Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c27.s16: § 1. Bhau and Abdali entrench at Panipat ; their first intentions and policy
Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c27.s16
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§ 1. Bhau and Abdali entrench at Panipat ; their first intentions and policy
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The ten months of waiting and uncertainty were over. At last the two rivals for dominion over Hindustan had come to grips exactly in that arena where such contests had been fought out age after age. Arrived within reach of his enemy at Pānipat, Ahmad Shah Abdali, like a true master of war, held his troops strictly in hand, in a compact body under his eyes, never letting them extend beyond support. At first he followed a cautious watching policy in order to discover his enemy's strength and plan of war, before showing his own hand. For a week he silently suffered his stray cattle and horses* on the outskirts of his army to be carried off by the Maratha foragers and their Pindhari underlings, and strictly kept his troops back from sallying out for their recovery.
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∗ The Pindharis brought away two elephants from the Afghan camp on 4th Nov. and two more soon afterwards. [Raj. i. 265. SPD. xxi. 197.] The capture of an elephant is considered by Indian soldiers as the highest glory like the capture of an enemy gun by European armies.
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This inactivity was mistaken by the Marathas as a proof of his terror and timidity, and there was exultation in the Deccani headquarters, which was heightened by the scarcity of provisions in the Afghan camp. The Bhau wrote on 1st November, "Grain sells at 2 to 2 1/2 seers in his camp. I have every confidence of being able to swallow him up soon." Four days later Krishna Joshi wrote from Pānipat, "The Yavan is greatly frightened, and dare not come on. Our troops are every day slaying 50 to 100 of his men and carrying off their camels and horses. His food supplies have been stopped, so that flour sells at three seers, gram at 4 seers, and ghee at 1/2 seer to the Rupee, while in our camp the rates are wheat 16, gram 12, and ghee 2 1/2 seers. All our troops are confident that in four to eight days, Abdali Najib and Shuja would be destroyed. Abdali is called 'the King of kings,' . . . but having come within four miles of us, he has sat down for eight days and dare not make a demonstration of his valour. Hence, our army is in high spirit. Abdali's route to his home is blocked; he cannot fight with hope of success, he cannot sit down idly as he has not the necessary food supply. He is bewildered." [Raj. i. 261, 264, 265.]
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Everything, therefore, seemed to point out that the Afghan invader would be glad to beat a hurried retreat to his home without venturing to attack the Marathas, or, if he chose to halt there, the longer he delayed the more would his Indian allies be scattered by privations, and his troops and horses reduced by famine, so that a crushing victory over him would be a mere walk over for the Marathas. The Bhāu’s plan was accordingly formed; on 4th November he decided to entrench his position and secure it by artillery against assault. At the same time he wrote to Govind Ballāl to harry the upper Doab, now entirely denuded of Durrāni and Indo-Afghan troops, to cut off the grain convoys that Najib’s agents were sending from that region to his camp in the desolate Pānipat district, to capture Najib’s posts in the Mirat division, and even to threaten to cross the Ganges and sack the homes of the Ruhelas and Shujā’s northern districts. Such hostile action on the east of the Jamuna would place Abdali between two fires, intensify the sufferings of his troops and impel all his Indian allies to hurry back from his banners to the defence of their Doāb and trans-Ganges homes. The Bhāu’s strategy was eminently sound in theory; it only needed able instruments to execute it and an adequate supply of food and munitions to outlast his opponent’s. The question, in its essence, was simply which of the two would starve the other out first. In both of these respects the Bhāu’s calculations went wrong, and the inevitable result was disaster.
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The first brush between the two armies had occurred on 1 November, and then followed daily skirmishes between their patrols or foraging parties and exchange of distant cannonade,—which latter was calculated rather to keep the enemy back through fear than to inflict loss. On 5th November the Bhāu began to fortify his position. Pitching his tents over a plain some six miles in length from west to east and extending for about two miles in depth southwards of Pānipat, he included that city within his defensive lines. Around his camp he dug a trench sixty feet wide and twelve deep, with a high earthen rampart on which he mounted his cannon. His field artillery of some two hundred pieces was judiciously distributed so as to make all the four sides easily defensible. The countryside for miles around Pānipat was denuded of its trees in order to supply timber for propping up the sides of the ditch and supporting the raised gun platforms. The Shah, too, formed a permanent camp facing the Marathas, about three miles to their south, and fortified his position with trenches and a strong abattis of felled trees. [Kashiraj.]
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§ 2. Early skirmishes and minor battles near Panipat, November 1760.
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The skirmishing on the debatable land between the two camps went on for two months and was varied by three conflicts on a larger scale though not amounting to pitched battles. On 19th November, the Gārdi infantry led by Fath Khan (the brother of Ibrāhim) made a night attack on the Shāh's camp, dragging some pieces of artillery with themselves. They easily entered by way of the Indo-Afghan trenches, but were defeated and expelled at the end of the fight, abandoning about 30 of their standards and some guns. [*DC.*, Husain Shahi, 66.]
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Three days later, while the ritual-loving Hindus were disorganized by the lunar eclipse due that night, the Durrani wazir in the course of his daily patrol came to a large well (*bāoli*),* evidently south-west of Pānipat, immediately in front of the Maratha right wing. It was near sunset, and no engagement being expected that day he had kept only a small escort with him. While he was inspecting the well, the troops of Sindhia from their trenches opposite recognized him as a chief, and taking advantage of his unguarded condition, made a sortie in full force and attacked him. A desperate battle joined amidst deafening shouts and a dense cloud of dust which hid friend from foe. The wazir held his ground against such tremendous odds, though he began to lose men very fast. After a time reinforcements came up from the rear and rescued him, his assailants chasing him up to a gunshot of the Afghan trenches and retreating with the setting of the sun. The wazir's casualties were about 600, and that of the Marathas about half the number. The Marathas captured over a hundred of his horses and boasted that but for nightfall they would have crushed him.*
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∗ Chāh-i-urchindāri (Turki for bāoli), Imād-us-sādat, 190. It seems to refer to Gaddiwāra of the map, half a mile south-west of the shrine of Ghaus Ali Khan, south of Panipat. The correct date of this battle is given in two contemporary Marathi letters [Raj. vi. 406 and i. 272n.] Kashiraj gives 22 Rabi-us-sani [=1 Dec.] wrongly for the 12th (or 13th) of that Hijeri month. Karnal Dist. Gaz. p. 32,—"The Maratha line of entrenchments can still be traced on the plain between Risalu and Panipat. The Durranis encamped close in front of them, on the plains north of Risalu and Ujaon." The latter statement cannot be true, because the contemporary records, both Marathi and Persian, say that the Shah encamped three miles south of the Maratha trenches. This would place his front south of the Siwah and Dhadaula villages, four miles south of the southern boundary of Panipat city,—or even further to the south, *i.e.*, along the Dimana—Pasina Khurd line.
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There was a pause for the next fortnight. A Maratha letter, written on 27th November asserts, "Up to now our foragers and troops have captured 1000—1200 horses, 300—400 camels and four elephants from the enemy." The Afghan historian, on the other hand, claims superior advantages, "In every foray (*chapāwwal*) two to three thousands of the Marathas were slain, but few of the Abdalis." [*SPD.* xxi. 197. *Husain Shahi*, 63.] But whatever may have been the relative losses on the two sides, these skirmishes could produce no military decision.
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∗ I have accepted Nana Fadnis's figures here. *SPD.* xxi. 197 gives about 950 and 160 for the two sides. Kāshirāj says, "Three to four thousand men were killed on the two sides taken together, in this action which lasted for 3 or 4 *gharis*" (exaggerated.) *Husain Shahi*, 61-62, does not refer to this battle, but to an earlier brush.
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§ 3. *Ruhelas penetrate Maratha trenches; fall of Balawant Rao Mehendele, 7 December 1760.*
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The first regular battle was precipitated on 7th December by a sudden outburst of Ruhela daring unauthorized by Ahmad Shah and without any concerted plan. That day, the Marathas, as was their wont, had dragged some of their guns to a position in the plain a rocket's flight in front of their trenches and fired them at the Afghans, who replied with some distant and equally fruitless shots. About an hour and a half before sunset, when the Marathas had just limbered up their guns and set out on return to camp, Najib's Ruhelas, harangued by his brother Sultān Khan, sallied out in a body of 1,000 horse and 5,000 foot and fell upon the retiring Marathas. The sharp and repeated fire of the Ruhela infantry—who were famous for their marksmanship, routed the cavalry guard of the guns, armed with sword and spear. The assailants reached the very edge of the Maratha trenches on the heels of the fugitives. But the alarm had spread to the entire army of the Bhau, and there was a rush from all sides to the defence of the threatened sector (the centre of the southern face.) The handful of Ruhela cavalry soon fled away before the thousands of Maratha light horse ; but their foot-soldiers, driving away the Maratha supports by their deadly musket-fire and profiting by the intense darkness of that night of lunar conjunction, penetrated inside the trenches. A party of the victors climbed upon the deserted Maratha guns and beat their small drums in wild exultation. The thrust reached almost up to the market-square of the Maratha camp. But now the Gārdi musketeers were turned upon them under the personal lead of Ibrahim Khan and Balawant Rao Méhéndélé; over three thousand of the Ruhela infantry fell in the field, and the remnant retreated to their own lines, mostly wounded but still beating their drums and dancing wildly in scorn of the foe! The Maratha army was saved, but at a heavy price, for Méhéndélé, the sole lieutenant of the Bhāu, fell down from his horse with a bullet in his chest while trying to stem the flight of his men by galloping up to the exposed front line during the first Afghan onrush. The Ruhelas crowded upon the fallen general; one slashed at his face; another began to sever his head in order to carry it away in triumph. But half a dozen Maratha horsemen galloped up to the spot and rescued their chief’s body from mutilation, though with the neck half cut through. The engagement ceased about three hours after nightfall. The Maratha casualties in slain and wounded were under one thousand, but the loss of Méhéndélé was irreparable. “We fought well, but owing to Balawant’s fall the enemy became triumphant.” [Nana Fadnis in Raj. i. 272 n.]
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The battle of 7th December was the turning-point in the Pānipat campaign. The Bhāu lost his supreme counsellor and right-hand man; there was none left to whom he could entrust any responsible work as his dependable deputy where he could not be personally present. All the rest of his officers were small men, at best good clerks and account-keepers, but unworthy of command, incapable of taking the initiative, and unable to inspire confidence in a crisis. From that night of wild confusion terror and carnage,* everything went against the Bhāu, slowly but with increasing and resistless pressure.
Linked texts (2)
- Bayān-i wāqiʿ — Khwāja ʿAbd al-Karīm Kashmīrī 1780, Persian
- Selections from the Peshwa Daftar — Marathi