On Vaisakhi 1748 at Amritsar the Sarbat Khalsa reorganised the scattered jathas into a single confederate army, the Dal Khalsa, under Nawab Kapur Singh Ji, and divided it into eleven misls with a twelfth added later. Jassa Singh Ahluwalia was given the overall command.
A misl was not a state. It was a band under a sardar, holding what it could take and defend, with its own horse and its own share of the plunder, bound to the others by the Sarbat Khalsa and by the practice of assembling twice a year at Amritsar.
The system worked because there was no fixed capital to lose and no ruler to kill. Ahmad Shah Abdali invaded nine times between 1748 and 1767, held Lahore repeatedly, and could not hold the countryside for a single season after his column left.
The misls struck coin at Lahore in 1765 with the legend that the Guru had given the sword and the victory. There was no king's name on it.
Between 1799 and 1820 Ranjit Singh Ji absorbed the lot into one state. Some accepted, some were fought, and the confederate system ended with the thing it had been built to prevent, a single ruler.
The Dal Khalsa was the combined force of the misls, organised in two divisions by Nawab Kapur Singh Ji, meeting at Amritsar and deciding by gurmata.
It had no permanent command, no pay and no supply system. It assembled for a campaign, fought, and dispersed to the misls' own territories.
It took Lahore in 1765 and struck a coin in the name of the Gurus. A force with no state behind it held the Punjab against an empire and an invader for forty years.