Raiders from the North: Empire of the Moghul (61 page)

Then one of Babur’s longest serving commanders, the usually taciturn Hassan Hizari, a Tajik from Badakhshan who had been with him for more than twenty years, had spoken. ‘That is well, Majesty, but Sanga has fewer than two hundred elephants and relies mainly on his cavalry. Our perimeter will be longer than at Panipat. Horses are much nimbler than the lumbering elephants, if less frightening. Even if the Rajputs lose some of their cavalry to cannon shot, it won’t deter them. Many will simply jump the ditches and barricades. We must be ready for at least some to penetrate our perimeter.’

‘You’re right, of course. We’ll need to station archers and musketeers as a further line of defence halfway up the hill.’

‘ We will need cavalry up there, too, to rush to any breach,’ Humayun had added. ‘Let me take charge of them.’ Babur had not had the heart to deny him.

Over the past few days Babur’s troops had put the plans into practice, digging earthworks and positioning cannon with the help of oxen. They had even made some of the wagons into a kind of movable barricade by encasing their sides and wheels in thick planks.

When Humayun had reviewed the dispositions with Babur only a few minutes earlier they had found need for only the most minor adjustments. After embracing his father, Humayun had departed to take up his position with his cavalry detachments a little further down the hill. Left alone on the hilltop Babur prayed for Humayun’s
safety in the coming battle. Despite his son’s protests, he had ensured that the young man had a strong bodyguard – forty men from Hassan Hizari’s Tajiks. He could do no more but still he was anxious – the memory of Baburi’s hand trailing in the dust after Panipat remained vivid . . .

By now the mist was beginning to lift and Babur could see that the Rajputs were deploying fully. There were rank after rank of horsemen. Babur’s spies had estimated that the rana’s forces outnumbered his own by at least four to one.

Suddenly a tall Rajput galloped towards Babur’s lines. He was dressed all in orange, his saddle and bridle ornamented with tassels of the same colour. His white horse’s head was protected by a steel headguard that glinted in the morning light. He wheeled his horse within just a hundred yards of Babur’s defences to shout what sounded like a herald’s challenge. Babur’s response was to send an order to his matchlock men to shoot the herald down. They obeyed. The man fell from his horse, but his foot caught in the stirrup and the animal bolted back towards the Rajput lines dragging its rider along, his orange-turbaned head quickly reduced to bloody pulp as it banged along the rocky ground.

Just as Babur had intended, his contempt for the traditional challenge goaded the Rajputs into a headlong, undisciplined charge. Their horsemen soon outdistanced the hundred or so armoured elephants Rana Sanga had deployed. Babur lowered his sword as a sign to his artillerymen, musketeers and archers to fire as soon as their enemy was in range. From his position on the hill, the Rajputs seemed like a great wave rushing forward to engulf his perimeter. Often a man or a horse fell. Sometimes a cannon ball stopped an elephant in its seemingly ambling but actually speedy run. But nothing stopped the onward charge, until it crashed around the trenches and barricades from behind which Babur’s archers were firing as fast as they could draw arrows from their quivers.

Babur could see the flashes as the musketeers discharged their weapons further up the hill and, nearer still, acrid white smoke billowing from the cannons’ mouths. Around the western side of his perimeter, Babur saw the wave of Rajput horsemen break and
dissipate their force and after swirling around in front of the barricades pull back to regroup. However, to the east, a number of Rajputs who had jumped the earth ramparts and kicked their horses on up the hill were scattering a group of musketeers and archers. Babur saw several slashed down by the Rajputs who then turned their mounts towards the cannon.

Immediately, Babur signalled to Humayun that his cavalry must charge. Humayun, his Tajik bodyguard around him, led them pell-mell down the hill to crash into the Rajputs. Several Rajputs fell, their horses knocked over by the sheer weight and speed of Humayun’s charge. Others were still fighting and more were joining them by jumping the barricades from which the defenders had retreated. Humayun seemed to be fighting well but through the drifting smoke Babur saw that the Rajputs were pressing round him. Then the smoke enveloped him and his bodyguards completely.

To Babur it seemed an age before the smoke cleared again. But it was in fact only a short time before he could make out that the Rajputs were now turning back down the hill and the few survivors were retreating back beyond the barricades. Five minutes later Humayun rode up.

‘There was so much smoke I couldn’t see what happened properly.’

‘Our first charge knocked them back a little but they regrouped and, seeing I was the leader, tried to cut me out from the rest.’

‘That much I saw.’

‘Well, my brave bodyguard held them off and I decided to repay the Rajputs in kind. We broke out of the heaving mêlée and charged one of their officers – a great black-bearded man with peacock feathers in his turban. I got in the first and only blow, slashing him across the face and neck, and down he went, backwards out of the saddle on to the rocky ground, to lie motionless. His men seemed to lose heart and we pushed them back, helped by the surviving musketeers who had taken up new positions on the flanks. Soon our perimeter was secure again and the front-line barricades were remanned.’

‘You did well.’

‘Shouldn’t we follow up and attack them?’

‘Not yet. Neither their strength nor their will is exhausted. See? They’re massing for another attack. Tell the bearers to get water-bottles and new supplies of arrows to our men. The fight is not yet over.’

Babur was proved right. The Rajputs continued to make periodic attacks throughout the heat of the day. Each time they were repulsed without breaking the perimeter, leaving wounded or dying men and horses piled around the barricades. Babur saw one wounded Rajput half walking, half crawling back towards the Rajput lines. Slowly and agonisingly, he made about seven hundred yards when a new Rajput cavalry charge rode over him and his body was crushed and spreadeagled in the stony desert dust. His turban, half-unwound and occasionally caught by a breeze, was the only movement from the corpse.

The sun was low in the sky when Humayun, at his father’s side, pointed towards yet another regrouping. ‘They seem to be massing again. There are elephants and cavalry as before, but in the middle there’s a large number of men on foot. Something we’ve not seen before – and there seem more of them than ever. It’s as if their camp-followers and servants have joined the front line.’

‘They probably have. I’ve heard that even the humblest water-carrier prefers to sacrifice his life in one last charge than to return home in defeat. They call these charges
jauhur
. Beforehand they pray and sacrifice to their gods to stiffen their resolve.’

‘One of our Hindustani allies told me they also chew opium pellets to deaden the fear as well as the pain of any wounds . . .’

‘No doubt. Here they come again . . .’

The blare of trumpets, the mesmeric tattoo of drums and the clash of cymbals grew louder as the Rajputs advanced, moving more slowly this time because so many were on foot.

‘Tell my groom to ready my horse,’ Babur shouted to Humayun. ‘I will lead the charge when the time comes.’

‘I’ll be with you.’

‘But first pass the word to our drummers to out-sound the Rajputs, and tell our officers that each time the Rajputs give their war-cry, our men should reply, “
Allah akbar
” – it will hearten them.’

On came the ragged line of Rajputs. Babur’s artillery despatched cannon balls into them, knocking men over. Musketeers and archers emptied saddles. Sometimes an elephant would lurch and fall or – wounded and in panic – turn to the rear, scattering those around it. Still the Rajput drummers kept up their hypnotic beat. Gaps in the lines of men were filled. To Babur, the noise of drums and trumpets and the mingled cries of ‘Mewar’ and ‘
Allah akbar
’, resounding in his head, seemed to drown the cannon shot and the screams of the wounded.

When they were about two hundred yards away from the barricades, the Rajput cavalry jabbed their horses into action, riding over the bodies of the dead and wounded from previous attacks. The infantry used their fallen comrades as soft stepping stones across the trenches and aids to climb the barricades. All along the perimeter the fighting was hand to hand, personal and determined. But the greatest crush was directly downhill from Babur and Humayun.

‘That is where we aim our charge.’ Drawing Alamgir, Babur ordered his cavalry to attack once more, then led them at a gallop down the hill through the remaining barricades and into the fray. Again, the shock of their downhill charge hurled the Rajputs back, their horses rearing and trampling foot-soldiers. As he rode on, Babur saw a Rajput archer aim at him, and before he could reach him to cut him down, the arrow had thudded into the leather pommel of his saddle. Babur slashed at the archer’s unprotected body – few Rajputs deigned to wear chain-mail even if they could afford it – and he fell beneath Babur’s horse.

Once through the mass of Rajputs, Babur wheeled his horse and waited while his men and Humayun, who to Babur’s consternation had lost his helmet, re-formed around him. Then they charged into the Rajputs again, this time from the rear. Although they fought bravely, the orange-clad Rajputs were soon surrounded, separated into isolated groups and beginning to be overwhelmed. When one band of five men was given the chance to surrender, they embraced then plunged their swords into each other. But everywhere the clamour of battle was lessening. Babur realised victory was his.

Then he noticed that, a hundred yards to his right, Humayun
was on the ground and three of his bodyguards were cutting his garments from his lower body. Paternal anxiety overwhelmed the joy of victory as he rode over. With intense relief he saw that Humayun was conscious, though grimacing in pain. ‘It’s just an arrow in the thigh – a lucky shot from way over there as the Rajputs were retreating.’

The arrow still protruding from his son’s leg and blood was seeping from around the metal head, only half of which had embedded itself in Humayun. ‘It seems not to have penetrated too far. All the same it needs to come out at once – I know from years of battle. I will hold my son’s shoulders,’ Babur said to the bodyguards. ‘One of you hold his ankles. The strongest of you draw it out. It’s very important you pull straight – no twisting. Humayun, keep still!’

Babur gripped his son’s shoulders. Instantly, one of his bodyguards grabbed Humayun’s feet and another stooped, gripped the arrow shaft in both hands and, in a single movement, pulled it out. Blood spurted but soon subsided.

‘Bind a pad of cloth tightly over it. Praise God, he will live to share in our victory. Prepare a litter to carry him to his tent.’

‘No, Father. I will ride with you to review our troops once I am bandaged and dressed in clean clothes.’

Half an hour later, Babur and Humayun rode around the battlefield in the dusk. By the light of flaring torches, Babur’s stretcher-bearers were bending over the bodies of his men, separating the living from the dead. Camp-followers and scavengers scuttled around the field under cover of the gloom to pick over the Rajput dead for objects of value, roughly pulling aside bodies and brawling over the richest-looking corpses. They disappeared into the darkness as Babur, Humayun and their entourage approached closer.

Father and son were quiet as they reached the tents to which their wounded were being brought. Some men were lying still and quiet, some trying to drive away the black flies crawling across their bodies and clustering on their wounds, some screaming out in pain, others biting the backs of their hands to prevent themselves from doing so and yet others begging for help.

‘So it’s true, Father, as you once said, that the badly wounded cry either for their mothers or for God.’

‘Their mothers have been their greatest and most unquestioning comfort in this world, and God is their greatest hope for the next.’ Babur paused, then continued, ‘We must give thanks that the bravery and sacrifice of these men have made us undisputed masters of Hindustan. We must repay them by seeing that the families of the fallen are cared for and those who survive compensated. Above all, we owe it to them and to ourselves not to squander the results of their sacrifice. Nevertheless, we should not dwell on sacrifice and death. Both – whether of the rulers or the ruled – are essential to all empires. To become overly concerned about them is to grow weak and indecisive. Tonight we should rejoice in our victory. We have vanquished our greatest enemy. When they hear of his utter defeat, other rulers will not dare to attack us. We have secured a bright future for our dynasty.’

In the late afternoon of the next day as shadows were lengthening, Babur once more addressed his troops, assembled around him. Many were bandaged and some supported themselves on crutches.