Third Battle of Panipat

The Third Battle of Panipat was fought on 14 January 1761 near Panipat, about 97 kilometres north of Delhi, between the Maratha Empire and the invading army of Ahmad Shah Durrani, ruler of the Afghan Durrani Empire, and his Indian allies. It ended in a crushing Afghan victory. Often described as one of the largest battles of the eighteenth century, it was followed by mass killings of Maratha prisoners and camp followers and halted the Maratha advance in northern India for about a decade.

As Mughal power weakened, the Marathas spread across much of the subcontinent. In 1758 they drove the Afghan governor out of Lahore and took the Punjab. This placed them in direct conflict with Ahmad Shah, who had appointed his son Timur Shah to govern the province. Some Muslim religious leaders in India, alarmed at the Maratha expansion, appealed to him for help. In 1759 he returned with an army of Afghan and other troops, retook ground in the Punjab and won over Indian allies: the Rohilla chief Najib-ud-Daula, some Mughal nobles, and Shuja-ud-Daula, the nawab of Awadh.

The Peshwa's cousin Sadashivrao Bhau was given command of the Maratha response. He set out from the Deccan in March 1760 with an army of perhaps 45,000 to 60,000 fighting men, accompanied by roughly 200,000 non-combatants, many of them pilgrims. The Marathas took Delhi from its Afghan garrison and stormed the Afghan post at Kunjpura, but in late October Ahmad Shah crossed the Yamuna unopposed and placed himself between the Marathas and Delhi.

The Marathas dug in at Panipat, and for about two months the armies faced each other, skirmishing constantly. Afghan cavalry cut the Maratha supply lines, and hunger spread through the crowded camp. With men and animals starving, Bhau decided to break out towards Delhi.

On the morning of the battle the Marathas advanced in formation, with Ibrahim Khan Gardi's European-trained musketeers and artillery on the left, Bhau and the Peshwa's young son Vishwasrao in the centre, and the Holkar and Scindia contingents on the right. Ibrahim's guns at first drove back the Rohillas, and a charge led by Bhau almost split the Afghan centre. But the Maratha horses were exhausted, and around midday Ahmad Shah threw in his reserves, supported by camel-mounted swivel guns that fired over the heads of his infantry. Vishwasrao was shot dead; Bhau dismounted from his elephant to fight and was killed. Panic spread, part of the Holkar and Scindia forces on the right broke away and escaped, and the Maratha army collapsed.

The scale of the losses is heavily disputed. Estimates suggest that between 60,000 and 70,000 men died in the fighting. According to the chronicle of Kashi Raja, an official of Shuja-ud-Daula, about 40,000 Maratha prisoners were massacred the day after the battle, a figure the British historian Grant Duff broadly supported. The Indian historian Shejwalkar concluded that at least 100,000 Marathas, soldiers and non-combatants together, died during and after the battle. Among the captured commanders, Jankoji Scindia and Ibrahim Khan Gardi were executed.

The Peshwa, Balaji Baji Rao, heard of the disaster while marching north with reinforcements and never recovered from the shock. Ahmad Shah could not stay to rule: he ordered the Indian chiefs to recognise Shah Alam II as Mughal emperor, left Najib-ud-Daula as regent, and in March 1761 headed home, harassed by Sikh forces on his way through the Punjab. The Maratha Empire recovered under Peshwa Madhavrao, and in 1771 Mahadji Shinde led its armies back into northern India, and remained the largest power in the subcontinent until its wars with the British East India Company, which had won the Battle of Plassey in Bengal four years before Panipat. Panipat had already seen the First Battle of Panipat in 1526, which founded the Mughal Empire.

Our 1715 map shows the Mughal Empire still dominant, and the 1783 map shows the Maratha territories after their recovery, alongside a separate Afghanistan.