पानीपत १७६१ (मराठा साम्राज्य एवं पानीपत महायुद्ध इतिहास)

92 PANIPAT 1761
the enemy line, as the Marathas had to do His defensive position was now
as strong as that of the Marathas at Panipat Ahmad Shah took full ad
vantage of this situation Only the fighting force was first sent to the front,
the rest doing all their duties in the usual manner They could cook their
food and have their meals before the Maratha onslaught could reach them
The Shah s personal troops had, as usual, been kept as a reserve Ahmad
Shah seems to have taken the precaution to keep his main body of troops in
tact in all his battles and not only at Panipat He would make the second
rate troops face the enemy first and wear them out Later on, at the critical
juncture, he would rush in with his fresh, unexhausted troops and complete
the victory His methodology was thus quite different from the Indian practice
since the days of the Mahabharata battle In all the noted Indian battles in
history, the chief general was always at the fore front, and at his fall the bat-
tles ended in a rout The battles were fought for the general, and with his
fall no motive remained for the troops to fight any longer Ahmad Shah, in
fact, was the precursor of the European mode of warfare, wherein a general
seldom takes a personal part in the fight In a composite fight he would make
his allies face the brunt of the battle and expose them to severe casualties
He himself would come in last when the result hung in the balance, thus leaving
a preponderating force with him to take charge of the spoils and not leave an
upper hand to others in case of a dispute later on The original Hindu prac-
tice of fighting with a general at the head of the army had been handed down
even to the Muslim rulers of India They also followed the same mode The
Marathas revolutionised the old system by their guerilla mode in which a
face to face battle was to be avoided But Sadashivrao Bhau had now again
brought the original vogue into fashion with the help of the trained infantry
and its park of artillery Unfortunately for him he had to practise this mode
under very adverse circumstances now
Thus the critical hour of the battle, when the Marathas could pos-
sibly have given a different turn to it, passed away with the army standing ex-
hausted and bewildered by the very first effort Sir Jadunath thinks⁵ that be-
cause 'Bhau had no squadron of cavalry in heavy armour and mounted on
powerful horses ready to charge in close order and cut its way like a solid
wedge through the shaken Durrani ranks," he could not complete his initial
success He also thinks that because the Maratha troops did not carry roast ,
meat and dry bread in their saddle bags and water in leather bottles to refresh
and reinvigorate themselves easily in the field on account of their caste suscepti
bilities with its dread of its defiling touch, they could not recoup themselves
in time so as to follow their initial success with further advantage Though these
causes are true so far as they go, we do not think that these decided the line
of action taken by Bhau He knew that Ahmad Shah with his entrenched
camp was behind the Wazir's line, and the possibility of marching through
it was very remote At the same time he was neither prepared to expose his
camp to Afghan butchery as long as he lived, nor would he break the square
formation decided upon the previous night, and run past Ibrahim Khan's in-
⁵ Fall 233, See the appendix on food arrangements