Fall of the Mughal Empire v3.c33.s3: § 4. Ranjit Singh Jāt hires the Marathas returned to the North
Fall of the Mughal Empire v3.c33.s3
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§ 4. Ranjit Singh Jāt hires the Marathas returned to the North
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A new and more dangerous enemy was now drawn into the Jāt kingdom by this fratricidal contest. Before the end of the year 1769 the young Peshwa Madhav Rao had triumphed over his domestic enemies and asserted his mastery over the Government of Puna. He was now free to send his best generals to Hindustan for restoring Maratha prestige which had been eclipsed by the disaster of Panipat. The aims of this expedition were quite clear: namely to realise the war indemnity due from the Jāt kingdom according to the treaty of 26th May, 1754 (Ch. 12 § 5) and to recover the lands assigned by the Delhi Government during Imād-ul-mulk’s wazirship as the price of Maratha armed help up to 1754 (Ch. 13 § 7.) Many of these lands had been usurped by the Jāts and the Ruhelas after Ahmad Shah’s victory in the Panipat campaign.
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The task set before the Maratha generals was a heavy one. The armed force which alone could have ensured its accomplishment required a large outlay for its initial equipment and maintenance. But the Puna Government was bankrupt; it was necessary for it to make war feed on war. The nearest and most solvent of its North Indian debtors was the Jāt Rajah. From the middle of 1767 to the first quarter of 1769, Jāt forces had been busy driving out Maratha posts in Bundelkhand and North Malwa in concert with the indigenous Rajput chiefs of that region and the Jāt ruler of Gohad. These troubles ceased only with the murder of Ratan Singh and the ensuing civil war. This gave the Marathas their long-coveted chance.
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The Peshwa’s generals in the North, after laying a large contribution on Mewar (September 1769), had gone away to besiege Rāghogarh in the Khechi country, and next taken post in Kerauli territory in order to dun the neighbouring State of Jaipur for its long-unpaid contributions. Here they were met by Ranjit Singh’s envoy with a proposal to hire them for his defence, and they jumped at the invitation. A Maratha army estimated at 30,000 men with good field artillery marched to Kumbher, interviewed Ranjit Singh on 5th March, 1770, and encamped outside that fort. But “Ranjit Singh not having paid them the stipulated sum of money, they began ravaging and laying waste the dependencies of both chiefs without distinction. Nawal Singh was encamped with his forces under the walls of Dig, uncertain whether he should fight the Marathas or buy them off.” [CPC. iii. 128, 161.] A month passed in this way, the Jāt army merely watching the enemy from a distance. [SPD. xxix. pp. 302-305.]
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§ 5. Battle of Sonkh-Aring, 6 April, 1770.
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Then a battle disastrous to Nawal Singh was precipitated by his folly on 6th April.* By that time the Marathas had exhausted the supplies in the open country near Dig and Kumbher and completed their alliance with Najib-ud-daulah, who had reached the Doab to join them. So, they set out for the Doab, sending their larger guns and baggage ahead under Tukoji Holkar to Mathura and following this vanguard in a strong body of cavalry with rockets and light pieces only.
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∗ Battle—Madec (best.) CPC. iii. 180, 184. DC. SPD. xxxvii. 210. Khare, iv. let. 970, 971.
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Nawal Singh had challenged them before to a pitched battle, but on seeing them thus going away, he realised that his waiting game would only lead to the loss of his Doab possessions without a blow in their defence. He therefore promptly set out from Dig and followed the Marathas by a parallel route a few miles north of theirs. He had no clear plan of action, and not being a soldier himself wavered between one general's advice and another's.
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On 6th April, the Jāt army moved out of Dig to Govardhan, nine miles eastwards, in several straggling bodies stretched out irregularly and without concert over the long road. No regiment was ready for fighting, large numbers of his soldiers had gone back to the city of Dig to fetch their necessaries, and detachments had been sent off to escort the baggage. Later in the day the Jāts sighted the Marathas drawn up in battle order and facing round towards them, some distance north-west of Sonkh, (a place midway between Kumbher and Mathura.) Nawal Singh held a council of war. Sombre and Madec urged him not to fight that day as his troops had not been fully assembled yet and there would not be sufficient daylight left for a regular action. But their advice was swept away by the vehemence of Dān Shāh, who had returned from his exile after organising the army of the deposed Nawab Qāsim Ali of Bengal. He could not let the Marathas slip away from under his eyes, without making an attempt to crush them when deprived of their powerful artillery. Gosain Bālānand, the captain of the wild Nāgā monks, supported this policy. Nawal Singh, like all weak men, was led away by the most clamorous counsellor and ordered an attack.
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The Jāt vanguard, composed of 2,000 chosen horsemen of the Bhadauria and other Rajput clans, led by Dān Shāh, galloped upon the Marathas and were met by a terrible fire of rockets and light artillery which brought down nearly the whole of their dense mass; the broken remnant took to flight. The action had begun so suddenly that no troops could be sent up to support this charge, which dissolved in nothing. Meantime, Madec had pushed back the left wing of the enemy, but men from their right promptly rode up to reinforce it, and he in his turn was attacked with such vigour and superior numbers that he could save himself only by forming his sepoys into a square and fighting on three faces at the same time.
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The battle raged thus, irregularly but with intense fury till an hour before midnight. The Jāts, fighting without any plan or mutual concert, acknowledged defeat only after Nawal Singh himself had fled away from the field.∗ His soldiers rushed back in disorder, breaking Madec’s square in the wild sweep of their flight. That French captain with only 5 or 6 horsemen escaped to safety through the Maratha ranks under cover of darkness.
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∗ "After two hours' close engagement, Nawal Singh was obliged to retreat within the lines of Samru, who had formed a square . . . and had for a long time sustained
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It was a long-drawn and most obstinate battle. The Jāts, with the inglorious exception of their master, fought with the desperate courage for which these peasant-warriors have always been famous. The Marathas lost a thousand to twelve hundred men in killed and wounded and eight hundred horses slain. But their victory was complete. The Jāt field army ceased to exist as the result of a single afternoon’s action. “It is computed that 2,000 of their soldiers were killed and 500 [? 5,000] wounded. All their artillery (40 pieces) was left on the field, except two light pieces which Samru had brought off.”
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Two thousand Jāt horses and thirteen elephants were captured. Madec’s corps alone lost 1,400 men in killed and wounded, with its horses, camels, elephants, arms and artillery; its sole remnant consisted of the wounded and his camp-guard left behind in Dig. Still heavier was the loss among the Jāt leaders. “Never was a greater number of sardārs killed and wounded in
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repeated shocks of the enemy. Finding himself in a tight corner, Nawal Singh threw away his ornaments lest he should be recognised by the enemy, and with a few attendants reached the fort [of Aring] in safety.” CPC. ii. 184, also DC.
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a matter of public notoriety in every camp bazar and came to be reported in the news-letters to the English Company, the Delhi Government and the Peshwa alike. The grouping of the mutually wrangling chiefs changed with bewildering variety for a year and a half and was ended only by the Peshwa’s recalling Ramchandra Ganesh (middle of 1771); but even after that date the old discord cropped up again in the form of an irreconcilable antagonism between Sindhia and Holkar as to the attitude to be observed towards the Emperor and Zābita Khan. In fact, the new Maratha enterprise for undoing the work of Panipat was foredoomed to failure, because the Peshwa could spare no member of his family like Raghunāth Dādā or Sadāshiv Bhāu to lead it with unquestioned authority and dominating rank.