The Military System of the Marathas, with a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities c13.36

c13.36

Ibrahim Khan Gardi was resolved to give a good account of himself and his battalion. He took a banner in his own hands and led a resolute bayonet charge against the Rohilla divisions of Hafiz Rahamat Khan and Dundi Khan. The Rohillas were utterly routed and broken, eight thousand of them were killed and wounded and hardly one thousand were left with each chief. At the same time the Maratha centre led by Sadashiv Rao and Viswas Rao fell on the Afghan centre where the Grand Vizier commanded a compact body of ten thousand horse, seven thousand Persian musketeers and one thousand camels mounted with *Zamburaks*. Here also the resolute Marathas carried everything before them. Attai Khan, the nephew of the Grand Vizier, was killed, three thousand of his followers were slain or wounded and the demoralised Afghans began to run way. The Grand Vizier reproached them, expostulated and argued with them, but in vain. He urged Kasiraj Pandit to bring Shuja-ud-daula to his rescue. But the Chief of Oudh seems to have been an indifferent spectator; his intention, most probably, was to watch the fight and join the victors. Jankoji Sindhia, however, failed to make much impression on the division of Najib Khan. The Rohilla chief had under him eight thousand infantry and nearly six thousand horse. ‘They advanced slowly under cover of a kind of breast-works of sand, which were thrown up by a great number of Bildars who were with them, and who, having finished one, advanced the distance of half a musket shot in front of that, under cover of their own people, and threw up another; to which the troops then advanced, while a third was thrown up in the same manner.’ These defensive tactics saved them from the violent cavalry charge of the Marathas that had nearly broken the Afghan centre. Damaji Gaikwad, whose division, Kasiraj Pandit tells us, supported Ibrahim Khan, behaved very well and he himself received several wounds.