not do it, I am not my father’s son. There are 1½ lakhs of Afghans in India; consider them as your servants. If any other envoy had come and you had rejected his message, I should have not have complained. But as I have come, putting my faith in your grace, listen to my words. Do one of two things now: either go to Abdālī’s side, or here is my dagger and here my neck; cut it with your own hand. If you so desire, I shall give you a writing, sealed with my seal, absolving you from the consequences of my murder.” His persistence and reputation for sincerity overcame Shujā’s fears and hesitation, and the Nawāb of Oudh at last agreed to go if Najib could bring for him a signed safe-conduct and the robe of investiture as imperial wazir from Abdālī.
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The successful ambassador turned back to Koil (beginning of June.) Abdālī sent the required letter and promise, and Shujā after some further wavering and an attempt to go towards Bihār and join Shah Alam (who had been defeated by the English) finally cast his lot in with Abdālī. His mother, the imperious daughter of Burhān-ul-mulk Sadat Khan, who watched over him like a guardian angel, had been most doubtful about his safety among the hated Afghans and the wisdom of alienating the Marathas. His old officers, true to the traditions of Safdar Jang’s time, had spoken in support of a Maratha alliance. But all had failed before Najib.
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Escorted by 7,000 picked horsemen and a devoted Gosain corps with a good park of artillery, Shujā made a start, early in July, for the Abdālī camp at Anupshahar. Some miles outside the place, he was welcomed in advance by Shāh Wali Khan the Durrānī wazir and then conducted to Ahmād Shāh’s presence (18 July), where he was received with the highest honours and given the title of that sovereign's son, *Farzand Khān*. *
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This was the most splendid diplomatic success of Najib. The Marathas now had not a single Delhi grandee left on their side.
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§ 17. *Abdali's difficulties during his encampment in the Doab; Najib's services.*
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When the rainy season fully set in (during July), Abdāli removed from the neighbourhood of Aligarh to the high ground on the west bank of the Ganges at Anupshahar and cantoned there. The swollen river and rain-soaked plains made the movement of troops impossible before next October, and Abdāli, wishing to lessen the pressure on the food and fodder supply of his neighbourhood, allowed the Ruhelas to go back to their homes beyond the Ganges for two months (August and September.) Throughout these two months peace talks went on between Shujā and the Bhāu, but nothing resulted from them, as the Bhāu's head had been turned by his capture of Delhi and he refused to agree to any reasonable compromise. The intelligence he was receiving from the Afghan camp during the rainy season confirmed his belief that the invading army would be starved into surrender or dissolve through internal dissension. For, during these two months and a half Abdālī was really in a difficult and alarming position. His army was saved from disaster only by his iron will and influence over his troops, Najib’s unfailing loyalty and resourcefulness, and the safe strategic position which the invaders had chosen in the upper Doāb with no enemy left near them on the land side, their western flank protected by the raging Jamunā and eastern flank bordering on the fertile and friendly countries of the Ruhelas and Shujā. But he needed money for feeding his troops. Famine prices were then raging, and, as a Maratha officer wrote, it cost Rs. 200 to maintain a trooper and his horse for a month. The Doāb had been ravaged by almost unceasing war and rebellion ever since 1756, and large tracts of fertile country had lapsed into the jungle. The provisions for the Afghan army had to be bought in distant places like the Ambālā and Karnāl districts and Rohilkhand and Oudh, and transported at heavy cost to Anupshahar. The few lakhs paid by Najib were soon exhausted, and Ahmad Shah had to press the Indian Ruhelas for contribution, saying that he had come not to found an empire for himself, but to rescue them from the Marathas. They pleaded poverty.
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∗ Govind Ballal from Tirwa, 10 m. s. of Qanauj, gives (on 29 Aug.) the following intelligence : The day after Shuja's arrival at Anupshahar Abdali offered to give him investiture as wazir, but the former replied, 'Who is the Emperor? Whose wazir am I going to be? You sit on the imperial throne and I shall serve you as wazir. Why are you making me ridiculous by giving me the robes of an office without the functions?' [Raj. i. 236.]
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He next turned to Shujā, who was reputed to be the richest prince in Hindustan after the Jāt Rajah. Early in August he told the Nawāb, "You are a grandee, with two *krores'* worth of territory under you. I am hard pressed by the increasing arrears of my soldiers' pay. Make some arrangement for it." The request was a veiled threat of extortion, and Shujā in consequence had a rupture with Najib who had induced him to come within Abdālī's clutches, and the Nawāb in his inner council repented of having chosen the Afghan side. In addition to this want of money and foodstuffs, the monsoon months are unusually unhealthy in the Doāb. In the cantonments at Anupshahar ten thousand of his horses camels and mules had perished of disease by the midddle of September, and more were dying daily. [Raj. i. 247, 246.]
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To aggravate these difficulties, backsliding appeared among his Indo-Muslim allies except the one constant Najib; Shujā sulked in his tents repenting of having joined Abdālī; the timid Ahmad Bangash and Sadullah Ruhela of Rāmpur, alarmed by the Maratha conquest of Delhi, began to intrigue secretly with the Bhāu and his agent in the middle Doab, Govind Ballāl; some Turki troops of Abdali (Miskin says the remnant of the Sindagh mercenaries) left his camp in disappointment and offered their services to the Marathas. [Raj. i. 236, 237, 244.] But the Bhāu could not take advantage of this distress of his enemy; he had no clever and energetic lieutenant nor any efficient troops in the Doāb. The fat old revenue-collector Govind Ballāl with his rabble retainers could do nothing greater than taking petty mud-forts from the zamindars and their rustic militia. He could not even lead forays into the undefended trans-Ganges country, as the bitter experience of his attempted raid on Najibabad and disastrous flight in November 1759 (under Dattāji’s orders from Shukartal) was still fresh in his memory.
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§ 18. *Abdali crosses at Bāghpat and marches to Panipat.*
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Abdāli, like a veteran general, grimly set his teeth and kept his army together, till his chance came towards the end of October. By reason of the flooded Jamunā he had not been able to raise a finger to save Delhi or Kunjpurā. And now the massacre of his partisans in the latter city roused him to the fury of impotent rage. “When the sack of Kunjpurā was reported to Ahmad Shah, his heart was inflamed to the extreme. Calling his Afghan generals together he told them that he could not bear it that while he was alive Afghan people should be so dishonoured.” [Nur-ud-din, 35b.] He had moved to Shāhdara, facing Delhi, sometime at the beginning of October, only to look helplessly across the Jamunā till the river should become fordable again. The fall of Kunjpurā forced his hands. On the 20th of that month he marched northwards and arrived within four *kos* of Bāghpat. Here he halted for four days to find out if the river could be forded. Some of his Durrānis who drove their horses into the river for discovering a fordable passage were swept away by the current and drowned. His Indo-Muslim allies, with all their local knowledge and influence, failed to provide a guide. So, the Shah fasted and prayed to God for two days, and on the third a ford was at last found. This miraculous reward of his piety roused the enthusiasm of the army to the highest pitch. The narrow passage across was lined with posts to mark it off from the deep water on the two sides, where men and horses would be drowned. The vanguard plunged into the river on 25th October, the day following the full moon, and reached the other bank in safety.
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The Shah himself followed (26th) when half the army had crossed over. The river bank on the other side was boggy and had been churned into a sticky mud pool by the passage of thousands; but the numberless *jhau* bushes growing near were cut by the willing hands of the soldiers,—the grand wazir setting the example,—and thrown in to form a dry landing place. Some boats were seized on the western bank and these were employed in ferrying the camp baggage and heavy armament over. Three days were occupied in completing the crossing for the whole army. Owing to the hurry and the crowd, some thousands of men were drowned, but the Maratha grand army was at last caught in a trap.¹
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¹ Shah fords Jamunā at Bāghpat,—Kashirāj (best.) DC. Nur-ud-din, 36-37. *Mujmil*, 129. *Imad* 188. Raj. i. 260, 261.
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On the 27th the Shāh began his advance from the west bank of the river. At an upper ferry east of Sonepat a Maratha patrol, less than a thousand strong, mostly second line troops or militiamen,—was posted to oppose any Afghan attempt at crossing. They were keeping watch in their usual slack and sleepy way, when 4,000 Durrānī horse under Shah Pasand Khan, guided by Najib’s men, surprised them by hard riding and cut off the entire force. That night the Shah slept in Fakhru’s garden, two miles north of Sonepat city. [Nur-ud-din, DC.] “On the 28th, at three quarters of the day, the Maratha vanguard [really advanced patrols] were sighted near Sarai Sambhālka. From our side a force went to meet them and a battle was fought, with two to three thousand casualties in the two armies taken together,--but more on the Maratha side and less on the Durrānī. In the evening the Marathas retreated and the Shah’s detachment fell back to their place of camping.” [Kāshirāj]. The Shah then advanced to Ganaur (9 miles north of Sonepat and 8 miles south of Sambhālka), where he halted for three days (28-30 Oct.), and on the 31st reached Sambhālka, 12 miles south of Panipat. On 1st November he arrived five miles nearer to Panipat and established contact with the main enemy force holding that town.
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I. *The relative strength of the two armies at Panipat.*
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According to Kashiraj Pandit, Ahmad Shah took a muster of his army one day before the Dasaharā, *i.e.*, on 18th October, 1760, which showed 41,800 horse and 38,000 foot under his banners. He continues, after giving the strength of each contingent in detail, "These made altogether 40,000 horse and 40,000 foot. Out of this total, 30,000 cavalry and 10,000 infantry (composed of the heroic tiger-cubs of Kābul) and two thousand camel-swivels belonged to the Shah, and the rest to his Indian allies." This totalling must be considered as a rough one, as it does not quite agree with the detailed numbers he himself has given before; *e.g.*, in the details he has missed out the 10,000 Kabuli infantry whose name occurs also in the account of the battle, while the Indo-Muslim auxiliaries total 51,000 against the 40,000 which would be left to them if in an army of 80,000 the Durranis numbered 40,000. Four thousand infantry, each carrying a zamburak, were mounted on 2,000 camels; these and the gunners serving Abdali's 70 to 80 pieces of cannon are evidently included in the above total of 40,000, though in that age the musketeers were placed under the artillery department and not counted among the cavalry or infantry.
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We may, therefore, take it as approximately correct that Abdali's fighting force was divided into two equal halves of about 40,000 men each,—the Durrāni portion (including the camel corps and unspecified infantry) being composed of 30,000 horse and 10,000 foot, and the Indian portion of the same number of men, but in the inverse proportion of horse to foot, namely 10,000 and 30,000 respectively. The Indian Ruhela army consisted preponderantly of foot musketeers.
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The Bhāu held his muster a day later, which showed 55,000 horse and 15,000 foot (including 9,000 disciplined sepoys under Ibrāhim Khan Gārdi), or a total strength of 60,000.
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As for the irregulars, on Ahmad Shah’s side, “they were four times the number [of the regular Durrāni troops mentioned above], and their horses and arms were very little inferior to those of the regular Durrānis. In action it was their custom, immediately after the regulars had charged and broken the enemy, to fall upon them sword in hand, and complete the rout. All the Durrānis were men of great bodily strength, and their horses of the Turki breed; naturally very hardy and rendered still more so by continual exercise.” [Kashiraj, 12-13.] On the Maratha side there were 15,000 Pindharis (Chorghori and Hul sawar.) These were employed in ransacking the battle-field and searching for the wounded of their side, after the fighting was over, and they could not therefore be used as reinforcements to turn the tide of an obstinately contested battle. In fact, their valour was reserved for unarmed peasants, defenceless women, and footsore solitary stragglers, and they were more of a danger to their own employers (by eating up the available grain and grass supply of the neighbourhood) than to their foes.
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The above figures, though correct for 19th October 1760, were modified to a great extent in the battle of 14th January 1761. The wastage of war between these two dates did not exactly cancel each other, because (i) the Maratha casualties at Kunjpura, some 800 to 1,000, were not set off in the Durrānī army, as the latter did not participate in that fight, (ii) in the intervening two and a half months’ skirmishing the Bhāu’s losses exceeded those of the Shah by one-half or even two-thirds, and (iii) Ahmad Shah received reinforcements from home a month before the final battle, and this body may be safely estimated at about 8,000 men (viz., 2,000 regulars and 6,000 irregulars or more correctly raw recruits and apprentices.) These last were really soldiers in the making, born fighters, only lacking in the discipline and experience of their regular brethren.
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Hence, the odds against the Marathas at Panipat were approximately 60,000 against 40,000 actually present in the field; but behind the Afghan fighting line there were about 80,000 second class troops as against 15,000 Pindharis. Above all, a famished army on lean half dead country mares met the finest cavalry in Asia, mounted on thorough-breds purchased straight from their breeding grounds in Khurasan and Trans-Oxiana, and the most efficient mobile artillery known in that age.
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The scale of deduction from the full strength of the muster of 18th October necessary in order to get the numbers that actually took part in the battle of Panipat, can be correctly inferred from Kashirāj’s own admission; e. g., Najib brought to that field only 15,000 men, against the 26,000 he had passed at the muster; and Shujā fought at the head of 3,000 men (against 4,000 counted at the muster.) Hence, a reduction by one-fourth from the full muster-strength would be well within the truth.
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Kāshirāj’s detailed figures for the Bhāu’s muster of 18th Oct. are all in thousands, never in hundreds; and his number for the total troops of the “several smaller bodies” whose captains were too humble to deserve mention by name, is 10,000. This last is such a large and round figure that it must be discredited as based on conjecture or bazar rumour and not on actual counting; I reduce it to 4,000 actual. Kāshirāj assignss to Ibrāhim Khan (on 19 Oct.) nine thousand foot and two thousand horse; but in the battle he gives Ibrāhim only nine battalions of sepoys. A French battalion (forming one regiment) in those days had a normal strength of one thousand infantry only. [E. M. Lloyd's Review of the History of Infantry, 119] Hence, his actual strength, allowing for the wastage of the Udgir campaign, was about 8,000, or 900 men per battalion which would correspond exactly to the Marathi report from Patdur (Kharé, i. p. 32) that he started with 8,000 sepoys. I cannot explain the 2000 horse assigned to the Gārdi; no other writer mentions such a force, nor do they figure at all in Kāshirāj's detailed story of the battle. I am sure that if they reached Pānipat, they must have been reduced to ‘unmounted men’ by the privations of the siege. No doubt, he had originally contracted for entering the Peshwa's service with 12 battalions, each normally containing a thousand men.
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Kashirāj Pandit is the best authority on the campaign of Panipat, in which he was present throughout. No other author can be set against him in point of authenticity. Siyar, Nur-ud-din and other later writers give grossly exaggerated numbers—culminating in the 3½ lakhs of troops and 30,000 Gardis assigned to the Bhāu by Md. Jafar Shāmlu ! Shamlu, who was present in the battle under Shah Pasand Khān, gives that general 12,000 men. But from the fact that this writer's figures are invariably inflated to at least three times the reality, I consider it safer to reduce Shah Pasand's force to 5,000,—which was the strength of his patrol, according to the more sober Kāshirāj.
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Ahmad Shah’s own troops, brought from Afghanistan and Persia and forming the backbone of his army, did not undergo any material change in their number during the three months intervening between the muster at Shāhdara and the battle at Pānipat, except for the addition of the newcomers under Hāji Atāi Khan (about 8,000.) The fluctuation was greatest among his Indo-Muslim allies, as it is definitely stated by Kāshiraj that Najib had 15,000 in the field (against 26,000 at the muster) and Shuja 3,000 (against 4,000.) Accepting this scale of shrinkage and allowing that no appreciable portion of the Durrāni regular troops was kept back to serve as baggage guard in the camp during the battle, we can make this fairly approximate calculation of the forces on the two sides actually engaged in the battle, counting each line of battle from its left:—
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Durrani.—[Left wing] Shah Pasand (5000, all horse), Najib (15,000, all foot and dismounted cavalry), Shuja (3,000, one-third being foot-musketeers). [Centre] Shah Wali Khan (19,000 men with 1,000 camel-swivels). [Right wing] Ahmad Bangash (1,000 foot), a small gap, Hafiz Rahmat and Dundi Khan (14,000, only one-fourth or less being cavalry), Amir Beg (Kabuli infantry) and Barkhurdār Khan (Persian cavalry), these last two together 3,000 men. Total 60,000.
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Maratha.—[Left wing] Ibrāhim Khan Gārdi (8,000 all foot-musketeers), Dāmāji Gaikwād (2,500 horse), Vittal Shivdev (1,500 horse). [Centre] some petty captains (2,000 horse in all), Bhāu and Vishwās Rao with the Household Troops (13,500). [Right wing] Antāji Mānakeshwar (1,000 horse), Satvoji Jadav (1,500 horse), minor captains (2,000 horse), Jaswant Rao Pawār (1,500), Shamsher Babadur (1,500), Jankoji Sindhia (7,000), Malhar Holkar (3,000.) Total 45,000.
Linked texts (3)
- Bayān-i wāqiʿ — Khwāja ʿAbd al-Karīm Kashmīrī 1780, Persian
- Ḥusain Shāhī
- Selections from the Peshwa Daftar — Marathi