Empire of the Moghul: Ruler of the World

by Alex Rutherford

  Even now, as Akbar watched, a number of his best troops were assembling for yet another attack on the ramp leading up to Chittorgarh’s gate. This time he and his commanders had decided war elephants would lead the assault. Soldiers were already climbing into the howdahs on the animals’ backs. To improve the chances of success, he had had the elephants fitted with coats of thicker than normal overlapping steel plates. The howdahs had been strengthened with heavy planking to give extra cover to the musketeers and archers within. Once their howdahs were full, the mahouts sitting behind the elephants’ ears tapped the beasts as a signal for them to rise, which they did ponderously beneath the weight of their extra armour and the reinforced howdahs and their occupants. Around them, the foot soldiers and horsemen who were to follow them into the assault were also forming up, taking advantage of what shelter the mud and stone barricades provided. The cavalrymen’s horses were tossing their heads and skittering uneasily, sensing their riders’ tension about the attack to come.

  From his vantage point Akbar could see defenders massing on the battlements of Chittorgarh, well aware that another assault was about to be launched on their stronghold. Although his preparations were beyond musket shot, arrows fired from the battlements high into the air to secure maximum range began to plummet from the skies to fall among Akbar’s men. Many had lost much of their force and did not penetrate the armour of either elephants or men; others were deflected by shields. Some, however, wounded horses or less well-protected foot soldiers. As Akbar watched, a black-feathered arrow hit an officer’s tall white horse in the neck. It collapsed, crimson blood staining its coat, and its rider, a stout man wearing a domed helmet, slid from the saddle shouting for a replacement. A groom – an elderly man judging by his white hair and stiff gait – moved forward, leading another horse, this time a chestnut, but as he did so another of the defenders’ lucky arrow shots caught him in the chest. He staggered and fell, dropping the reins and allowing the horse to gallop wildly out from the Moghul ranks and around the ramparts of Chittorgarh.

  ‘Ahmed Khan, we must attack now if our assault is to succeed. Give the orders for the elephants to advance and for our cannon and archers to provide covering fire. I will take my place with the first wave of cavalry, ready to follow up the elephants’ attack.’

  At Ahmed Khan’s signal, the elephants, encumbered by the extra weight they were carrying, began to advance, moving more slowly than usual but still they made progress over the dry, stony ground, bare except for the corpses of men and animals which lay between them and the bottom of the winding ramp. The defenders’ arrows seemed to have little effect, bouncing off the elephants’ steel armour or sticking harmlessly into the planking of the howdahs like quills on a porcupine. However, when the attackers came within musket shot, Akbar saw one elephant pause as if hit but then it moved forward again, stoically plodding after its companions leaving a trail of blood as it did so. Occasionally a soldier plunged from a howdah, clearly wounded, but with growing excitement Akbar realised the elephants were making better progress than in any previous attack. Soon the leading beasts would be at the foot of the ramp. Now was the time for him to ready his horsemen.

  ‘Follow me. Chittorgarh will be ours,’ he shouted as he led his riders forward at the trot, ready to charge after the elephants if they made it up the ramp to the gate. But then he saw some pots full of fire being thrown from the walls of Chittorgarh towards the elephants. All of them fell short, bursting harmlessly on the surrounding rocks. Suddenly orange-turbaned Rajputs began to emerge through a door set into the metal-studded main gate. The first man to appear put a taper to the large clay pot he was carrying and, as the pitch within caught fire, began to whirl the pot round his head while running at full pelt down the ramp towards the advancing elephants. He was followed by his companions, all similarly equipped with flaming pitch pots.

  Although the noise of battle was too great for Akbar to hear the crackle of musketry, his musketeers and archers in the howdahs had clearly begun to fire. Several Rajputs fell on the ramp, dropping their fire pots, but the rest ran on, including one man whose clothes had been set afire by burning pitch after a musket ball had shattered its clay container. Eventually this human torch collapsed into a flaming heap but not before he had waved a blazing arm to encourage his fellows on. Other Rajput attackers – hit by musket balls or arrows – plunged over the low wall that formed the side of the ramp, crashing to the ground below. Yet still the rest ran on, oblivious of their comrades’ deaths and the musket balls and arrows cracking and hissing around them.

  A minute or two after they emerged, the leading Rajput threw his flaming pitch pot towards the first of Akbar’s elephants, which had just put its front feet on to the ramp. Moments later the Rajput, hit in the forehead by a musket ball, collapsed to the ground, but his pot of burning pitch burst squarely on its target’s head and its flaming contents began to run down the elephant’s armour. Some of it must have seeped between the steel plates or into the animal’s eyes because, maddened with pain and trumpeting wildly, it turned back from the ramp, striking the elephant behind it and setting the heavy planking of its howdah afire. Other pitch pots thrown from the walls above, as well as by the survivors of those who had run down the ramp, also found their targets.

  To his horror, Akbar saw his soldiers begin to jump from the howdahs of the stricken elephants and run back towards their own lines. Some with their garments alight rolled on the dry ground to try to extinguish them. Others just ran on screaming in agony, orange flames billowing behind them, until they too fell. More elephants began to turn, streaked with flames. Akbar saw the mahout of one hammer into his mount’s brain the large steel spike which mahouts carried to kill wounded elephants to prevent them rampaging among their own men. The great beast collapsed almost immediately and was instantly still. Another mahout was less brave and jumped from his animal’s neck, leaving it to turn frenzied and riderless and run back trumpeting towards Akbar’s barricades with its howdah on fire. It crashed into one barricade and stumbled over. As it fell, it exposed its unprotected belly to some of Akbar’s musketeers, who despatched it with several shots. In its death throes, it rolled on its burning howdah, mercifully crushing the life from the soldiers trapped within. The pungent stench of singed and burning flesh, human and animal, now blowing across the battlefield and mingling with the acrid gunpowder smoke began to fill Akbar’s nostrils, and he knew this attack – like so many others previously – had no chance of success. To save further futile casualties, with a wave of his hand he ordered his forces to fall back and turned his own horse. How was he going to break the deadlock?

  That evening, with the rays of the setting sun reflecting from the shoulder pieces of the gilded breastplate he now habitually wore when on campaign, Akbar was in sombre mood as he entered his scarlet command tent where his war council was assembling. His mind was still void of viable new stratagems as he took his place on a small throne placed at the centre of the semicircle in which Ahmed Khan and his other generals sat cross-legged. He had never needed their help and advice as much as he did now but he couldn’t help thinking they were an ill-assorted bunch. Some, like Muhammad Beg over there in his green and red striped robes, had served even longer than Ahmed Khan and had fought at Panipat with Babur in their youth and experienced all the trials of Humayun’s life and had the scars to show for it. Others, like the square-shouldered, extravagantly moustached Tajik Ali Gul, were younger and had only known Humayun’s last few battles. Yet others were even newer adherents. Some, such as the large, stout, red-turbaned figure of Raja Ravi Singh, noisily crunching almonds from the engraved copper dish in front of him, were the rulers of smaller states, even – like Ravi Singh himself – of Rajput ones, who had already submitted to Akbar’s suzerainty after his defeat of Hemu. Whatever their age or background, all his commanders had chastened expressions on their faces.

  ‘What were our casualties from today’s attack?’ asked Akbar.

  Ahmed Khan replied.
‘We lost the pick of our war elephants as well as over three hundred men. Many others are so badly burned they may not survive.’

  ‘Despite the losses it was worth trying,’ said Akbar. ‘We must look to the use of more innovations such as the strengthened howdahs if we do not want to allow Rana Udai time to raise a great relieving army, or perhaps even to form an alliance with other Rajput rulers, before we can take Chittorgarh.’

  ‘He is unlikely to find allies,’ put in Ravi Singh quietly. ‘The ranas of Mewar have long alienated their fellow rulers with their pretensions to the leadership of all Rajasthan, and with the pompous and superior airs with which they treat their fellows.’

  ‘That’s good to hear, at least. Has Chittorgarh been conquered before, other than by treachery?’

  ‘Yes,’ answered Muhammad Beg, scratching the uneven bridge of his broken nose. ‘Over two hundred years ago by a man called Alauaddin Khilji and more recently by the Gujaratis.’

  ‘Can we learn anything from their methods?’

  ‘I know nothing of how Alauaddin Khilji succeeded: it is too long lost in history. However, when I was in Gujarat after your father’s siege of Champnir, I spoke to an old Gujarati who told me that in their attack they tried, as we have, to push strong barricades forward to allow attackers to approach nearer. They even constructed a kind of covered corridor made of thick hide – a sabat the man called it – which allowed them to get quite a distance up the ramp. But from what I gathered, their final victory was caused as much by deprivation and disease among the defenders as by anything else. I would have mentioned the covered corridors before if I hadn’t thought that, while they were successful in offering protection against arrows, they would be easily vulnerable to musket balls as well as to cannon fire.’

  ‘But couldn’t we strengthen them by using stones and mud for the sides and heavy wooden planking for the roof?’ asked Ahmed Khan.

  ‘It would take a long time and cost many lives, Majesty,’ put in Ali Gul.

  ‘But so have all our other fruitless attacks,’ Akbar pointed out. ‘My grandfather Babur once said that an emperor must recognise that to win and expand an empire he has to be prepared to sacrifice lives – even potentially his own and those of his closest adherents and family. Only when victory is complete may he show compassion and compensate as best he can the families of the fallen. The idea of sabats is worth pursuing. Have plans drawn up. Send parties in search of more stones and supplies of timber. To give those working on the construction some protection, throw up thick hide screens as the Gujaratis did. They will stop arrows, and the Rajputs won’t want to expend too much of their powder in firing cannons and muskets randomly on unseen targets, for fear of exhausting their supplies.’

  Akbar was feeling optimistic as he sat on his horse at the entrance of one of his two great sabats. They were proving quicker to construct than he had anticipated. A forest only a few miles away had provided good quantities of thick tree trunks for timbers. Prisoners had been put to the backbreaking work of quarrying stone. Chittorgarh’s defenders had proved, as Akbar had predicted, reluctant to waste powder on musket and cannon fire and the hide screens had indeed provided a degree of protection from arrows. Nevertheless up to a hundred men a day – mostly poor barefoot labourers lured by the silver coin offered by Akbar – had been killed as they worked.

  As he had promised he would, Akbar had had his clerks carefully record the names of the dead and wounded in leather-bound ledgers so that they or their families could receive compensation once victory was secured. The sabat Akbar was entering had been constructed on a huge scale. It was – as Muhammad Beg, whom he had put in charge of the works, proudly assured him – wide enough to accommodate ten horsemen riding abreast or a team of oxen pulling a small cannon, and high enough to allow even a large war elephant to get through. Akbar knew from the reports reaching him that, while the sabats were advancing sinuously and inexorably up and round the slopes leading to the ramp, like the tentacles of some predatory creature, they had not yet reached their target, but it could not be long . . .

  ‘How far does this sabat extend at the moment, Muhammad Beg?’ he asked.

  ‘To about a hundred yards from the foot of the ramp. We had a setback three days ago when a Rajput sortie managed to set fire to some of the roof timbers. Only a display of great bravery by our labourers, who formed a bucket chain all the way from our wells to put the fire out, prevented the destruction of the forward quarter of the sabat.’

  ‘Let me know the names of any who merit special reward.’

  ‘Majesty.’

  ‘Now let me see for myself the inside of one of these sabats.’ Akbar kicked his black horse gently forward into the darkness of the entrance. The thick wooden roof made it cooler inside. As he went further along, a sour aroma – a combination of damp earth, smoke, and sweat, urine and faeces both animal and human – began to build up in his nostrils. Occasional torches of cloth dipped in pitch placed in holders in the walls provided the only light. By each stood a labourer with leather buckets of sand as well as water beside him, ready to douse any flame that looked like getting out of hand and setting alight the resinous wood of the roof. As Akbar passed these labourers, most of whom were dressed in little but a loincloth and a ragged shirt, they prostrated themselves before him. Sometimes he dismounted to speak briefly to them – a question about where they came from or the extent of their family, a word of encouragement and a gift of a small coin – before moving forward again.

  As he was listening to a wizened, white-haired torch-bearer explain that he was the head of a large family from a hamlet called Gurgaon near Delhi, a dull thud shook the wall of the sabat, dislodging many small stones and one or two larger ones. The labourer flung himself to the ground but soon scrambled to his feet upon seeing Akbar still standing, holding on to his rearing horse. Shamefacedly he said, ‘I apologise. I am not as brave when these cannon balls strike as you, Majesty.’

  ‘You are sufficiently brave to stay at your post,’ said Akbar. ‘And remember something my father told me about battle. If you hear the sound of an impact or an explosion, you have survived it.’

  The labourer smiled briefly. ‘I will remember, Majesty.’ Akbar slipped him some small coins, and the man raised both his hands above his head and pressed them together in the Hindu form of salutation. Then Akbar rode on through the sabat. Before long, despite its tortuous bends, he could see some light dimly reflected from the mouth. Occasionally he heard a musket shot, either from his own men trying to protect the workers as they laboured in the open air or from the defenders on the battlements above who were trying to pick them off. Once he heard a strangled cry which transformed into an animal-like shriek before dying away. By now, Akbar knew enough of the sounds of battle to realise that another of his labourers had died in his cause.

  Soon he was at the end of the sabat where boulders were piled ready to extend the walls near stacks of roughly sawn tree trunks for the roof. Just within the tunnel’s mouth sweating labourers were mixing buckets of water with dry earth to make mud to serve as a kind of cement to hold the walls together. Akbar and Muhammad Beg dismounted. Both men put on their helmets and with bodyguards holding large metal shields in front of them made their way across a patch of open ground towards one of the rock piles which would provide them with some protection.

  ‘Majesty, if you come here you will have a good view of Chittorgarh’s battlements,’ called an officer from a little further along the mound. His clothes and once white turban were streaked with dust and mud.

  ‘Be careful, Majesty,’ said Muhammad Beg. ‘If you can see the battlements, those upon them can see you and they may recognise you from your gilded breastplate.’

  ‘My men daily expose themselves to such risks. I shouldn’t scruple to do the same,’ said Akbar. He manoeuvred along to where the officer was standing pointing upwards. The top of the walls was clearly visible and there seemed to be some kind of lookout platform on them. After Akbar had watche
d for a minute or two, he saw two figures emerge on to the lookout and begin scanning the Moghuls’ position keenly. One – a tall, black-bearded man – pointed something out to the other. From the sparkling flashes as the sun caught the rings on his fingers and from his general demeanour he was clearly an important commander. Akbar whispered to the white-turbaned officer, ‘Get me two loaded muskets and a firing tripod. I want to bring down these fine fellows.’

  Quickly two of the musketeers posted at the entrance to the sabat passed their weapons and a tripod forward to Akbar. The only way that Akbar could get sufficient elevation on the six-foot-long musket while keeping it steady on its tripod was by lowering himself on to the dusty ground and half-lying, half-crouching behind the musket. As quietly and as quickly as he could, he aligned the barrel on the jewelled man, just as if his target were a tiger in a jungle clearing. Holding his breath to keep himself as still as he was able, he fired. Coughing from the acrid smoke of the discharge, he saw the man pitch forward and plunge from the lookout platform to smash with a dull thud into the ground only a few yards away. His companion disappeared before Akbar could ready the second musket.

  ‘Bring the body in,’ he ordered. ‘Let’s see who we have.’

  When two soldiers had dragged the broken figure over, Akbar saw that his musket ball seemed to have caught the man above the right ear, although he could not be entirely sure since much of the rest of the back of the man’s head was a bloody misshapen mess from the impact of the fall.

  ‘He is clearly a high-ranking officer,’ said Muhammad Beg, ‘but I don’t recognise him.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ said Akbar, ‘but Raja Ravi may well do so, despite the wounds, if we show the body to him. He met many of the leaders of Mewar in past years when there was less hostility between their states.’