Battle of Buxar

In October 1764 an army of the East India Company under Major Hector Munro met a far larger allied force near Buxar. It included the troops of Shuja-ud-Daula, Nawab of Awadh, those of the ousted Nawab of Bengal, Mir Qasim, and the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II. The allied army had the larger number of guns and cavalry, but its commanders failed to act together. Munro's disciplined infantry and artillery held their ground and the allies broke. The defeat made the Company the dominant power in eastern India.

Historians often treat Buxar as the real founding battle of British rule in India, more consequential than Plassey, because it defeated the Mughal emperor and a major regional power together and led to the grant of the diwani. The allies were less a single army than separate ones with separate aims, and several commanders were suspicious of one another, which is part of why they lost. The numbers on both sides come from Company despatches and later histories and should be read as estimates. The long-term cost of the revenue grant, in particular the Bengal famine of 1770, remains a major subject of debate.