Panipat Battles
Before Babur won fame and a throne at Panipat, his forebear Timur the Lame had won a victory on the same field in 1399. He crushed his opponent, the sultan of Delhi, and then proceeded to capture the undefended capital and loot it for 10 days. This victory was the source of Babur’s claim to the throne a century and a quarter later.
Three decades after the foundation of the Moghul Empire in India was laid by Babur’s victory at Panipat, its establishment was confirmed by his grandson Akbar. He was only 14 years old when the battle was fought on 5 November 1556, but he was ably assisted by an advisor named Bairam. Hemu, the general who took the throne in Delhi after Sher Khan’s accidental death in 1545, led 100,000 men against Akbar’s 20,000. Although the battle in its early stages seemed to belong to Hemu, when he was struck in the eye by an arrow, his army collapsed. Akbar incorporated many of the defeated enemy troops into his own army, which he organized along the lines employed by Sher Khan and Hemu. With this professional force, Akbar spread Moghul influence through the northern two-thirds of India. He became legendary for his wise leadership and thirst for knowledge. Unfortunately, his son had no such fine qualities and poisoned his father in 1605.
The final battle at Panipat occurred in 1761. By that time, the once might, Moghul Empire was a kingdom in name only. The last Moghul of any authority, Aurangzeb, died in 1707. Afterward, the throne was occupied by a series of weak figures. In the 1750s, the Punjab had been conquered by the Afghan leader Ahmad Shah, but, upon his return home through the Khyber Pass, the region had been conquered by the Marathas. They had once been a population of bandits and guerrillas, but by 1760 had transformed themselves into a disciplined army, well armed with European artillery. They raised the flag of religious war, Hindu against the Moslem Afghans, and in 1761 the two armies met at Panipat. The Marathas numbered 70,000 infantry and 15,000 cavalry under Sadasheo Bhao. The Afghan army was comprised of 40,000 infantry and 53,000 cavalry under the command of Ahmad Shah.
Both sides entrenched themselves and faced each other down for 2 months. Finally feeling the strain of hunger and failing to receive any receptive response to peace feelers, Bhao ordered an assault. The Hindus had the early advantage with their superior weaponry, and the Rohillas, Indian allies to the Afghans, began to buckle. Just as all seemed to be lost, Ahmad Shah ordered a concentrated cavalry assault on the Marathas that, at the end of an exhausting day, proved the difference. With the defeat of the Maratha army, the only serious military force in India was broken. Ahmad Shah, although victorious, was severely weakened by the battle and unable to follow up. Thus, the Moghul king, Shah-Alam, negotiated an agreement with the British East India Company, which gave him a pension in return for administrative control of much of Hindustan. Having defeated their only European rival, the French, at Plassey in 1757, the British assumed a position of power that no local or foreign power could challenge. Thus, Panipat was the scene of the beginning and the end of the Moghul dynasty.