Mughal–Maratha Wars — The War That Broke the Mughal Empire
The Mughal-Maratha conflict was the central military drama of South Asian history between 1681 and 1720. It grew from the tension between Mughal imperial expansion into the Deccan plateau and the Maratha polity that Shivaji had built in the western hills. Shivaji Maharaj (1630–1680) had established a Maratha state in the Sahyadri mountain range, deploying a mobile warfare strategy based on hill forts and cavalry raiding that neutralised Mughal and Bijapur military superiority. He died in 1680 before Aurangzeb's direct campaign began. Aurangzeb moved his court to Aurangabad in 1681 and never returned to Delhi. He had two initial objectives: the Maratha succession struggle (Shivaji's sons were rivals) and the conquest of the remaining Deccan Sultanates (Bijapur fell 1686, Golconda 1687). These early successes gave a false impression of eventual Maratha defeat. The Maratha campaign proved qualitatively different. The Marathas, under Sambhaji (1680–89) and then Rajaram (1689–1700) and Tarabai (1700–07), used the terrain of the Sahyadri mountains and the western Deccan to conduct sustained guerrilla resistance. Mughal armies could capture hill forts but could not hold territory; Maratha cavalry raided supplies and communication lines. The war became attrition on Mughal terms — the empire had to maintain enormous armies in the field for decades, which required revenue extraction that alienated the population and accelerated decentralisation. The financial strain was critical. Mughal military finance depended on mansabdars — nobles who received land revenue assignments (jagirs) in exchange for maintaining troops. The Deccan campaign's cost exceeded available revenue; jagir assignments were made in territories not actually under Mughal control; nobles demanded compensatory grants elsewhere; the system strained beyond capacity. Aurangzeb captured the Maratha king Sambhaji in 1689 and executed him with calculated brutality — which produced the opposite of the intended effect, transforming Sambhaji from a sometimes-unreliable ruler into a martyr who unified Maratha resistance. By the time Aurangzeb died in 1707, the Maratha confederacy was stronger and more widespread than when the campaign began. The last Mughal emperors ruled over a contracting rump; by the 1750s they were dependent on Maratha protection.
- Year: 1681 CE
- Category: Military
