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BATTLE OF BAXÁR
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accompanied by Sháh Alam and Mír Kásim, marched at the head of a powerful army towards the Karamnása. Repulsed from Patná on May 3, after many hours' hard fighting, he withdrew for the rainy season to Baxár. A few weeks later the mutinous spirit, which had been flashing out fitfully for some months past, broke forth again among the Sepoys with such violence, that Major Hector Munro was driven to quell it by blowing the ringleaders from the cannon's mouth. The mutineers returned to their senses and their duty; and in October Munro's force of seven thousand men, mostly Sepoys, with twenty-eight guns, began its eventful march upon Baxár.

On the 23rd of October, 1764, Munro won the splendid victory of Baxár, over fifty thousand of Shujdás troops, which included Sumru's disciplined brigades and thousands of those Afghán horsemen who had fought so bravely at Pánípat. Shujá's schemes of conquest in Hindustán and Kásim's hopes of vengeance on his English foes were wrecked for ever on that disastrous field. Munro's great victory opened the way to our subsequent capture of Allahábád, drove Sháh Alam to treat for peace and protection from his nominal protectors, and brought him in the following year, a needy and anxious suppliant, into the British camp. Not many months were to pass before Mír Kásim had fled for shelter into Rohilkhand, and the infamous Sumru, whom Shujá would not surrender and could no longer defend, was selling his services to the Játs of Bhartpur, while the twice-beaten Shujá himself was