Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c27.s24.7

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.”