पानीपत १७६१ (मराठा साम्राज्य एवं पानीपत महायुद्ध इतिहास)

CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 131 wards It is ostensibly written to glorify the achievements of the Shindes and these have no direct connection with the battle of Panipat. The author is evidently a biased person and on that account tries to supply and explain the genesis, the events and the activities behind the scenes of actual narration with all the personal bickerings of the actors in their full gusto The reports of these bickerings and their actual wording may or may not be true in their full import, but it is clear that they throw a necessary light on the seamy side of history We shall have to discount much of this report due to the bias of the author Another thing which has to be borne in mind is the fact that these reports must have necessarily come from the persons who ran away from the field of battle and as such were dubbed as renegades by the people at large The odium of this obloquy and the guilty conscience of having failed to be with their leaders in the thick of the fight, made the reports from these survivors naturally colourful and excusatory Most of these persons had di rect blame attached to their conduct and in sheer self-justification they gave such a retrospective turn to their own and Bhaus conduct as to lead to the disaster which would then appear inevitable If we compare the tone of the letters¹² which some of these survivors sent previous to the battle with those they wrote after it, we can understand the difference worked out in the minds of these writers by the fatal disaster When the authors of the Kaifiyat and the Bakhar wrote their accounts after a few years, the public in Maharashtra had come to form some sort of plausible opinion about the great disaster, after hearing, explaining, accounting and guessing about the various reports brought from the distant field The boiled essence of all these is found written in the Bakhar Sadashivrao Bhau was out to give a new turn to the ancient mode of Maratha warfare which was taken to be of the guerilla type Bhau had introduced the trained infantry tactics and tried to combine them with the original mode The good result of this innovation had been reaped in the Udgir campaign The Udgir victory had naturally increased the prestige of Ibrahim Khan Gardi and his mode of warfare Throughout the Panipat cam- paign, Bhau had put his main confidence in these infantry corps and they also gave a very good account of themselves The idea of entrenching at Panipat was a result of these tactics It made the Marathas unassailable so long as they remained within their entrenchments Bhau expected Abdali to attack them in this strong position, as he was sure of victory in the event of such an attack But Abdali had understood it equally well He himself never once tried to attack, and had strictly forbidden any one from his camp to go out with a view to attacking He played a game of waiting and hoped to get a victory when the Maratha army would come out due to starvation That is why Bhau is found raging and almost railing against Govindpant Bundele for not attacking Abdali from behind and making him compulsorily fall on the Maratha entrenchments to his sure destruction When, due to the failure of Govindpant and due to starvation, Bhau himself had to come out, that combi nation of artillery, infantry and cavalry tactics which it was necessary to keep 12 RAJ Vol. 6 Cf Satvoji Jadhavrao's letters No 404 dated 18-9-1760 and No 409 dated 10-3-1761 also cf Nana Purandare's letters No 391 of 14-11-1760 in Purandare

• Daftar Pt. 1, and No 118 in Pt. III