Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c54.s5.24

v4.c54.s5.24

The fighting raged throughout the day. First, the orderly tactics and steady fire of Brownrigg’s battalions totally broke up the Holkar campoo under Harnāth and they took to flight. At the sight of this the myriads of Pindari horsemen forming the rear of Jaswant’s army vanished quickly. In the meantime, in the other sector of the field, the division under Mir Khan was pressed very hard, and Jaswant advanced there to see things for himself and bring relief. Many of his horsemen followed him, thus leaving that sector of the entrenchment very thinly held. Seizing this opportunity Brownrigg launched his infantry for the final blow. They stormed the enemy’s trenches at the point of the bayonet. After a last desperate counter-attack by Jaswant himself, which for a time wrested back three of his abandoned guns, the struggle ended at sunset. Holkar’s defeat was complete; all his guns, numbering more than one hundred, his camp and stores were captured by the victors. Jaswant fled away to Kushālgarh and Jāmghāt; and here most of his cavalry who had escaped death in battle by a timely flight, soon rallied round him, and with them he took to a life of predatory warfare, roaming all over the country, untramelled by artillery or disciplined infantry, in the manner for which his great ancestor Malhar Holkar I was famous.