Third Battle of Panipat

Who: Ahmad Shah Durrani (Abdali) with Najib-ud-Daulah, Shuja-ud-Daulah, Ahmad Khan Bangash and the Rohilla chiefs, against the Marathas under Sadashiv Rao Bhau. The Sikhs were not principal parties, and neither of the main sources describes a Sikh part in the battle.

What: The Marathas had come into Punjab first. In January 1758 Adina Beg invited Raghunath Rao to invade. Sirhind fell and was sacked on 21 March 1758, and on 20 April a joint Sikh and Maratha army occupied Lahore. Adina Beg was made governor, and small garrisons were left at Attock and Multan. In November 1759, on his fifth invasion, Abdali wiped out the Maratha forces in Punjab and pressed on toward Delhi. On 14 January 1761 the two armies met at Panipat. Ganda Singh writes that the Maratha attack on the Afghan right failed first, that Bhau's attack on the centre was then pushed back, that Vishwas Rao and Sadashiv Bhau were both killed, and that Holkar and Shinde gave way late in the day. Next morning 28,000 bodies were counted in 32 heaps, and about 22,000 men, women and children were taken captive. Abdali entered Panipat on 15 January, reached Delhi on 29 January and left it on 20 March 1761 for Afghanistan.

Where: Panipat, now in Haryana. Its consequences fell on Punjab.

Why it mattered: Panipat ended the Maratha bid for Punjab, but Ganda Singh notes that the Shah gained no political benefit from it beyond booty and captives. He writes that the Sikhs drove Abdali toward the Indus after he left, and that his Punjab administration collapsed. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says the Sikhs ravaged central Punjab between June and September 1761. At Amritsar at Diwali the Sarbat Khalsa resolved to punish Afghan agents, and in November 1761 the Sikhs took Lahore and struck their own coin. Abdali came back the next winter, and the result was the Vadda Ghallughara of 5 February 1762. The Sikhs occupied Lahore again on 17 April 1765.