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Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c27.s24: § 22. The contest on the Maratha right wing : Malhar and Jankoji against Najib and Shah Pasand

Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c27.s24

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§ 22. The contest on the Maratha right wing : Malhar and Jankoji against Najib and Shah Pasand

v2.c27.s24.1

We have said nothing about one main division of the Maratha army because there is nothing to be said about it. Their right wing did not influence the issue of the battle in any way. Here Shah Pasand Khan and Malhar Holkar had merely immobilized each other without any exchange of fire or blows till after the contest in the centre had been decided. During the five hours of the general battle Najib Khan had advanced one *kos* and a half and arrived very close in front of Jankoji Sindhia’s contingent. Dismounting his six thousand cavalry and merging them with his nine thousand infantry, and himself moving with them on foot, he had steadily gained ground bit by bit. While his infantry watched with loaded firelocks, his pioneers advanced a musket-shot in front of them and quickly threw up a breastwork of sand eighteen inches high, to which the infantry next rushed up and where they crouched down, while the pioneers went the same distance forward and prepared a similar trench for them. Arrived at last within firing range of Sindhia’s troops, Najib attacked them, discharging two thousand rockets at a time, and “although the forces opposite to him wanted to attack him, they were convulsed and overpowered by the shock of this fire.” On the left hand of Najib was Shah Pasand Khan, forming the extreme flank of Abdali’s line. The bold front he presented “prevented the Maratha corps facing him from drawing breath.” This corps was Malhar Holkar’s, and numbered only 3,000 against the 5,000 men led by Shah Pasand.

v2.c27.s24.2

On the right of Najib and left of the grand wazir stood Shujā-ud-daulah, with 2000 horse and 1000 State-equipped infantry and twenty guns, besides *jixails*, ready to meet any attack. But none attacked him. Facing him were a number of small individual contingents, namely those of Shamsher Bahadur, Jaswant Rao Puar, and others, but these did not make any move throughout the day. "Twice or thrice their swords and spears flashed in the sunlight in the distance, as if they were going to issue on a charge, but it did not materialize, and the thing passed off safely for us," as Shujā's clerk writes. It means that every time the Bhāu made a charge from the centre, a thrill of excitement passed through his right wing and some men there shouted to be led on to an advance from that wing; but they had no general with heart or leadership, the momentary enthusiasm evaporated and nothing was done. Only at the end of the day, when all was almost over at the Maratha centre and left wing, and the entire Afghan line advanced, Shah Pasand and Najib made an onset upon their opponents. Malhar first fled away, uncovering Jankoji's right flank, which Shah Pasand at once turned; Sindhia's ever-beaten contingent shamelessly followed Holkar's example, leaving their chieftain to his fate. [SPD. xxvii. 271.] Jankoji was wounded and driven upon the centre, Jaswant Puār and a son of Pilāji Jādav fell, Shamsher Bahadur was mortally wounded, and the Maratha right wing ceased to exist.

v2.c27.s24.3

§ 23. Pursuit and slaughter of the Marathas.

v2.c27.s24.4

The last trace of resistance ceased at a quarter to three in the afternoon. Most of the officers of the defeated army had fallen, and the field was covered with scattered knots of bewildered leaderless men making their way between piles of the dead and wounded, “every one fleeing as he found a path, without trying to unite with others.” Then the whole Durrānī line advanced in one exultant rush. The Maratha camp, stocked with immense riches, lay only two miles before them, and from it streams of fugitives encumbered with heavily loaded transport animals were seen to be issuing. Two hours of daylight still remained, and as the moon did not set before a quarter past nine that night, the pursuit was kept up for twenty miles in a fan-shaped semi-circle by the Durrānī horsemen, who slew every one they could overtake. But the Maratha entrenchments were not sacked that evening, because Ahmad Shah, like a wise general, kept his troops together till he could be sure that the enemy forces were destroyed beyond any chance of rally or counter-attack.*

v2.c27.s24.5

Next morning the sun revealed a horrid spectacle on the vast plain south of Pānipat. On the actual field of the combat thirty-two distinct heaps of the slain were counted, the number of bodies in each ranging from 500 upwards to 1,000, and in four up to 1,500,—a rough total of 28,000. In addition to these, the ditch round the Maratha camp was full of dead bodies, partly the victims of disease and famine during the long siege and partly wounded men who had crawled out of the fighting line to die there. West and south of Pānipat city, the jungle and road in the line of Maratha retreat were littered with the remains of those who had fallen unresisting in the relentless Durrāni pursuit or from hunger and exhaustion. Their number,—probably three-fourths non-combatants and one-fourth soldiers, could not have been far short of the vast total of those slain in the battlefield. "The hundreds who lay wounded perished from the severity of the cold."

v2.c27.s24.6

∗ Kāshirāj, 28. Nur. 50b-51a. Husain Shahi, 72-73. Manazil, 79-84. Nana Fadnis, Autobiography.

v2.c27.s24.7

After the havoc of combat followed cold-blooded massacre. Several hundreds of Marathas had hidden themselves in the hostile city of Pānipat, through folly or helplessness; and these were hunted out next day and put to the sword. According to one plausible account, the sons of Abdus Samad and Mian Qutb received the Durrāni king's permission to avenge their fathers' death by an indiscriminate massacre of the Marathas for one day, and thus nearly nine thousand men perished [Bhau S. Bakh. 123]; these were evidently non-combatants. The eye-witness, Kāshirāj Pandit, thus describes the scene: "Every Durrāni soldier brought away a hundred or two of prisoners and slew them in the outskirts of their camp, crying out, 'When I started from our country, my mother father sister and wife told me to slay so many kāfirs for their sake after we had gained the victory in this holy war, so that the religious merit of this act [of infidel-slaying] might accrue to them.’ In this way, thousands of soldiers and other persons were massacred. In the Shah’s camp, except the quarters of himself and his nobles, every tent had a heap of severed heads before it. One may say that it was verily Doomsday for the Maratha people.”

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