Empire of the Moghul: Brothers at War (60 page)

‘Come,’ Humayun shouted to Mustapha Ergun, ‘it’s getting lighter. Now we can see more, let us try to find Sekunder Shah’s personal quarters. You too, Bairam Khan, follow me with your men.’

Soon, by the swiftly rising light, Humayun distinguished on a low rise about half a mile away a collection of large tents erected in a hollow rectangle with a big flag hanging wet and limp from a pole outside a single vast tent – surely Sekunder Shah’s own – at its centre. As Humayun rode closer, he saw a number of men milling around the tents. Some already had their breastplates and helmets on, others were throwing saddles on their horses, clambering unprotected into them and forming up ready to defend themselves.

Moments later, Humayun heard a crackle of musket fire from beneath the awning of one of the tents – at least some of Sekunder Shah’s men had kept their powder dry. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of Mustapha Ergun’s Turks slide silently from his saddle with a bullet wound in his temple. His frightened horse swerved into the path of Humayun’s own mount. Humayun hastily pulled on the reins of his horse but the frightened animal reared up. It took all Humayun’s skill to retain his seat as his mount, dropping back on to its four legs, skittered sideways, further disrupting the progress of his other cavalry. They in turn, seeing Humayun’s difficulty, almost instinctively began to rein in, presenting an attractive target to Sekunder Shah’s men. A flight of arrows rose from another of the tents, which were now becoming veiled in white smoke from the muskets. Several more of Humayun’s men were hit. One dropped his sword and, falling headlong into the mud, lay still. Others remained in the saddle but slowly dropped back from their comrades to tend their wounds.

Almost simultaneously, from Humayun’s flank came two louder explosions. Turning his head towards the sound, Humayun realised that Sekunder Shah’s artillerymen had got two of his larger cannon into action from where they had been dug in, protected from the wet by a rough, timber-planked roof. Each cannon ball found a mark. One hit a black horse in the belly, causing it to collapse. It tried to stagger to its feet, its intestines protruding from the gaping wound, before subsiding back into the mud neighing piteously. The second cannon ball carried away the front leg of another horse which buckled and fell, pitching its rider – another of Mustapha Ergun’s men – over its head.

It had all happened very quickly and as Humayun regained full control of his dancing horse a sudden thought chilled him. He might be being drawn into a carefully prepared trap. Sekunder Shah’s men might even now be circling round to block the route behind them. Surely the prize of the throne of Hindustan would not be ripped from his grasp once more? No, it could not be . . . He must not falter in his moment of destiny, not let doubt stand in the way of overcoming this momentary disorder.

‘Come on, regroup! We mustn’t lose impetus,’ he yelled. Waving Alamgir he turned directly towards the tents from which the musket men had fired and kicked his horse forward as fast as it would go in the glossy deep mud. He was immediately followed by his bodyguard. Another few musket shots rang out and another rider fell but then Humayun was among the enemy musketeers who were now trying to flee, throwing aside their long weapons and supporting tripods. Humayun cut one down with a slash from Alamgir but then he and his men were in turn charged by some of the riders he had seen mounting up previously. A stout officer on a brown horse with a diamond blaze on its face made directly for Humayun, his lance held in his left hand aimed at Humayun’s chest.

Humayun twisted his horse’s head and the lance struck a glancing blow against his breastplate, knocking him slightly off balance so that his own sword slash also missed. Both men wheeled their horses round tightly and the officer drew his sword and came at Humayun again. Humayun ducked under his arcing sword cut, hearing a whooshing sound as it parted the air above his head.Then he lunged with Alamgir at his opponent’s midriff, which was unprotected by chain mail. The sharp sword cut deep into soft, fatty flesh and, bleeding profusely, the officer collapsed over the neck of the brown horse, which bore him away into the mêlée.

Humayun next attacked an imposing red-turbaned figure he saw directing the fighting a little way off. As he rode closer, he saw the man pull a double-headed battleaxe from its sheath, which was attached to his saddle. He drew back his arm and sent the battleaxe spinning through the air towards Humayun. Humayun got his mail-clad arm up to protect his head but the sharp axe blade caught his arm a glancing blow. It was heavy enough to damage Humayun’s chain mail and to reopen the scar tissue of the wound he had suffered all those years ago at the battle of Chausa. Bright scarlet-orange blood started to run down his arm and into the gauntlet on his hand. Humayun ignored it and, still gripping Alamgir tightly, slashed at the man as he rode past him so close that their legs bumped together. Humayun’s stroke caught the officer full on his throat, just above his Adam’s apple, severing his neck and sending pulses of blood into the air from his torso for the few moments it remained erect before collapsing from the saddle.

Breathing hard, Humayun reined in his horse and looked around. He and his men had won the battle around the command tents. To his left he could see Mustapha Ergun and some of his white-turbaned warriors pursuing a fleeing band of Sekunder Shah’s cavalry while to his right Bairam Khan’s men, among whom Humayun could identify Akbar’s milk-brother Adham Khan, had encircled another large group who, as Humayun watched, flung down their arms.

Bairam Khan rode up to Humayun. ‘Majesty, my junior commanders report that twenty of our divisions have entered Sekunder Shah’s camp and more and more are doing so by the minute. We have killed many of our opponents before they could arm and captured many others, while yet more have fled in small groups in panic. We have already secured more than three-quarters of the camp. However, our enemies are still resisting strongly and in numbers in the southwest corner. Some of my men claim they saw an important officer, perhaps Sekunder Shah himself, riding in that direction with a bodyguard from the command tents when we first made our attack on them.’

‘Let’s get ourselves over there to organise the assault and attempt to capture Sekunder Shah if that is where he is. But first, bind this wound of mine with my neck cloth,’ said Humayun, pulling off his gauntlet and stretching out his bloody arm to Bairam Khan. Within a few minutes, Bairam Khan had bound Humayun’s forearm tightly and the wound, which was not deep, had more or less stopped bleeding.

Humayun and Bairam Khan headed through the rain across the slightly undulating ground towards the southwest corner of the camp, past collapsed tents, overturned cooking pots and the bodies of dead and wounded men and animals lying slumped amid the puddles, some of which were now stained red. As they drew closer, the cries and sounds of battle grew louder, including the occasional crack of muskets when soldiers from one side or the other managed to open their powder horns and prime their muskets sufficiently quickly or under sufficient cover for the powder to remain dry enough to ignite.

By the sombre leaden light of the new day, Humayun could see that Sekunder Shah’s men were fighting determinedly. They had managed to overturn a number of baggage wagons around some small hillocks, and archers and musketeers were firing from behind the protection they provided. Several squadrons of cavalry were grouped in the middle of the barricades, whose perimeter stretched for perhaps twelve hundred yards. There appeared to be several thousand of the enemy in total. However, they were completely encircled by his own troops.

‘Bairam Khan, order our men to pull back just a little but to keep Sekunder Shah’s troops securely surrounded. We will offer them a chance to live if they will lay down their arms and tell us the whereabouts of Sekunder Shah.’

A quarter of an hour later, a gap was opened in Sekunder Shah’s barricades and Humayun’s emissary, a young officer named Bahadur Khan, re-emerged and galloped over to where Humayun was waiting, seated on his black horse.

‘Majesty, they are willing to surrender. They are adamant that Sekunder Shah is not among them and that although it was indeed he who left the command tents with his bodyguard just after we attacked, he did so in flight. They accuse him of deserting them to save himself and it is for that reason that they have agreed to surrender. Several commanders actually volunteered to join our armies.’

Relief and joy swept through Humayun in equal measure. Victory was his. He had surmounted the last obstacle to his regaining Hindustan. Even if, as it seemed, he had failed to capture Sekunder Shah, his victory was complete. Sekunder Shah’s vast army had been smashed in less than two hours of combat. Those who remained unwounded had surrendered or fled. Voice shaking with emotion, Humayun spoke.

‘I thank you, my commanders. We have won a great victory. Hindustan is firmly within our grasp, but there is still no time to waste. First we must care for our wounded and bury our dead, but then we move on to Delhi to secure that great city.’

Humayun woke to the sound of birdsong in his scarlet tent at the centre of his camp, just outside the great sandstone walls of Delhi. Later that morning he was due to make his ceremonial entry through the high gateway in them to hear the
khutba
read once more in his name at the service in the Friday Mosque, proclaiming him Padishah of Hindustan.The days since his victory at the battle of Sirhind had been crowded as he and his army had marched as quickly as the monsoon would allow towards Delhi. Local rulers had hastened to offer their obeisance and groups of soldiers formerly loyal to other of the pretenders to the throne had ridden in to surrender and to volunteer their services to Humayun.

Four days ago Humayun had passed the site of the battle of Panipat where he and his father had first won Hindustan. Even now, twenty-nine years later, the white bones of some of Sultan Ibrahim’s great war elephants killed by Babur’s artillerymen still lay scattered across the plain.

The previous evening, lying in his tent, Humayun had pondered the parallels and paradoxes within his own life and the comparisons with that of his father. He had lost his first great battle with Sher Shah when his enemy had made a surprise night attack during the monsoon and won his last great battle against Sekunder Shah by using those same tactics. On both occasions he had been wounded in his right forearm. His forces had melted away after his defeat by Sher Shah just as they had grown by desertion from Sekunder Shah and the other claimants to Hindustan during his recent campaign. His half-brothers had rebelled against him and threatened his family but Sher Shah’s relations had exceeded even this. Not content with fighting his family, Adil Shah had killed his young nephew, the legitimate heir, in front of his mother, his own sister, something at which even Kamran had baulked.

Humayun had gained the Koh-i-Nur for the Moghuls following the great victory at Panipat and sacrificed it at his and the dynasty’s nadir to help bring about its renaissance. Like his father, he had known youthful triumph but then suffered great reverses which had tested his resolve. Persian support and the religious compromises it had demanded had proved of less assistance to both than they had hoped. Like Babur, he had spent far more time in Kabul than he’d intended before seizing Hindustan.

Were these real patterns, just as in the movements of the stars? And if they were, how did they come about? Were events inevitable, predestined and laid down by a superior power, ready to be read within the stars by anyone with insight, as he had once believed? Or, on the contrary, were the patterns in men’s lives he thought he saw figments of his imagination and its search for structure in a shifting world, and the events themselves caused by coincidence or understandable similarities in circumstances? Weren’t family rivalries inherent threats to ruling dynasties? Hadn’t Babur’s own half-brother rebelled against him and hadn’t Timur’s sons disputed and dissipated their father’s legacy? Weren’t defeats always followed by desertions, great victories by swathes of fawning new adherents? Hadn’t learning from his father’s experience and using it to strengthen his resolve created the similarities between their lives?

In his youth, he had liked to believe in patterns and in predestination. Such beliefs had seemed to absolve him from full responsibility for his actions and their consequences. They had fed his indolence and justified his naive trust that his supreme position was his by right and inviolable. But his experiences had changed him and now, in his maturity, he usually rejected such external explanations – excuses for failure even. Although it was God’s will into which station a man was born, it was up to an individual and his use of his abilities to shape his life from there on. He had not regained his empire because it was predestined but because he had striven to do so, mastering his weaknesses and spurning indulgences to focus all his efforts on that single goal. Proud of this thought, Humayun had fallen asleep as he wondered how his renewed reign would evolve in comparison with the few short years Babur had had on the throne after conquering Hindustan.