By 1760 the Marathas held much of north India. Ahmad Shah Abdali came back to the Punjab to drive them out, and the two great armies met at Panipat, north of Delhi, on 14 January 1761.
The Maratha army under Sadashivrao Bhau was surrounded and starving after a two-month standoff. In the battle, Abdali's heavy cavalry and swivel guns mounted on camels broke the Maratha centre. Perhaps sixty to seventy thousand Marathas were killed in the battle and the massacre that followed, and tens of thousands were taken prisoner.
The Sikhs did not fight at Panipat. But as Abdali returned with thousands of Hindu women captives, the Sikhs raided his columns and freed many of them, sending them home; it is one of the proudest memories of the misl era. The Maratha defeat left the Sikhs as the only power able to resist the Afghans in the Punjab.
Ahmad Shah Abdali's nine invasions
1748 – 1769- 1
- 21749–50
Forces the governor of Lahore to pay tribute
- 31751–52
Besieges Lahore four months; takes Kashmir
- 41756–57
Sacks Delhi, Mathura and Agra
- 5
- 6
- 71764
Attacks Amritsar; harried home by the Sikhs
- 81766–67
Cannot pin down the Sikhs; withdraws
- 91769
Turns back at Gujrat; his last campaign
Each time Abdali went home, the Sikhs came back out of the hills and forests and took the country again. By 1765 the misls held Lahore; Abdali's Afghan empire never kept the Punjab.
Same era
Misls, Mughals and Afghans, 1709 – 1799
Banda Singh's first great strike, on a wealthy town that was home to the executioners of Guru Tegh Bahadur and the younger Sahibzade.
Banda Singh avenged Pir Budhu Shah, who had been killed by Sadhaura's governor for helping Guru Gobind Singh.
The peasant army of Banda Singh routed the Sirhind army and killed Wazir Khan, the man who had executed the Guru's younger sons. Sirhind fell two days later.
The emperor himself marched against the Sikh capital. A Sikh named Gulab Singh put on Banda Singh's clothes and was captured in his place while Banda slipped away.
Banda Singh and his followers held out in a walled compound for eight months, eating grass and bark, before surrendering. They were marched to Delhi and executed.
Nadir Shah crushed the Mughal army in a few hours, then sacked Delhi and carried off the Peacock Throne and the Koh-i-Noor.
Chhota GhallugharaMay – June 1746 · About 7,000 Sikhs killed and 3,000 executed (traditional figures)The 'Lesser Holocaust'. To avenge his brother's death, Lakhpat Rai hunted down Sikhs in the Kahnuwan swamps. Thousands were killed and captives were beheaded in Lahore.
The only time Abdali was beaten in a pitched battle in India. Sikh bands attacked his retreating columns.