Maratha Army

The army of the Maratha Empire was organized by its founder Shivaji as part of a broader administrative system that included a Senapati, or commander-in-chief, responsible for the kingdom's forces and defense, and by the time of Shivaji's death in 1680 his state was defended by roughly 300 forts, some 40,000 cavalry and 50,000 infantry, along with naval forces maintained along India's western coast. Maratha military power expanded dramatically during the eighteenth-century Peshwa era, particularly under Peshwa Bajirao I, whose campaigns produced victories at the Battle of Palkhed in 1728, the Battle of Delhi in 1737 and the Battle of Vasai against Portuguese forces, extending Maratha territory to roughly 2.5 million square kilometers by 1760, and General Raghunath Rao's forces captured Delhi itself in August 1757 and pushed Maratha influence as far northwest as Peshawar. Maratha military dominance was broken on January 14, 1761, at the Third Battle of Panipat, where the combined armies of Ahmad Shah Durrani and his regional allies inflicted a catastrophic defeat that halted further Maratha expansion, though Peshwa Madhavrao I restored much of the empire's authority by 1771. Madhavrao's death in 1772 opened a period of internal fragmentation among Maratha chieftains that, combined with escalating British intervention through the Anglo-Maratha Wars, ultimately dismantled the Maratha confederacy by 1818.