The Third Battle of Panipat
The third battle at Panipat, on 14 January 1761, was among the largest and bloodiest fought anywhere in the eighteenth century, and it settled who would not inherit India. The Maratha Confederacy had spent forty years replacing Mughal authority across the subcontinent without replacing the Mughal emperor, collecting tribute from Bengal to the Punjab while leaving a powerless court in Delhi. That expansion brought them to the Afghan frontier, and Ahmad Shah Durrani, who had already sacked Delhi twice, came south with an army and with Indian Muslim allies - Awadh and the Rohillas - who preferred an Afghan overlord to a Hindu one. The armies faced each other north of Delhi for two months. The Marathas, under Sadashivrao Bhau, had the better artillery and a large non-combatant train of pilgrims and families; the Afghans had better cavalry and cut the Maratha supply lines. By January the Maratha camp was starving, which is why they attacked. The battle lasted a day. Maratha guns did well in the morning and the line broke in the afternoon when Vishwasrao, the Peshwa's son, was killed and Sadashivrao rode into the melee after him. Estimates of the dead run from forty thousand upward on the day, with tens of thousands of prisoners and camp followers killed or enslaved afterwards. Ahmad Shah went home and held nothing. The Marathas recovered Delhi within a decade but never again fought as one army, and the confederacy that emerged was four houses with separate policies. When the East India Company began taking India seriously, there was no single Indian power left to stop it.
- Year: 1761 CE
- Category: Military
