Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c27.s24.5

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."