Re: The worst day...
Thankyou everyone for your continued support.
I will begin again.
I left my last posts with a brief overview of the political and physical atmosphere of Hindustan in the year 1760. The decline of the Mughals had by now led the Marhatha confederacy to make a climatic decision. Literally India as we know it was about to be carved out by the champions of the south, the followers of Shivaji... becuase already since 1752 they had forced the Mughals to sign the treaty of Ahmediya in which Mughal power had been restricted to Northern India.
The Mughals as I have already described were now a mere shadow of thier former glory and thier empire was rapidly disintegrating. The Rohilla chieftain Najib Khan and the Jatt Rajah Surajmal were the only real powers in North India. The Marathas however were spreading thier influence ever northwards, and in the preceding decades many northern territories joined the Marhatha empire particulalrly the dynastic rulers of Gwalior under the house of Scindia.
Meanwhile the historians among us will notice that the Maratha empire seems to have grown and spread almost overnight, from a few isolated hill forts and lightly armed guerrillas how had they grown to an empire and forced the Mughals to thier knees. Part of the reason, if not one of the main reasons was the bankrupt state of the Mughals. Aurangzeb Alamgir the first had spent 26 years of his reign trying to conquer the Maratha armies and ultimately failed, how was it possible that the Mughals went bankrupt and yet the Marathas got ever richer?
The reason is location, the Maratha empire was not just South Indian it also held much of India's rich west coast, and controlled sea trade routes as well as being in constant contact with European colonials who had established in Hyderabad under the French and Goa under the Dutch. Backed by a large army the Marathas soon found themselves expanding at a rapid rate and they practically held most of the subcontinent in thier power with non confedarate rulers fearing the sight of Maratha hordes coming over the horizon.
As the Maratha empire grew so did the Durrani Empire under Ahmed Sha the first king of Afghanistan, he too had forced the Mughals to give up thier claim over most of what is now Pakistan and on his fourth and most succesfull campaign to date in 1757 his army entered and looted Delhi but for some reason did not depose the Mughal dynasty. Whatever his reason may have been for leaving a puppet ruler in Delhi and that too being Alamgir the second as we know a weak king... we may never know.
What we do know is the Maratha's reacted strongly to this invasion of Hindustan and soon raised an army to halt Ahmed Sha Abdali from any further expansion, but as it was Abdali simply left Delhi and marched back to Kabul through the Punjab. Abdali was to have destroyed the Sikh Golden temple at Amritsar along the way as well as massacre large numbers of non Muslim populations and to the average Hindu this was a most heinous war crime, I too find no excuse for Abdali's behavior and in fact it has left a bad feeling in communities to this day... perhaps a reason why many Sikhs and Pathans may never get along. Even with Abdali having made a U-turn the Marathas were determined to punish him and so the encumbent Peshwa Balaji Bajirao sent his brother Ragunath Rao, known as Raghoba to punish the invasion.
Raghoba was a classic Maratha leader he was a shrewd man and a famous fighter much loved by the martial hawks in the Marhatha confedaracy. In what would be the greatest Maratha campaign ever Raghoba led 100,000 Maratha soldiers out of Pune and far into North India. His army was mostly made up of swarms of light cavalry and they stormed ever northwards crossing the lands Abdali had ravished and vowing vengeance.
Within a few Months they had reached Lahore and found the Afghans had left a token garrison which they soon overwhelemed. But not satisfied with this small victory Raghoba went further and followed up this victory by leading his army all the way to the banks of the Indus River. It was there that they paused becuase no Maratha, in fact no other Hindu led Army had ever come this far North for over two centuries and to the Maratha soldiers it was a miracle and made ever more so by what Raghoba did next.
Ahmed Sha Abdali had left India and returned to Kabul, behind he ensured his Son Timoor would be an able administrator of his new conquered territory, he never imagined the Marathas would follow his army and try and re-conquer ever inch of ground he had taken. Timoor had fled before the fall of Lahore not becuase he was a coward but becuase his small token forces were no match for this host of Maratha's that was pursuing him relentlessly.
His own soldiers were among the best in the subcontinent they were Afghans armed and well trained with plenty of equipment and in close combat they were among the best in the world at that time but vastly outnumbered and in a foriegn land he was forced to seek shelter and he gambled his hopes on the Indus River the point at which many have made thier last stand throughout history. High on the ridge overlooking the Indus river and almost on the ancient border of India and Afghanistan stood the ancient and seemingly impregnable fortress of Attock.
I am among the few people in recent times to ever see the fort up close as it is off bounds even to Pakistani citizens becuase even today it is used by the Pakistan army and is surounded in secrecy, but it is among the most well built fortresses in all the world. It rises on a bluff on the east bank of the Indus it's walls seem to have been hewn out of the great rock cliff and in 1760 it would have been an impressive sight. Alexander the great was said to have crossed under it's shadow in the ancient times and it is to this day so strong that two companies of boy scouts armed with stones could hold off an army of men ten times thier number almost indefinately. The Marathas were used to forts in the hills of the Deccan but nothing in all Hindustan would compare with the might of Attock, unlike Delhi or Lahore that had forts on fertile plains the aproach to Attock was itself a physical challenge and the Marathas who lacked the heavy siege guns required to smash down the walls could only look on in despair... as some must have realised this would be an almost impossible fortress to capture.
But a credit to the millitary genius of Raghoba, we do not know if he used any trickery becuase it's certianly a possible ruse de gure or if he employed spies or traitors, but we can be certianed that under his leadership the Marathas risked everything in an escalade. Under covering fire of muskets and arrows the Maratha's stormed the walls with makeshift ladders and somehow took the walls one after another, the fighting must have been horrendous and I can still remmber the hieght of Attocks walls that rise on huge cliffs the drop being straight into a river from a canyon. But the fighting was brief and bloody and Timoor escaped with his life and fled by taking a back road and swiftly crossing over to the other side of the Indus on a small boat with some bodyguards. The Marathas slaughtered the remaining garrison and celebrated thier victory all the way back to Pune.
Raghoba had taken the Maratha army right to the edge of India and forever he would have been remembered as India's greatest hero but history is ever cruel and even to this day his name is almost forgotten in Maratha history itself becuase of what happened next.
For as Raghoba reached Pune Abdali was allready making preparations for vengeance of his own.... History would yet have it's say and the next chapter to this episode i shall present to you in my next post.
Jokes aside Aurangzeb Alamgir was always heard refering to Shivaji the original Maratha chief as the “Deccan ka Chewa” Mouse of the South. At least for him that mouse turned out to be the mouse that roared, and in his latter years the Mughal king grudgingly admitted Shivaji was a hard enemy.
Where did all this knowledge come from Faris udeen?