Place · campaign battle site · India
Palkhed
The February-March 1728 campaign by Baji Rao I against Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah I of Hyderabad in the Palkhed-Aurangabad area of Maharashtra, in which the Maratha Peshwa outmanoeuvred the Nizam without a general engagement — forcing the Nizam to accept the Treaty of Mungi Shevgaon and recognise Maratha chauth revenue over the Deccan. Baji Rao's rapid-moving light cavalry columns severed the Nizam's supply lines and forced his surrender through strategic manoeuvre rather than battle. The Palkhed campaign is still cited in military academies — Field Marshal Montgomery named it in his History of Warfare — as an exemplary campaign of movement, with Baji Rao as one of the great strategists of the 18th century. The campaign began the Peshwa's expansion into the Deccan.
- Date
- 1728 CE
- Function
- Military & resistance
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 20.100, 74.200
Connections (2)
- CampaignGolconda
Baji Rao I outmanoeuvred the Nizam at Palkhed in 1728 without a general engagement — cutting supply lines and forcing a negotiated settlement by movement alone, which is why it is still taught as a campaign of manoeuvre. The Nizam's state was the Mughal Deccan viceroyalty built on the Golconda succession, and it survived as an autonomous power until 1948, longer than any of its rivals.
- Succession in timePanipat
Palkhed in 1728 and the third Panipat in 1761 are the two ends of Maratha expansion. Baji Rao outmanoeuvred the Nizam without a general engagement and made the Marathas the dominant power in India; thirty-three years later, at Panipat, an army that had marched to the Punjab was destroyed by Ahmad Shah Durrani in an afternoon, with perhaps forty thousand killed. The confederacy survived but never again acted as one state.
Sources
List of wars in the Indian subcontinent; standard reference accounts
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