Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c27.s22: § 17. Sadashiv Bhau attacks the Durrani centre under Shah Wali Khan
Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c27.s22
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§ 17. Sadashiv Bhau attacks the Durrani centre under Shah Wali Khan
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All this time the centre had been the scene of a still more deadly and obstinate conflict. Here each side had concentrated its best resources, and the opposing forces were more evenly matched in number,—about 18,000 on each side,—than in the fight between the Gardis and the trans-Ganges Ruhelas (6,300 against 15,000.) Simultaneously with Ibrāhim Khan's advance against the Shāh's right wing, the Bhāu had launched his own division in an attack on the Durrāni centre where the wazir Shāh Wali Khan commanded in person. This struggle was prefaced by the discharge of the Bhāu's artillery, which was mostly drawn up in front of his centre. To this the Afghan wazir replied with the fire of his own lighter pieces planted on the ground and a thousand swivel-guns mounted on camels which were placed before him in a line with their knees tied together. Suddenly the firing on the Maratha side ceased, and from around the great yellow banner (*Bhagwā Jhāndā*) towering above their centre, a thunderous roar of *Hara! Hara! Mahādev!* was heard and a waving forest of long swords and spears flashed in the morning sun, as a vast cavalcade of 13,500 men heaved tumultuously like one gigantic billow of the ocean and the next instant dashed in resistless sweep upon the Durrāni centre. The momentum of their charge broke through the screen of Afghan front skirmishers and the hail of zamburak balls. Regardless of the bloody trail they left behind them, the Maratha horse grappled with their foes in a deadly hand to hand combat, under a cloud of dust "which hid the earth and sky and from which blood dropped in rain-showers," while the mingled dissonance of *Hara! Hara! Mahādev!* and *Ya Ali! Yā Ali!* drowned every other sound.
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The desperate fury of the Maratha charge at first seemed to carry everything before it. Hāji Atāi Khan, the slayer of Govind Ballāl, fell with nearly 3,000 other Durrānis, their surviving comrades were pushed backwards and many of these took the road to the camp. So intense was the pressure that "the grand wazir stood with only a hundred or two hundred troopers and fifty zamburak-camels (having their knees tied together)
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placed in front of him. He himself, in full armour, dismounted from his horse and sat down on the ground, beating his forehead and throwing dust into his mouth and cursing and haranguing his fleeing followers, ‘Brethren! our country is far off. Whither are you going?’” An appeal to Shujā (on his left) to come at once to his rescue passed unheeded, as Shujā, in view of the unbroken enemy masses facing him, wisely refused to weaken his section of the line and thus invite a break-through there.
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But even at the centre the Afghan line held. The Bhāu had no squadron of cavalry in heavy armour and mounted on powerful horses ready to charge in close order and cut its way like a solid wedge through the shaken Durrāni ranks and complete his initial success. The hand to hand combat swayed to and fro with each individual group’s charge and counter-charge, indecisively for over three hours, and though the wazir’s casualties were much less than his opponents’, yet from the unabated courage and wild onslaught of the Marathas it seemed likely that they would triumph in the end.
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§ 18. Ahmad Shah reinforces his centre and right.
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Shortly after midday the Shāh received intelligence of the perilous condition of his right wing and centre, and the dispersion of most of their troops to the rear. He could not thin his battle front elsewhere without the risk of the Marathas penetrating there and crumbling up the whole line. At this critical stage, the side which would be first able to push up adequate reinforcements to the centre was sure to turn the wavering struggle into a victory. Here the Shah’s matchless generalship, the ready obedience of his troops, and the ability of his subordinate commanders told. He sent one provost-marshal with 500 troopers to gallop to his camp and by merciless beating drive out of it all the soldiers who were found hiding there and all the armed followers to the battle front. Another officer with 1,500 mounted military police was posted immediately behind the firing line under orders to attack every runaway from the fight and turn him back to the field. Thus, some six or seven thousand retreating troops were rallied. To them were added the small body of soldiers (under one thousand) found in the camp and a detachment from the Shah’s bodyguards, forming a total of over 13,000 men. Out of these some 3,000 were sent to reinforce the hard-pressed Ruhelas of the right wing, and 10,000 to support the wazir. At the same time his two flanks were ordered to charge the Maratha centre from their respective sides every time that the grand wazir made an advance against it from the front.
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It is an age-old habit of the Hindu soldiers to work at high pressure up to noon and then retire for taking food and rest. An unconquerable lassitude comes over them after one o’clock in the afternoon. (Hence, General Harris launched his storming columns on Seringapatam at that psychological hour.) The Marathas had spent a sleepless night and had fasted or been half-fed for a month before. Moreover, troops who carry roast meat and dry bread in their saddle bags and water in leather bottles can easily refresh and reinvigorate themselves in the field. Not so a caste over-ridden by the dread of defiling touch at meal time and regarding leather with abomination as a carcase. The long-drawn battle had worn the Marathas out far more than the Muslims when the fresh Durrānī troops appeared on the scene.
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§ 19. Desperate fighting by the outnumbered Bhau at the centre; Durrani tactics.
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Shortly after half-past one, the reinforcements reached the wazir, and they at once delivered a charge at the full gallop. Ten thousand fresh troops thrown into the contest at a time when the Marathas were exhausted by four hours of strenuous fighting and reduced to less than 10,000 men, turned the scale decisively against them. But the Bhāu refused to acknowledge defeat. He fought on for over an hour more, regardless of the tremendous odds now arrayed against him, and delivered three counter-charges with his rapidly thinning band of personal followers and himself headed the attack. In that awful hour, when all hope of victory had vanished and life had assumed the bitter taste of death in the mouth of the Marathas, there was no holding back among their leaders or their Household Cavalry. Nor did Vishwās Rao, the young heir to the Peshwā’s throne, belie his noble ancestry. He pressed into the thick of the fight along with the boldest of his comrades.
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But as the blood of the Maratha centre was being more and more drained and a smaller and still smaller wave came up on each successive counter-attack under the Bhāu, the eagle eye of Ahmad Abdali seized the situation at a glance; now was the time to launch his most deadly weapon, so long kept in reserve for such a moment. He sent three squadrons* of his favourite slave corps to fire upon the Bhāu’s division and envelop it from three sides. "One squadron of slaves . . . came up from the right and after firing off their muskets went away to the left. Another squadron which came up from the left, after emptying their fire-arms galloped away to the right. The third squadron, advancing from the front, discharged their pieces at the Bhāu’s vanguard and then wheeled to the rear. Before the enemy could recover from the shock, these men had loaded their muskets again and arrived, the left squadron on the right wing and the right squadron on the left wing, while the squadron that had been originally in front fell on the rear. During this circular manoeuvre, they quickly discharged their muskets from one side and went off to the other. It looked as if on all four sides troops were attacking the Marathas simultaneously..... Their firm stand was swept away..... Their vanguard retreated and mingled with the division under the Bhāu himself, and great confusion arose.... The Maratha soldiers who had been spread over the field now drew together into a knot at their centre." [Nur-ud-din, 48b-49a.] Every Afghan bullet found its billet in that dense enemy mass around which the attacking horsemen revolved in circles.
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∗ Nur-ud-din says three squadrons of 2,000 men each, but Kashiraj [p. 12] gives ‘six *dastas* (squadrons) of slaves each consisting of 1,200 horsemen. Husain Shahi, 71, has three *dastas* of a thousand men each. Law, 195. Shamlu, as usual, inflates the number to 8 or 9 thousand under the *Qular āqāsi* (p. 74.)
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BATTLE OF PANIPAT—2.30 P. M.
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But even then, thrice did the Maratha horse form again under their lofty banner and advance like a roaring wave upon the wazir's front, which stood like a rock and every time flung them back with woefully thinned ranks, pursued and raked by the fire of the Afghan mounted musketeers and camel-borne light artillery. The white spray of uplifted dust, stabbed by the fire flash and sharp rattle of musketry, concealed for a time the red heaps of writhing horses and men that strewed the plain as the surf retired shivered into many small eddying fragments.