The Ahoms lost an open-field battle with heavy loss of men.
01Leaving the hills
Lachit’s plan was to hold the hills and river line round Guwahati and make the Mughals come to him. At Alaboi that plan was set aside. The Buranjis record that the Ahom force came down to fight in the open, where Ram Singh’s Rajput and Mughal cavalry had every advantage. The Ahom losses ran into thousands, and the chroniclers count it the bloodiest day of the war.
02The lesson taken
Alaboi did not open Guwahati to the Mughals. The Ahoms went back to their earthworks, their river fleet and the waiting game, and Ram Singh spent the next year and a half stuck below the hills. When the decisive fight came at Saraighat in 1671, it was on the water, where the Ahoms were strongest.
A costly defeat that confirmed Lachit’s own method: fight from the hills and the river, never on the plain.
