Remind me who they were fighting with? Clues.
- British Army
- Trading company
The Marathas were fighting them on home turf against a few 'gorahs' million miles from home and you make it look like a bloody grand thing that they lasted 3 "full" wars.
You're understanding of 18th century warfare in india is limited.The nawab of bengal fought a few 'goras' at plassey.After the conquest of bengal and victory over awadh and mughals at buxar along with their possesions in the carnatic british army in india(company's army) was the most technically modern and quite large.It now had the land revenue of bengal,bihar,carnatic,orissa and control over the gunpowder trade.They recruited large numbers of bhumihars,purbia rajputs as sepoys in the bengal army which was the main instrument of expansion.These native sepoys were commanded by european officers.Other than that there were elite all european redcoat companies and the artillery was all european.
The french were defeated in the first carnatic war by 1760.Marathas and british fought for a decade from mid 1770s to mid 1780s with no result and stalemate.Reason marathas were able to hold them off was they had much more numbers,they fought united,they still had excellent leaders such as mahadji scindia and nana fadnavis.After this they had a 20 year truce,during which british finished off tipu.Marathas wanted tipu beaten,but not destroyed but british diplomatically outmanuevred them.By 1802 when 2nd war began both fadnavis and scidnia were dead.There was a internal dispute and peshwa took refuge with british and basically sold out by signing subsidiary alliance treaty which made marathas a defacto vassal .None of the marathas sardars fought together.They were defeated seperately,some didn't fight.British had an all time great general in wellington and he was almost defeated at assaye 1803.Wellington always spoke of assaye as even closer than waterloo.3rd war was a formality,mismatch was too much.
Basically any chance an indian empire had against a technologically far superior opponent was vastly more resources and manpower.But after conquest of bengal,bihar,orissa,carnatic,mysore british no longer suffered from any revenue or manpower shortage.
The biggest down fall of mughal empire was invasion by Persian empire under nadir shah he sacked Delhi
And weakened mughal empire enough that miscreants like marhata became real threat for mughal many peripheral provinces also declared independence from center using this weakness and then latter British also took advantage of mughal weaknesses
Mughals were already defeated by then more or less.Nadir shah came in 1739.Bajirao had already defeated mughal main army at bhopal in 1737 and raided delhi in same year.Nadir was final nail in coffin.
Thank you my brother it was quite informative [emoji3] so battle of panipat didn't destroy marathas completely but from the northern punjab. It is said that marathas had three fronts fighting at the time of panipat 3 so what about other 2 fronts what happend to them. And how much was strenght/influence of marathas after this battle?. I know that durranis and sikhs had fought a lot battles in present kpk and this assisted britain a lot and even sikhs sided with britain to fight against durranis and sikhs and britain were toghether for quite a time. And lastly how did marathas end and what about their battles with mughals prior to the death of aurangzeb ?
At panipat only half the maratha army was present,other half was in deccan.This was one of the reasons they were outnumbered in the battle.
As to why they lost -
1.Marathas were outmanuevred before the battle.Their hit and run tactics required very good commanders like bajirao to be successfully used in the flat plains of north India.The commander Sadashiv Bhau made a bad error in disregarding surajmal's(jat king) advice and took the entire civilian baggage train with the army slowing it to a crawl(you'll never see this with bajirao i).They got cut off from supplies and were burdened with additional mouths.The number of noncombatants was 4 times the number of soldiers.
After starving they fought a desperate action.The deccan ponies were not a match in quality for the central asian breeds and were starving on top of it.Giving advantage of speed and power to afghan cavalry.
2.Half the maratha army was in deccan under raghunathrao.Hence in the battle they had only half as many men as aghans .50,000 to 100,000.
3.Except for the elite troops maratha light cavalry had less armour than afghans.But even then the french trained telugu gardi musketeers and artillery under ibrahim gardi smashed the afghan left with huge casulities.Bhau's attack on the centre caused a crisis for the afghans ,but abdali was able to rally them.However holkar didn't press or support bhau and when the afghans counterattacked he left the battlefield.
4.The main tactical problem for marathas was the afghan camel mounted swivel cannons which were present in hundreds,once the battle came into close quarters these started firing into packed ranks and created chaos and marathas couldnt respond effectively.The maratha field guns had been very effective,particularly those under ibrahim gardi before the lines had made contact but now couldnt match the mobile light camel artillery.
5.Bhau was inexperienced commander compared to raghunathrao or holkar.He made wrong political choices and got himself killed in the battle by coming down from his elephant and charging into enemy lines.He was brave but not ready for such a post.
6.One of the biggest reasons is none of the indigeneous monarchs supported the marathas while both awadh and rohillas provided thousands of men for abdali .Bhau disregarded advice of surajmal,ignored the sikhs.As for the rajputs ,stupid maratha policies had alienated them.In the 1750s rampant raids by maratha sardars,extortion of money and internal interference in rajputanas politics led to marathas losing all goodwill.Thus the marathas entered the battle outnumbered for their own fault - alienating their own potential allies and keeping half their army in the deccan.
Yes.Marathas were expelled from punjab and never really returned there in force.When they returned 10 yrs later in 1771 they returned to rajputana,central india and delhi -doab.Punjab became battleground between durrani and sikhs.Sikhs eventually won later under ranjit singh,until in 1840 sikhs too were defeated by british.
https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/battle-report-20-palkhed-1728-bajirao-unleashed.465090/
Here i did a thread once on rise of marathas.Marathas were a powerful military force,but they weren't a proper empire due to decentralized nature and this led to constant infighting and bad administration.
basically - it's Akbar- who gave access the East -india comapy what his father and grandfather Denied to do- he DID it . Which man can do 500 marriage and make a new religion. It is possible for him. 
