Battel of Panipat
Panipat was one of the five cities (prasthas) founded by the Pandava brothers during the times of the Mahabharata; its historic name being Panduprastha. Panipat was the scene of three pivotal battles in Indian history.
The Lodi dynasty was actually the fifth and final of the Delhi Sultanate's ruling families during the late medieval period. The Lodi family were ethnic Pashtuns who took control over a large section of northern India in 1451, reunifying the area after Timur's devastating invasion in 1398.Ibrahim Lodi was a weak and tyrannical ruler, disliked by the nobility and commoners alike. In fact, the noble families of the Delhi Sultanante despised him to such a degree that they actually invited Babur to invade! The Lodi ruler would have trouble preventing his troops from defecting to Babur's side during the fighting, as well.
Ibrahim Lodi was no tactician - his army simply marched out in a disorganized block, relying on sheer numbers and the aforementioned elephants to overwhelm the enemy. Babur, however, employed two tactics unfamiliar to Lodi, which turned the tide of the battle.
The first was tulughma, dividing a smaller force into forward left, rear left, forward right, rear right, and center divisions. The highly mobile right and left divisions peeled out and surrounded the larger enemy force, driving them towards the center. At the center, Babur arrayed his cannons. The second tactical innovation was Babur's use of carts, called araba. His artillery forces were shielded behind a row of carts which were tide together with leather ropes, to prevent the enemy from getting between them and attacking the artillerymen. This tactic was borrowed from the Ottoman Turks.
The First Battle of Panipat is a crucial turning point in the history of India. Although it would take time for Babur and his successors to consolidate control over the country, the defeat of the Delhi Sultanate was a major step towards the establishment of the Mughal Empire, which would rule India until it was defeated in turn by the British Raj in 1868.The Mughal path to empire was not smooth. Indeed, Babur's son Humayan lost the entire kingdom during his reign, but was able to regain some territory before his death.
Samrat Hem Chandra Vikramaditya (1501-1556), also known as Hemachandra Bhargava or simply Hemu was a Hindu Emperor of India during the 1500s. He fought Afghan rebels across North India from the Punjab to Bengal and the Mughal forces of Akbar and Humayun in Agra and Delhi, winning 22 battles without a single setback. He assumed the title of Vikramaditya after acceding to the throne of Delhi This was one of the crucial periods in Indian history, when the Mughals and Afghans were desperately vying for power. The son of a food seller, and himself a vendor of saltpetre at Rewari, he rose to become Chief of Army and Prime Minister under the command of Adil Shah Suri of the Suri Dynasty, who ruled over a region east of Delhi established at Chunar and was seeking to expel the Mughals from Delhi. He acceded to the throne of Delhi on October 7, 1556. His Rajyabhishek (coronation) was at the Purana Quila (Old Fort) in Delhi, where he was bestowed the title of Samrat. Hemu re-established the Hindu Kingdom (albeit for a short duration) after over 350 years.Hemu struck coins, bearing his title.
Developments in Delhi and Agra disturbed the Mughals at Kalanaur. Many Mughal Generals advised Akbar and Bairam Khan to retreat to Kabul as the Mughal forces would not be able to face Hemu's might, but Bairam Khan decided in favour of war. Akbar's army marched towards Delhi. On November 5, both armies met at the historic battlefield of Panipat, a pass where, thirty years earlier, Akbar's grandfather Babur had defeated Ibrahim Lodi in what is now known as the First Battle of Panipat.
Not only could Hemu muster the support of both Hindus and Afghans against the Mughal invaders, he was a dynamic leader and a brilliant tactician. At the time Afghans considered themselves to be natives,(and were considered to be natives by the Hindus); on the other hand Akbar,writes Dr Vincent Arthur Smith, was considered to be a foreigner. Hemu was a native ruler leading a native Afghan army to victory, battle after battle, thus Hemu was very popular among Hindus as well as Afghans. (this secular rule was also an important policy in the Sikh Raj of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. It also indicates that the rule which Hemu established commanding the Afghan army was secular and nationalistic. (secular rule was also an important policy in the Sikh Raj of Maharaja Ranjit Singh).
Hemu, whose army was twice the size of Akbar's, showed heroic courage during the battle. The Mughal forces were charged by elephants to break their lines. General Hemu was commanding his forces, out in front, from atop an elephant. Bairam Khan devised an ingenious plan to attack Hemu by sending his archers, protected by a circle of swordsmen, forward to allow them to get close enough to Hemu to send an arrow into his unprotected eyes, the only part of his body not covered by armor. Seeing him fall from his elephant, Hemu’s army quickly became disarrayed and was defeated in the ensuing confusion. Hemu was captured by Sher Afghan Quli Khan and brought to Akbar’s tent. General Bairam Khan was desirous that Akbar should slay General Hemu himself establishing his right to the title of “Ghazi” (slayer of a mushrikūn (an idolater or enemy of Islam). But Akbar, the spirited 13 year old that he was, refused to strike a defeated and wounded enemy. Bairam Khan, irritated by Akbar’s scruples, beheaded Hemu himself, disgracing the young emperor in the eyes of his warriors who witnessed the scene. (Akbar would later send Khan into exile). Hemu's head was sent to Kabul, where it was hung outside the Delhi Darwaza, while his body was placed, to rot, in a gibbet outside Purana Qila in Delhi.
The Third Battle of Panipat took place on 14 January 1761, at Panipat, about 60 miles (97 km) north of Delhi between a northern expeditionary force of the Maratha Empire and a coalition of the King of Afghanistan, Ahmad Shah Abdali with two Indian Muslim allies—the Rohilla Afghans of the Doab, and Shuja-ud-Daula, the Nawab of Awadh. Militarily, the battle pitted the French-supplied artillery[4] and cavalry of the Marathas against the heavy cavalry and mounted artillery (zamburak and jizail) of the Afghans and Rohillas led by Ahmad Shah Durrani and Najib-ud-Daulah, both ethnic Afghans (the former is also known as Ahmad Shah Abdali). The battle is considered one of the largest fought in the 18th century,[5] and has perhaps the largest number of fatalities in a single day reported in a classic formation battle between two armies.
The decline of the Mughal Empire following the 27-year Mughal-Maratha war (1680–1707) had led to rapid territorial gains for the Maratha Empire. Under Peshwa Baji Rao, Gujarat and Malwa came under Maratha control. Finally, in 1737, Baji Rao defeated the Mughals on the outskirts of Delhi, and brought much of the former Mughal territories south of Delhi under Maratha control. Baji Rao's son, Balaji Baji Rao (popularly known as Nana Saheb), further increased the territory under Maratha control by invading Punjab in 1758. This brought the Marathas into direct confrontation with the Durrani empire of Ahmad Shah Abdali. In 1759 he raised an army from the Pashtun tribes and made several gains against the smaller Maratha garrisons in Punjab. He then joined with his Indian allies—the Rohilla Afghans of the Gangetic Doab—forming a broad coalition against the Marathas. The Marathas, under the command of Sadashivrao Bhau, responded by gathering an army of between 45,000–60,000, which was accompanied by roughly 200,000 non-combatants, a number of whom were pilgrims desirous of making pilgrimages to Hindu holy sites in northern India. The Marathas started their northward journey from Patdur on the 14 March 1760. Both sides tried to get the Nawad of Awadh, Shuja-ud-Daulah, into their camp. By late July, Shuja-ud-Daulah made the decision to join the Afghan-Rohilla coalition, preferring to join what was perceived as the 'army of Islam'. This was strategically a major loss for the Marathas, since Shuja provided much needed finances for the long Afghan stay in North India. It is doubtful whether the Afghan-Rohilla coalition would have the means to continue their conflict with the Marathas without Shuja's support.
The slow-moving Maratha camp finally reached Delhi on 1 August 1760, and took the city the next day. There followed a series of skirmishes along the banks of the river Yamuna, and a battle at Kunjpura, which the Marathas won against an Afghan garrison of about 15,000 (at this time, Abdali and the other Afghan forces were on the eastern side of the Yamuna river). However, Abdali daringly crossed the river Yamuna on the 25 October at Baghpat, cutting off the Maratha camp from their base in Delhi. This eventually turned into a two-month-long siege led by Abdali against the Marathas in the town of Panipat. During the siege both sides tried to cut off the other's supplies. At this the Afghans were considerably more effective, so that by the end of November 1760 they had cut off almost all food supplies into the besieged Maratha camp (which had about 250,000 to 300,000, most of whom were non-combatants). According to all the chronicles of the time, food in the Maratha camp ran out by late December or early January and cattle died by the thousands. Reports of soldiers dying of starvation began to be heard in early January. On 13 January the Maratha chiefs begged their commander, Sadashiv Rao Bhau, to be allowed to die in battle than perish by starvation. The next day the Marathas left their camp before dawn and marched south towards the Afghan camp in a desperate attempt to break the siege. The two armies came face-to-face around 8:00 a.m., and the battle raged until evening.
The specific site of the battle itself is disputed by historians, but most consider it to have occurred somewhere near modern-day Kaalaa Aamb and Sanauli Road. The battle lasted for several days and involved over 125,000 troops. Protracted skirmishes occurred, with losses and gains on both sides. The forces led by Ahmad Shah Durrani came out victorious after destroying several Maratha flanks. The extent of the losses on both sides is heavily disputed by historians, but it is believed that between 60,000–70,000 were killed in fighting, while the numbers of injured and prisoners taken vary considerably. According to the single best eye-witness chronicle- the bakhar by Shuja-ud-Daulah's Diwan Kashi Raj, about 40,000 Maratha prisoners were slaughtered in cold blood the day after the battle.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.
The result of the battle was the halting of further Maratha advances in the north, and a destabilization of their territories, for roughly 10 years. This period of 10 years is marked by the rule of Peshwa Madhavrao, who is credited with the revival of Maratha domination following the defeat at Panipat. In 1771, 10 years after Panipat, he sent a large Maratha army into North India in an expedition that was meant to re-establish Maratha domination in North India and punish refractory powers that had either sided with the Afghans, such as the Rohillas, or had shaken off Maratha domination after Panipat. The success of this campaign can be seen as the last saga of the long story of Panipat.
First Battle of Panipat (April 21, 1526)
Background to the First Battle of Panipat
India's invader, Babur, was the scion of the great Central Asian conqueror-families; his father was a descendant of Timur, while his mother's family traced its roots back to Genghis Khan.His father died in 1494, and the 11-year-old Babur became the ruler of Farghana (Fergana), in what is now the border area between Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. However, his uncles and cousins fought Babur for the throne, forcing him to abdicate twice. Unable to hold on to Farghana or take Samarkand, the young prince gave up on the family seat, turning south to capture Kabul instead in 1504.Babur was not satisfied for long with ruling over Kabul and the surrounding districts alone, however. Throughout the early sixteenth century, he made several incursions northward into his ancestral lands, but never was able to hold them for long. Discouraged, by 1521, he had set his sights on lands further to the south instead: Hindustan (India), which was under the rule of the Delhi Sultanate and Sultan Ibrahim Lodi.The Lodi dynasty was actually the fifth and final of the Delhi Sultanate's ruling families during the late medieval period. The Lodi family were ethnic Pashtuns who took control over a large section of northern India in 1451, reunifying the area after Timur's devastating invasion in 1398.Ibrahim Lodi was a weak and tyrannical ruler, disliked by the nobility and commoners alike. In fact, the noble families of the Delhi Sultanante despised him to such a degree that they actually invited Babur to invade! The Lodi ruler would have trouble preventing his troops from defecting to Babur's side during the fighting, as well.
Battle Forces and Tactics
Babur's Mughal forces consisted of between 13,000 and 15,000 men, mostly horse cavalry. His secret weapon was 20 to 24 pieces of field artillery, a relatively recent innovation in warfare.Arrayed against the Mughals were Ibrahim Lodi's 30,000 to 40,000 soldiers, plus tens of thousands of camp followers. Lodi's primary weapon of shock and awe was his troop of war elephants - numbering anywhere from 100 to 1,000 trained and battle-hardened pachyderms, according to different sources.Ibrahim Lodi was no tactician - his army simply marched out in a disorganized block, relying on sheer numbers and the aforementioned elephants to overwhelm the enemy. Babur, however, employed two tactics unfamiliar to Lodi, which turned the tide of the battle.
The first was tulughma, dividing a smaller force into forward left, rear left, forward right, rear right, and center divisions. The highly mobile right and left divisions peeled out and surrounded the larger enemy force, driving them towards the center. At the center, Babur arrayed his cannons. The second tactical innovation was Babur's use of carts, called araba. His artillery forces were shielded behind a row of carts which were tide together with leather ropes, to prevent the enemy from getting between them and attacking the artillerymen. This tactic was borrowed from the Ottoman Turks.
The Battle of Panipat
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After conquering the Punjab region (which today is divided between northern India and Pakistan), Babur drove on toward Delhi. Early on the morning of April 21, 1526, his army met the Delhi sultan's at Panipat, now in Haryana State, about 90 kilometers north of Delhi.Using his tulughma formation, Babur trapped the Lodi army in a pincher motion. He then used his cannons to great effect; the Delhi war elephants had never heard such a loud and terrible noise, and the spooked animals turned around and ran through their own lines, crushing Lodi's soldiers as they ran. Despite these advantages, the battle was a close contest given the Delhi Sultanate's overwhelming numerical superiority.
As the bloody encounter dragged on toward midday, however, more and more of Lodi's soldiers defected to Babur's side. Finally, the tyrannical sultan of Delhi was abandoned by his surviving officers, and left to die on the battlefield from his wounds. The Mughal upstart from Kabul had prevailed. |
The Aftermath of the Battle
According to the Baburnama, Emperor Babur's autobiography, the Mughals killed 15,000 to 16,000 of the Delhi soldiers. Other local accounts put the total losses at closer to 40,000 or 50,000. Of Babur's own troops, some 4,000 were killed in the battle. There is no record of the elephants' fate.The First Battle of Panipat is a crucial turning point in the history of India. Although it would take time for Babur and his successors to consolidate control over the country, the defeat of the Delhi Sultanate was a major step towards the establishment of the Mughal Empire, which would rule India until it was defeated in turn by the British Raj in 1868.The Mughal path to empire was not smooth. Indeed, Babur's son Humayan lost the entire kingdom during his reign, but was able to regain some territory before his death.
Second Battle of Panipat(November 5, 1556)
Background
On January 24, 1556, Mughal ruler Humayun died and was succeeded by his son, Akbar who was only thirteen years old. On February 14, 1556, in a garden at Kalanaur in Punjab, Akbar was enthroned as the Emperor. At the time of his accession to the throne, Mughal rule was confined to Kabul, Kandahar, parts of Punjab and Delhi. Akbar had been campaigning in Kabul with his guardian, Bairam Khan at the time of his father.s death, which was not announced until Akbar returned to India.Samrat Hem Chandra Vikramaditya (1501-1556), also known as Hemachandra Bhargava or simply Hemu was a Hindu Emperor of India during the 1500s. He fought Afghan rebels across North India from the Punjab to Bengal and the Mughal forces of Akbar and Humayun in Agra and Delhi, winning 22 battles without a single setback. He assumed the title of Vikramaditya after acceding to the throne of Delhi This was one of the crucial periods in Indian history, when the Mughals and Afghans were desperately vying for power. The son of a food seller, and himself a vendor of saltpetre at Rewari, he rose to become Chief of Army and Prime Minister under the command of Adil Shah Suri of the Suri Dynasty, who ruled over a region east of Delhi established at Chunar and was seeking to expel the Mughals from Delhi. He acceded to the throne of Delhi on October 7, 1556. His Rajyabhishek (coronation) was at the Purana Quila (Old Fort) in Delhi, where he was bestowed the title of Samrat. Hemu re-established the Hindu Kingdom (albeit for a short duration) after over 350 years.Hemu struck coins, bearing his title.
Battle of Panipat
Developments in Delhi and Agra disturbed the Mughals at Kalanaur. Many Mughal Generals advised Akbar and Bairam Khan to retreat to Kabul as the Mughal forces would not be able to face Hemu's might, but Bairam Khan decided in favour of war. Akbar's army marched towards Delhi. On November 5, both armies met at the historic battlefield of Panipat, a pass where, thirty years earlier, Akbar's grandfather Babur had defeated Ibrahim Lodi in what is now known as the First Battle of Panipat.Not only could Hemu muster the support of both Hindus and Afghans against the Mughal invaders, he was a dynamic leader and a brilliant tactician. At the time Afghans considered themselves to be natives,(and were considered to be natives by the Hindus); on the other hand Akbar,writes Dr Vincent Arthur Smith, was considered to be a foreigner. Hemu was a native ruler leading a native Afghan army to victory, battle after battle, thus Hemu was very popular among Hindus as well as Afghans. (this secular rule was also an important policy in the Sikh Raj of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. It also indicates that the rule which Hemu established commanding the Afghan army was secular and nationalistic. (secular rule was also an important policy in the Sikh Raj of Maharaja Ranjit Singh).
Hemu, whose army was twice the size of Akbar's, showed heroic courage during the battle. The Mughal forces were charged by elephants to break their lines. General Hemu was commanding his forces, out in front, from atop an elephant. Bairam Khan devised an ingenious plan to attack Hemu by sending his archers, protected by a circle of swordsmen, forward to allow them to get close enough to Hemu to send an arrow into his unprotected eyes, the only part of his body not covered by armor. Seeing him fall from his elephant, Hemu’s army quickly became disarrayed and was defeated in the ensuing confusion. Hemu was captured by Sher Afghan Quli Khan and brought to Akbar’s tent. General Bairam Khan was desirous that Akbar should slay General Hemu himself establishing his right to the title of “Ghazi” (slayer of a mushrikūn (an idolater or enemy of Islam). But Akbar, the spirited 13 year old that he was, refused to strike a defeated and wounded enemy. Bairam Khan, irritated by Akbar’s scruples, beheaded Hemu himself, disgracing the young emperor in the eyes of his warriors who witnessed the scene. (Akbar would later send Khan into exile). Hemu's head was sent to Kabul, where it was hung outside the Delhi Darwaza, while his body was placed, to rot, in a gibbet outside Purana Qila in Delhi.
Aftermath
Akbar, after the Battle of Panipat, took Agra and Delhi without much resistance. But soon, after he took possession of his capital, he had to return to Punjab when intelligence informed him of Sikandar Shah Suri’s (Adil Shah Suri’s brother) advancing campaign in Punjab. Suri was defeated and taken captive after the siege of Fort Mankot by Mughal forces and exiled to Bengal. The victory of Akbar at the Battle of Panipat in 1556 was the real restoration of the Mughal Dynasty to Power in India. It marked the fulfillment of the destiny of the House of Timur in India as rulers.Third Battle of Panipat (14 January 1761)
The Third Battle of Panipat took place on 14 January 1761, at Panipat, about 60 miles (97 km) north of Delhi between a northern expeditionary force of the Maratha Empire and a coalition of the King of Afghanistan, Ahmad Shah Abdali with two Indian Muslim allies—the Rohilla Afghans of the Doab, and Shuja-ud-Daula, the Nawab of Awadh. Militarily, the battle pitted the French-supplied artillery[4] and cavalry of the Marathas against the heavy cavalry and mounted artillery (zamburak and jizail) of the Afghans and Rohillas led by Ahmad Shah Durrani and Najib-ud-Daulah, both ethnic Afghans (the former is also known as Ahmad Shah Abdali). The battle is considered one of the largest fought in the 18th century,[5] and has perhaps the largest number of fatalities in a single day reported in a classic formation battle between two armies.The decline of the Mughal Empire following the 27-year Mughal-Maratha war (1680–1707) had led to rapid territorial gains for the Maratha Empire. Under Peshwa Baji Rao, Gujarat and Malwa came under Maratha control. Finally, in 1737, Baji Rao defeated the Mughals on the outskirts of Delhi, and brought much of the former Mughal territories south of Delhi under Maratha control. Baji Rao's son, Balaji Baji Rao (popularly known as Nana Saheb), further increased the territory under Maratha control by invading Punjab in 1758. This brought the Marathas into direct confrontation with the Durrani empire of Ahmad Shah Abdali. In 1759 he raised an army from the Pashtun tribes and made several gains against the smaller Maratha garrisons in Punjab. He then joined with his Indian allies—the Rohilla Afghans of the Gangetic Doab—forming a broad coalition against the Marathas. The Marathas, under the command of Sadashivrao Bhau, responded by gathering an army of between 45,000–60,000, which was accompanied by roughly 200,000 non-combatants, a number of whom were pilgrims desirous of making pilgrimages to Hindu holy sites in northern India. The Marathas started their northward journey from Patdur on the 14 March 1760. Both sides tried to get the Nawad of Awadh, Shuja-ud-Daulah, into their camp. By late July, Shuja-ud-Daulah made the decision to join the Afghan-Rohilla coalition, preferring to join what was perceived as the 'army of Islam'. This was strategically a major loss for the Marathas, since Shuja provided much needed finances for the long Afghan stay in North India. It is doubtful whether the Afghan-Rohilla coalition would have the means to continue their conflict with the Marathas without Shuja's support.
The slow-moving Maratha camp finally reached Delhi on 1 August 1760, and took the city the next day. There followed a series of skirmishes along the banks of the river Yamuna, and a battle at Kunjpura, which the Marathas won against an Afghan garrison of about 15,000 (at this time, Abdali and the other Afghan forces were on the eastern side of the Yamuna river). However, Abdali daringly crossed the river Yamuna on the 25 October at Baghpat, cutting off the Maratha camp from their base in Delhi. This eventually turned into a two-month-long siege led by Abdali against the Marathas in the town of Panipat. During the siege both sides tried to cut off the other's supplies. At this the Afghans were considerably more effective, so that by the end of November 1760 they had cut off almost all food supplies into the besieged Maratha camp (which had about 250,000 to 300,000, most of whom were non-combatants). According to all the chronicles of the time, food in the Maratha camp ran out by late December or early January and cattle died by the thousands. Reports of soldiers dying of starvation began to be heard in early January. On 13 January the Maratha chiefs begged their commander, Sadashiv Rao Bhau, to be allowed to die in battle than perish by starvation. The next day the Marathas left their camp before dawn and marched south towards the Afghan camp in a desperate attempt to break the siege. The two armies came face-to-face around 8:00 a.m., and the battle raged until evening.
The specific site of the battle itself is disputed by historians, but most consider it to have occurred somewhere near modern-day Kaalaa Aamb and Sanauli Road. The battle lasted for several days and involved over 125,000 troops. Protracted skirmishes occurred, with losses and gains on both sides. The forces led by Ahmad Shah Durrani came out victorious after destroying several Maratha flanks. The extent of the losses on both sides is heavily disputed by historians, but it is believed that between 60,000–70,000 were killed in fighting, while the numbers of injured and prisoners taken vary considerably. According to the single best eye-witness chronicle- the bakhar by Shuja-ud-Daulah's Diwan Kashi Raj, about 40,000 Maratha prisoners were slaughtered in cold blood the day after the battle.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.
The result of the battle was the halting of further Maratha advances in the north, and a destabilization of their territories, for roughly 10 years. This period of 10 years is marked by the rule of Peshwa Madhavrao, who is credited with the revival of Maratha domination following the defeat at Panipat. In 1771, 10 years after Panipat, he sent a large Maratha army into North India in an expedition that was meant to re-establish Maratha domination in North India and punish refractory powers that had either sided with the Afghans, such as the Rohillas, or had shaken off Maratha domination after Panipat. The success of this campaign can be seen as the last saga of the long story of Panipat.