पानीपत १७६१ (मराठा साम्राज्य एवं पानीपत महायुद्ध इतिहास)

116 PANIPAT: 1761 behaviour during the ten months of the Panipat campaign, but of the im- pression he had created during the previous ten years. It was singularly un- fortunate for the Marathas that such should have been the case at this most critical juncture. The respect and awe with which Shivaji seems to have been looked upon by his contemporaries was not felt in the case of Bajirao and Bhau. Bhau was not strict in his sex-life, as was wrongly assumed by SARDESAI in his Panipat Campaign.⁵ The Purandare Daftar, Part I, bears ample testimony⁶ to Bhau's extra-marital sex life. Perhaps this fact had affected the contem- porary opinion about Bhau in an adverse manner to a certain extent. We do not know whether Kashiraj's statement⁷ that "one of the Bhau's wives escaped" from Panipat on horseback was made under this misapprehension. SADASHIVRAO BHAU AS A GENERAL Sadashivrao Bhau has become the scape-goat of both the sides. He is criticised not only by the opponents but also by his compatriots. The ma- jority of the Marathas thought that the strategy he followed at Panipat was wrong. The Marathas till then had never encamped behind the trenches and arranged their fight on the basis of infantry tactics. The critics on the opposite side think that the whole Maratha system was loose, insubordination being in- grained in the Maratha ranks; there was no proper gradation, no link between the commander-in-chief and the common soldier. But if we compare Bhau with another renowned general of his times in Europe, there does not seem to be any great difference in their ideas about the strategy and tactics of those days. In the battle of Panipat, Abdali had definitely a superiority in the Ruhela infantry under such a consummate captain as Najib Khan. His infantry it was that decided the day by its last tactics. Bhau's infantry under Ibrahim Khan had been used decisively in the beginning of the battle. But it was not followed with advantage by the cavalry at the back. Bhau's per- sonal effort was mainly based on his devoted cavalry, in the use of which he seems to have followed the innovation attributed to Fredric the Great. "Fredric had learnt its value, against the musket of those days, by experience; and he believed that Seydlitz in the open, at the head of 70 squadrons, was a thing which no infantry could resist."¹ But unfortunately for Bhau he first came across the Afghan cavalry under Shah Wali Khan and not against the infantry under Najib Khan, due to his formation of the oblique order in the march out of Panipat. Had the cavalry divisions kept behind the infantry of Ibrahim Khan to support it and take advantage of its invincible attack acted in a valiant and correct manner, there would have been no occasion for Bhau to deliver his side-attack on the Afghan front. Damaji Gaikwad, Vitthal Shivdeo and Yashwantrao Pawar had been placed behind Ibrahim Khan to do their duty. They inadvertantly rushed forward, before the full effect of Ibrahim Khan's grand effort had reached its culmination and created a wide 5 SARDESAI, Marathi Riyasat, Panipat Prakarana, p. 253 6 Purandare 1.212, 241, 289, 293, 311, 345, 364. 7 KASHIRAJ, p. 50. 1 ACTON p. 293.