Third Battle of Panipat

Third Battle of Panipat
Part of Indian Campaign of Ahmad Shah Durrani and the Afghan–Maratha War

c. 1770 Faizabad-style painting of the Third Battle of Panipat; the centre of the image is dominated by the twin arcs of the lines of guns firing at each other with smoke and destruction in between.
Date14 January 1761
Location
Panipat (present-day Haryana, India)
29°23′N 76°58′E / 29.39°N 76.97°E / 29.39; 76.97
Result Durrani victory[4]
Belligerents
Durrani Empire
Supported by:
Kingdom of Rohilkhand
Khanate of Kalat
Kingdom of Awadh
Amb State
Sind State
Mughal nobles
Commanders and leaders
Ahmad Shah Durrani
(Shah of the Durrani Empire)
Afghan officers:
Rohilla, Kalat, Awadh, Amb, Sindh and Mughal officers:
 Sadashiv Rao Bhau †
(Amatya of the Maratha Confederacy)
Maratha officers:
Strength
42,000 Afghan cavalry, of which 28,000 was regular cavalry[12]
32,000 Rohilla infantry[12] 2,000 Zamburak (camel gun)[13]		 55,000 Maratha cavalry, of which 11,000 was regular cavalry[14]
9,000 Gardi infantry[14]
200,000 non-combatants (pilgrims and camp-followers)[15]
Casualties and losses
15,000 Rohillas killed and wounded[16]
5,000 Afghans killed and wounded[16]		 30,000 killed in battle[16]
10,000 killed while retreating[16]
10,000 missing[16]
50,000 non-combatants executed following the battle[16][17][18]
9,000 in revenge killings following the battle[19]
Estimated 22,000 enslaved[17]

The Third Battle of Panipat[a] took place on 14 January 1761 between the Maratha Confederacy and the invading army of the Durrani Empire. The battle took place in and around the city of Panipat, approximately 97 kilometres (60 mi) north of Delhi. The Afghans were supported by three key allies in India: Najib ad-Dawlah who persuaded the support of the Rohilla chiefs, elements of the declining Mughal Empire, and most prized the Oudh State under Shuja-ud-Daula.[20] The Maratha army was led by Sadashivrao Bhau, who was third-highest authority of the Maratha Confederacy after the Chhatrapati and the Peshwa. The bulk of the Maratha army was stationed in the Deccan Plateau with the Peshwa.

Militarily, the battle pitted the artillery, musketry, and cavalry of the Marathas against the heavy cavalry, musketry (jezail) and mounted artillery (zamburak) of the Afghans and the Rohillas led by Abdali and Najib ad-Dawlah. The battle is considered to have been one of the largest and most eventful fought in the 18th century,[21] and it had perhaps the largest number of fatalities in a single day reported in a classic formation battle between two armies.

The battle lasted for several days and involved over 125,000 troops; protracted skirmishes occurred, with losses and gains on both sides. The Afghan army ultimately emerged victorious from the battle after successfully destroying several Maratha flanks. The extent of the losses on both sides is heavily disputed by historians, but it is believed that between 60,000 and 70,000 troops were killed in the fighting, while the numbers of injured and prisoners taken vary considerably. According to the single-best eyewitness chronicle—the bakhar by Shuja-ud-Daula's Diwan Kashi Raja—about 40,000 Maratha prisoners were collectively slaughtered on the day after the battle.[18] British historian Grant Duff includes an interview of a survivor of these massacres in his History of the Marathas and generally corroborates this number. Shejwalkar, whose monograph Panipat 1761 is often regarded as the single-best secondary source on the battle, says that "not less than 100,000 Marathas (soldiers and non-combatants) perished during and after the battle".[17]

  1. ^ Robinson, Howard; James Thomson Shotwell (1922). Mogul Empire. The Development of the British Empire. Houghton Mifflin. p. 91.
  2. ^ Robinson, Howard; James Thomson Shotwell (1922). Mogul Empire. The Development of the British Empire. Houghton Mifflin. p. 91.
  3. ^ Robinson, Howard; James Thomson Shotwell (1922). Mogul Empire. The Development of the British Empire. Houghton Mifflin. p. 91.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h Kaushik Roy, India's Historic Battles: From Alexander the Great to Kargil, (Orient Longman, 2004), 90.
  5. ^ a b c d e Sharma, Suresh K. (2006). Haryana: Past and Present. Mittal Publications. ISBN 9788183240468.
  6. ^ "History of the Pathans" by Haroon Rashid, Volume III, page 365
  7. ^ Rai, Raghunath. History. FK Publications. ISBN 9788187139690.
  8. ^ Solomon, Arnold; Playne, Somerset (2006). Indian States. Asian Educational Services. p. 362. ISBN 81-206-1965-X. Retrieved 7 January 2023.
  9. ^ George, Bruce Malleson (1878). History of Afghanistan, From the Earliest Period to the Outbreak of the War of 1878. Afghanistan: W.H. Allen & Company. p. 287. ISBN 9781163302446. Archived from the original on 2 October 2022. Retrieved 8 September 2021.
  10. ^ Farooq Baloch, Ghulam (1984). "TREATY OF KALAT 1758 BETWEEN QANDHAR AND KALAT AND ITS IMPACTS" (PDF). EduPK. 1 (PK): 6. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 8 September 2021.
  11. ^ Kulke, Hermann; Rothermund, Dietmar (2004). A History of India. Psychology Press. ISBN 9780415329194.
  12. ^ a b Roy, Kaushik (2004). India's Historic Battles: From Alexander the Great to Kargil. Orient Blackswan. pp. 84–85–93. ISBN 9788178241098.
  13. ^ Iqtidar Alam Khan (2004). Gunpowder and Firearms: Warfare in Medieval India. Oxford University Press. p. 109. ISBN 978-0-19-566526-0. At the Third Battle of Panipat (1761), Ahmed Shah Abdali had 2000 shaturnals which indicates that the popularity of these particular type of firearm was growing in the subcontinent down to the middle of the eighteenth century
  14. ^ a b Roy, Kaushik (2004). India's Historic Battles: From Alexander the Great to Kargil. Orient Blackswan. pp. 84–85–93. ISBN 9788178241098. Archived from the original on 8 February 2022. Retrieved 8 February 2022.
  15. ^ "Third Battle of Panipat (1761) | Panipat, Haryana". Archived from the original on 27 October 2021. Retrieved 20 May 2018.
  16. ^ a b c d e f Roy, Kaushik (2004). India's Historic Battles: From Alexander the Great to Kargil. Orient Blackswan. pp. 84–85–93. ISBN 9788178241098. Archived from the original on 8 February 2022. Retrieved 8 February 2022.
  17. ^ a b c James Grant Duff "History of the Mahrattas, Vol II (Ch. 5), Printed for Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1826"
  18. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference tss was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  19. ^ The Indian Journal of International Law:Official Organ of the Indian Society of International Law · Volume 3. the University of Michigan. 1963. Archived from the original on 4 April 2023. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
  20. ^ Stewart Gordon (1993). The Marathas 1600-1818:Volume 4. Cambridge University Press. p. 154. ISBN 9780521033169. Archived from the original on 30 July 2023. Retrieved 11 July 2023.
  21. ^ Black, Jeremy (2002). Warfare In The Eighteenth Century. Cassell. ISBN 978-0304362127.


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