Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c27.s17: § 4. Durrani cavalry patrols dominate the environs of Maratha camp and cut off communications and food supply
Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c27.s17
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§ 4. Durrani cavalry patrols dominate the environs of Maratha camp and cut off communications and food supply
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First, the enemy established undisputed supremacy in the open. Hitherto the light foray tactics of the
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* Nana Fadnis says that it was only nightfall that saved the entire Maratha army from destruction. Indeed, if Abdali had driven home this individual thrust of the Ruhelas with his own troops, or even made a diversion on another wing of the Maratha army, the trenches would have been completely carried and the 14th of January anticipated by a month and a week. But the Ruhela attack was a spontaneous and unauthorized movement and begun with too little daylight left to call up distant supports. Thus the valour and heavy sacrifice of Najib's troops were thrown away through their lack of disciplined obedience to the supreme command. An army cannot win unless all parts of it work in concert like an organized team.
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Ruhela night-attack.—Kashiraj 18, Husain 66, Nur-ud-din 42b-43a, Mux. 188, DC., Siyar. iii. 68, Nana F.'s Auto, Raj. i. 272n.
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Marathas had remained unchecked and done great damage to the Afghans by cutting off their stragglers, grazing cattle and horses, and grain supplies. But now the Shah arranged for the strictest watch not only on his own camp, but also around that of the enemy. Every night a body of 5,000 Durrānī horse advanced as near as they could in safety towards the enemy's camp, and there they remained all the night, keeping watch against surprise. Two other bodies of his horse made half circles round the Maratha encampment, one to the right and the other to the left. These night-patrols, each at least 5,000 strong, mounted on powerful Turki horses and commanded by practised cavalry leaders like Shah Pasand Khan and Jahān Khan, cut off every provision convoy that attempted to steal into the Bhāu's camp and every party of camp-followers that issued from Pānipat under cover of the darkness to gather firewood and fodder in the neighbouring woods. The southward road to Delhi was the first to be closed by reason of the Afghan army sitting astride it. A detour through the jungles south-west of Pānipat and north-west of Delhi was rendered all but impossible by the hostile Jat villagers and still more vindictive Baluch landlords occupying that tract. In the rear of the Bhāu's position, Kunjpurā was recovered by Dilir Khan (a son of Ināyet Khan Ruhela) from its small isolated Maratha garrison, and the grain collected there for despatch to Pānipat was seized by him. Only from the north-west did provisions reach the Bhāu once or twice from the dominions of Ālā Singh Jat of Patiālā; but these had to be paid for in hard cash by the Bhāu, as the Marathas had no vassal or revenue collector of their own in that region. This loss of communication with his base quickly impaired the Bhāu's military strength in addition to reducing his men and horses by starvation. The profuse firing, both in the actual fight and in the protective random cannonade, soon exhausted his munition stock, and as early as 15th November he was in urgent need of manufacturing 400 maunds of powder and 100 maunds of shot, and wrote to Govind Ballāl for every ounce of ready-made munition he could send immediately. These were to have come via Delhi, but that path was shortly afterwards closed. [Raj. i. 268. SPD. xxix. 27, camels for Marwar.]
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§ 5. Sad condition of Panipat city under Maratha occupation.
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Moreover, the stoppage of treasure supply from his distant agents soon turned him bankrupt at a time when every seer of grain, every bundle of grass, and every service whether of bringing in intelligence or carrying a despatch outside had to be paid tenfold its normal price and paid in cash, if it was to be at all secured in that beleaguered city. And that city was utterly unfriendly to him. Panipat being the seat of many famous Muslim saints' tombs, the population was predominantly Muhammadan,* and most of these residents claiming descent from the holy men or their servitors and in consequence living on rent-free land grants from the Mughal Government, resented the Maratha intrusion more bitterly than the ordinary peasants and labourers of their faith elsewhere. The Bhāu's military necessities had justly deepened their antipathy. As a noble of the city, Shākir Khan (the son of Nawāb Lutfullah Khan Sādiq Ansāri), who was present there during the siege, writes about the sufferings of the local population :
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"The Marathas felled all the timber and fruit trees of the gardens round Pānipat. Our seven gardens, each two to three hundred bighas in area, full of fruit trees and flower plants, were thus destroyed. They employed the timber in supporting the walls of the ditch and the raised gun platforms. For want of fuel, they consumed the planks beams and doors of the houses, ruining the roofs and walls. Marble slabs from the tombs of holy men were burnt in kilns and turned into lime for their pān. Our city houses were demolished by cannon balls and we were forced to exile ourselves from home. Heaps of stone and brick
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∗ In 1881 there were 17,000 Muslims out of a population of 25,000, and all its substantial families (except one) were of that creed. Denzil Ibbetson gives the Panipat Muslim gentry no very flattering character. Karnal Dist. Gaz. 257-259.
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were formed at different places. After the arrival of the accursed dogs, the higher people took refuge in the fort, the seat of the [Mughal] governor, which was no larger than a *sarāi*, with only one lower and one upper rooms. Our hardship in eating, sleeping and evacuating in such a narrow space can be imagined.” (P. 102.)
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§ 6. *Govind Ballal Bundele’s raid into the upper Doāb and death, 17 December.*
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After the 7th of December the sole star of hope visible to the confined Maratha army was Govind Ballāl, who had been commanded by the Bhāu to ravage Najib’s estates in the Mirat and Bulandshahar districts and send convoys of grain and treasure to Pānipat *via* Kunjpurā. And within ten days of that date even this star set. Leaving his headquarters at Etāwā, with less than 10,000 men, mostly rustic levies and second-rate Maratha light horse, Govind moved northwards to the upper Doāb, to carry out his task, which if successfully accomplished would have counteracted the closing of the Delhi route by Abdāli. Govind was an old man of over sixty; his life had been spent in revenue collection varied by petty fights with refractory landlords and attacks on their small mud-forts. He was now too stout to ride on horseback with ease or speed, and in such broken health as to be unable to bear the strain and rough life of light forays. He fondly imagined that the entire Doāb was secure fro n his enemies, as all the Durrānī and Ruhela soldiers were entangled at Pānipat, 200 miles away; and so he repeated Malhar Holkar's mistake of 4th March 1760 by neglecting to keep a sharp look out. His advance to Shāhdara, opposite Delhi, was unopposed; all the agents of Najib were driven away from the way, and half a dozen villages in the Sikandrabad region were sacked by the raiders. The Maratha force lay dispersed in fancied security from Shāhdara by way of Ghaziabad to Jalalabad (10 miles north-east of the latter city.) Here doom overtook them like a bolt of thunder from a cloudless sky, in the form of a body of 5,000 newly arrived Durrānī horse, led by Atāi Khan and Karimdād Khan and guided by Najib's captain Karim Khan and some spies of that Ruhela chieftain, in the morning of 17th December.*
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The news of Govind Ballāl's advance up the Doab had spread consternation among the Indo-Afghan allies of Ahmad Shah for the safety of their defenceless homes. At their entreaty the Shah had detached the above force, to make a rapid march with their fresh horses and cut Govind Ballāl's division off. The two generals crossed the Jamunā at Bāghpat and after covering 160 miles in one night and day, reached Shāhdara about 4 o'clock in the evening of 16th December, and at once annihilated the Maratha outpost there (under Nāro Shankar's deputy.) Early next morning they destroyed the second Maratha corps at Ghāziābād, and followed this victory up by immediately pushing on ten miles northwards to Jalalabad and surprising Govind Ballāl, "who was totally off his guard." That general had alighted at this village, which had been sacked by his troops a day or two earlier and now lay utterly deserted by its inhabitants. He was engaged in his ceremonial bath and preparations for personal cooking, when the Afghan cavalry burst upon him in overwhelming force. After a short feeble resistance the Marathas, hopelessly outnumbered and outridden, took to flight. Their half-naked general fell down from his horse, with a bullet wound (according to Bālkrishna Dikshit's letter from Benares), and was beheaded before his rank could be known. When it was learnt, the head was taken to Abdali by the returning victors, exposed in the market-place of the Durrāni camp, and finally sent to the Bhāu, as a triumphant proof of the downfall of his plan. On the sandy plain outside Jalalabad, Govind Ballāl Bundélé at last found that peace which had been denied to him in life. No more for him the jealous accusations of Antāji Mānakeshwar, the backbiting of Bāpuji M. Hingané, the confiscation of his estates by the Peshwā, the persecution of his caste-brethren by the Punā Brāhmans, and the last eight months' constant nagging censure and prodding into activity by Sadāshiv Rao Bhāu. Even the blackening of his memory by the Chitpāvan partisan V. K. Rājwadé was to come a century and a half later. His son Bālāji escaped from the carnage with a handful of men of the family contingent. Everything in the two Maratha camps including the vast stores of provisions which this force was convoying for the Bhāu, was carried off by the Afghans. "After this action, the Durrāni army was constantly supplied with provisions."
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∗ Fall of Govind Ballāl.—Kashiraj 15-16, Nur-ud-din 45b-46b, DC (date), Husain Shahi 63-65, Siyar iii. 68, Muz. 189. Raj. i. 264 (Bhāu's order to G. B.), 272 (Bhau's report of disaster), 272n, iii. 511 (details from Benares.)
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§ 7. Maratha raid into Oudh fails disastrously, January, 1761.
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The news of this disaster reached the Bhāu about 21st December and filled him with consternation. At the same time, a second plan of raid and diversion that he had ordered further south, in the lower Doab, also miscarried. Simultaneously with Govind Ballāl's march from Etāwā into the upper Doab, Gopāl Ganesh Barvé (of Fathpur-Haswa) and Krishnānand (of Karra) had set out with their small contingents to raid Oudh territory. Crossing the Ganges at Dalmau and Manikpur respectively, early in December, they sacked two villages, Phulpurā and Nawābganj. But the Oudh troops soon came up and attacked the raiders. As the battle began, Balbhadra (the Rajah of Tiloi) and other rebel zamindars—who were the sole hope of Barvé, took to flight. The small Maratha force, unable to contend alone, broke and scattered each as he found a path open. Barvé himself escaped with only half a dozen followers by way of Vindhya-bāsini to Karra Jahanabad.*
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§ 8. *Treasure sent to the Bhau cut off near Panipat 6 January : despair and terror in Maratha camp.*
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Before advancing to the fatal field of Jalalabad, Govind Ballāl had at last performed one of the tasks so persistently laid on him by the Bhāu. He had safely transmitted to Nāro Shankar at Delhi Rs. 4,20,000 of collected revenue, (in addition to the two lakhs paid to the Bhāu in August.) The Bhāu had sent a party of horse under Krishna Rao Ballāl of Manaji Paygudé's contingent, to fetch this treasure to his camp. But like a wise man, Nāro Shankar did not risk it all in one consignment. On 21st December he remitted Rs. 1,10,000 with Krishna Rao, and this amount seems to have reached the Bhāu's camp in safety. But when, on 1st January 1761, a second instalment of one and a half lakhs was despatched in charge of 300 troopers under Parāshar Dādāji, each man carrying Rs. 500 tied round his waist, the situation had already become most dangerous for the Marathas in consequence of the annihilation of Govind Ballāl's force in the Doab and the strict investment of the Bhāu within his trenches at Pānipat. Six of these troopers came back at the end of the first day, their horses or their hearts having failed, and returned the money. The rest pushed on, travelling by night for safety through the wilderness west of the imperial highway, but at the very end of their journey, in the dim misty small hours of the morning of 6th January, they missed their way, entered the left wing of the Abdali camp, mistaking it for their own, and asked in Marathi what general's quarter it was. Their speech at once betrayed them, and the whole body of 293 men with their captain was cut off by the Durrānis, only one man escaping to carry the tale of disaster to Delhi. [Raj. i. 281, Husain Shahi 65, Nur-ud-din 41b, Kashi. 16.]
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∗ *Oudh Gazetteer*, ii. 479-480. Raj. iii. 511. *SPD*. ii. 134. The *Gazetteer* says that this rout took place after the news of the disaster at Pānipat had reached the invaders At all events, this raid *cum* fomented rebellion in Oudh did not affect the issue at Panipat.
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The horizon now totally darkened round the Bhāu and his pent up army. Their food supply was exhausted, their horses and gun-cattle were lean with fasting and dying by the hundred, and no relief was visible as far as the human eye could gaze into the future. At first a few grain convoys had come from the Patiala district in the north-west through the favour of Ala Singh; but a punitive expedition by a Durrāni detachment effectually cowed that Rajah into neutrality. Even after that, the offer of large rewards had induced some Banjaras to smuggle grain into Pānipat by obscure jungly tracks at night. But the vigilance of the Durrani night-patrols and the wide sweep of their powerful chargers closed that path. Even the untenanted jungle stretching for miles and miles west and south-west of Pānipat city became inaccessible to the beleaguered army. "One day, near the end of the night, when 20,000 or rather more of their camp-followers had gone out of the trenches to gather grass and wood in a jungle of Dhāk trees, they were overtaken by a body of 5,000 horse under Shah Pasand Khan, . . . who surrounded them and put the whole to the sword. On account of its being night, no one came to their assistance from the Maratha camp. On the scene of slaughter the dead bodies were piled up into a perfect mountain. . . . The grief and terror which this event struck into the Marathas is indescribable; even the Bhāu himself began to yield to fear and despair." [Kāshirāj.]
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§ 9. Ahmad Shah rejects Bhau's request for peace.
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One last effort the Bhāu made to save his army by appealing to Shujā to arrange a peace at any price between him and the Shāh, and sent him a *carte blanche*, in the form of the impression of his palm dipped in saffron on a piece of blank paper, to be his credentials as a plenipotentiary, together with the most solemn oaths for a Hindu to abide by any settlement that he might make. The Durrāni wazir, Shāh Wali Khan, a kind-hearted man as well as a cool and far-sighted statesman, was willing to accept a large ransom from the Bhāu instead of antagonizing the Marathas for ever. But in the Shah's council-chamber his pacific advice was borne down by the vindictive fury of Najib Khan and the fanaticism of the Afghan soldiery, who refused to lose this opportunity of waging a holy war and slaying infidels on a gigantic scale, which would give them measureless spiritual merit.* As their mouthpiece, Qāzi Idris, urged his master, "Fix your eyes on your Faith, and let not any greed of money influence you in this matter, because the merit of jihad would be lost thereby.... This world is for a few days only.... Fear not the enemy, fear not the lack of money for your army expenses. Fear God rather." On hearing this speech, the Durrāni captains cried out with one voice, "The Qāzi has spoken the truth. In this holy war, we shall follow your wishes in every eventuality. Whether we are hungry or with full stomachs, we shall not lessen our exertions." Then Ahmad Shah said, "Recite the prayer for battle; the idea of making peace is given up." The baffled Maratha envoys were dismissed.
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§ 10. Starving Maratha army decide on fighting one desperate battle, 13 January.
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As day followed day after the destruction of the treasure convoy under Parāshar Dādāji (6th January), life within the entrenchments at Pānipāt became harder and harder to sustain. There was no food and no firewood for man and no grass for the horses. The stench of the carcases of men and beasts lying uncremated and unburied, and the effluvia of the evacuations of four lakhs of living creatures, made the confines of the entrenchment a living hell for human beings. At last the soldiers, in the agony of hunger, got out of hand and broke out in a general plunder of the houses in the city of Pānipāt. But their outrage yielded very little, because very little had now been left in that small poor and battered city.
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∗ Abortive peace parleys.—Nur-ud-din 43b-45b, Kashiraj 19-21.
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Finally on the 13th of January 1761, life became utterly intolerable to the beleaguered Maratha army. The soldiers and officers went off in a tumultuous body, surrounded the Bhāu's tent, and cried out, "It is now two days that no man among us has got a grain to eat. A seer of grain cannot be had even for two Rupees. Whence can we procure, no matter at what high price, an article that has totally disappeared from this place? Do not let us perish in this misery. Let us make a valiant struggle against the enemy; and then what Fate has ordained will happen." The discussion went on till midnight, when it was resolved that the whole army should march out about an hour before daybreak and attack the enemy in a pitched battle. The decision made, the generals were sent back to their posts each with a betel-leaf from their chief's hand, in token of their readiness to make their utmost exertion in the desperate enterprise about to follow.*
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§ 11. Bhan's army marches out to battle, 11 January, 1761.
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That night, none, at least of the leaders, slept. The Brahman officers, including the Bhāu, rose from the bed very early, performed their ablutions and religious worship in preparation for facing eternity on the morrow, took their last mouthful, and then donned their arms.
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An hour before the morning of 14th January, 1761, the Maratha army set out from its camp to the field of doom. Each division marched "step by step behind its banner with the regularity and order of the parade ground" and took up its appointed position. After three hours of movement, "in the processional manner which was then the only one known," the line of battle was fully formed. Then both sides halted for about an hour, as if by mutual consent, to let the dust settle down and make the opposing army visible. The Afghan line of battle extended seven miles in length and two in depth. It overlapped the Maratha line on the right and the left alike by about half a mile each way, as the invader had a numerical superiority of 15,000 men (i. e., 60,000 against 45,000), and his extreme right and left wings were bent inwards like the horns of a crescent, so as to outflank and threaten the two ends of the Maratha line.
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∗ Kashiraj 21, Nur-ud-din 46b.
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The Bhāu’s decision to fight that day had been taken so suddenly that Abdali had received no intelligence of it before his enemies were actually on the march towards him. After surrendering to his army’s clamour at midnight, Sadāshiv Rāo had made a last despairing attempt to avert the fatal conflict. He had sent off his favourite valet Bālakrām, who used to serve him his betel-leaf, with a short note to Kāshirāj, a Maratha clerk of Shujā, urging him to appeal to his master to arrange a peaceful settlement, now or never. “The flood,” so ran his expressive language, “has risen above my head. If anything can be done, do it or else inform me plainly at once, for hereafter there will be no time for writing or speaking.” Shujā, learning from Bālakrām that the Maratha army had started, rode immediately to Abdali’s tent, waked him by pleading the urgency of the situation, and told him what he had heard from the Bhāu’s valet and his own spies. The Shah promptly took horse and rode out a mile to the front to observe, ordering his guards to get ready and his long Persian pipe to be lighted and brought to him, as a sedative in that intensely cold night air. That day Shah Pasand Khan was in command of the night-patrol, and his men discovered the march of the Maratha artillery by the clatter of the iron chains of the guns and their wheels. The Maratha guns on taking up their allotted position fired a salvo and this confirmed the news brought by Shujā beyond any doubt.
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§ 12. *Ahmad Shah's battle arrangements.*
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The veteran lieutenant of the Asiatic Napoleon calmly finished his pipe, replaced his cap on his head, and calling up his wazir and Shah Pasand Khan gave them orders to marshal his ranks. With the instinct of a born general, he placed over half (18,000) of his own national troops in the centre in charge of his wazir, while two other corps—about 5,000 each, mostly cavalry mounted on superb Persian horses,—were sent to his extreme right and left. Thus, his Indo-Muslim allies were wedged in between strong bodies of Durrani troops on both sides and any attempt at treachery or flight on their part could be promptly crushed. These divisions on the extreme wings also rendered the favourite Maratha tactics of a flank attack impossible and thus heartened his Indian associates by guarding them against such a danger.
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There was no love lost between Najib (with his friend Shujā) and the trans-Ganges Afghans under Hāfiz Rahmat, Dundi Khan and other generals of Ali Muhammad Ruhela's colony. Hāfiz despised Najib as a vulgar upstart, who had first entered his master's service as a poor infantryman but now risen to be the dictator of Delhi and the prime minister of Abdali for Indian affairs,—while Hāfiz claimed the blood of the honoured spiritual head of the Ruhelas long settled in India. Abdali, therefore, placed Najib (with Shujā) on the left and the Pār Ruhelas on the right of his centre. Ahmad Khan Bangash with his paltry contingent of about 1,000 men stood in the right wing, but at some interval to the left of the Pār Ruhelas and next to the centre.
Linked texts (2)
- Bayān-i wāqiʿ — Khwāja ʿAbd al-Karīm Kashmīrī 1780, Persian
- Selections from the Peshwa Daftar — Marathi