Siege of Ahmadnagar | |||||||||
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Part of the Second Anglo-Maratha War | |||||||||
A British illustration of the battle | |||||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||||
British East India Company | Maratha Confederacy | ||||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
Arthur Wellesley | Daulat Rao Scindia | ||||||||
Strength | |||||||||
24,000 | Unknown | ||||||||
The siege of Ahmednagar was the first battle of the Second Anglo-Maratha War fought between the Maratha Confederacy and the British East India Company. When he determined that a long defensive war would ruin his army, Wellesley decided to act boldly to defeat the numerically larger force of the Maratha Empire.
With the logistic assembly of his army complete (24,000 men in total) he gave the order to break camp and attack the nearest Maratha fort on 8 August 1803. [1] Wellesley's first move was to take the walled Pettah of Ahmednagar (town adjacent to the fort) by escalade, [2] on the same day (the 8 August). [3]
The Ahmednagar Fort surrendered on 12 August after an infantry attack had exploited an artillery-made breach in the wall. With the pettah and fort now in British control Wellesley was able to extend control southwards to the river Godavari. [4]
Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, was an Anglo-Irish statesman, soldier, and Tory politician who was one of the leading military and political figures of 19th-century Britain, serving twice as prime minister of the United Kingdom. He is among the commanders who won and ended the Napoleonic Wars when the Seventh Coalition defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
The Maratha Confederacy, also referred to as the Maratha Empire or the Maratha Kingdom, was an early modern polity in the Indian subcontinent comprising the realms of the Peshwa and four major independent Maratha states who were often subordinate to the former. It was formed in 1674 with the coronation of Shivaji of the House of Bhonsle as the Chhatrapati of the Marathas. The Maratha realm was recognised by Bahadur Shah I, the Shahenshah of Hindustan as a tributary state in 1707 after a prolonged rebellion. The Marathas continued to recognise the Shahenshah as their nominal suzerain similar to other contemporary Indian entities.
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