Ahmad Shah hardly ever lost a battle, but he was ultimately defeated by a foe more intractable than any army. He had had his face eaten away by what the Afghan sources call a “gangrenous ulcer,” possibly leprosy or some form of cancer. At the height of his power, when after eight successive raids on the plains of north India he finally crushed the massed cavalry of the Marathas at the Battle of Panipat in 1761, Ahmad Shah’s disease had already consumed his nose, and a diamond-studded substitute was attached in its place. As his army grew to a horde of 120,000 and his empire expanded, so did
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