Battle of Merta

The Battle of Merta was fought on 10 September 1790 between the Maratha Empire and the Rajputs of Jodhpur which resulted in a decisive Maratha victory.The general of the Jodhpur army, Bhimraj Bakshi fled the battlefield with his horsemen before the battle started but the local Rathore chieftains refused to retreat without a fight.

A French mercenary Benoît de Boigne gives an eyewitness's account of a charge that took place: "it is impossible for me to describe the feats of bravery performed by the Zard-Kaprawalas or forlorn hope of the enemy. I have seen, after their line was broken, fifteen or twenty men only return to charge one thousand infantry, and advance within ten or fifteen paces of our line, before they were all shot." "It is but just to the enemy to acknowledge that, considering the situation in which they were found, and the disorder consequent thereto, they behaved very valiantly, as they actually cut down some of our people at their guns, and two of them with a desperate fury and intrepidity, made at De Boigne himself and might possibly have killed him if they had not been hewn in pieces by his bodyguards."