Raiders from the North eotm-1

by Alex Rutherford

  Babur turned in his saddle. Humayun was quite close behind but his bodyguard was strung out some way further back. He was hot and sweating, and dust had stuck to every inch of his exposed flesh, crusting around his eyes, but he was delighted that at forty-four he had ridden a hundred and fifty miles in two and a half days and had still been able to out-gallop his men to this hilltop vantage-point.

  The rocky outcrop gave a fine view over the dry deserts of Rajasthan, but there was little enough else to be pleased about. He had ridden the hundred and fifty miles in pursuit of Rana Sanga but he and his men had not even come in sight of the rana’s main army, not even a glimpse of their dust on the horizon. He had been on campaign for the last six weeks but during that time had been unable to bring his enemy into a pitched battle in which his muskets and cannon — including one he had had newly cast which could throw a ball over three-quarters of a mile — could be deployed to good effect.

  The wily rana had wisely preferred a war of movement, using his more mobile forces to make hit-and-run raids on Babur’s forts and supply caravans, just as Babur had once done from the hills above Ferghana against his half-brother Jahangir’s men. The raids had weakened the morale of Babur’s battalions, leaving them edgy and always on the lookout for attack. The raids had also forced Babur to detach more and more of his best troops from his main force to guard the baggage train.

  Humayun was at his side now. ‘I can still outride you just as I could when you had the little white pony ten years ago. .’

  ‘You have the best horse and there’d be a different result if we were on foot,’ responded Humayun, provoked almost despite himself into adolescent competition with his father and an adolescent touchiness about any perceived failure.

  ‘I was only joking. Anyway, neither of us seems able to catch the rana and he’s older than both of us and crippled. The plain out there is deserted. We need to think again. Let’s dine alone so that we can talk frankly.’

  The two servants dressed in white tunics and baggy trousers disappeared through the tent flaps carrying the remains of the last course of the dinner — oranges, nuts and sticky sweetmeats. Babur and Humayun lay back from the low table against the large purple cushions embroidered with elephants and peacocks that had once graced Ibrahim’s palace in Delhi. Each had a gold goblet of red wine, newly arrived from the vineyards of Ghazni, south of Kabul.

  ‘I’ve been thinking how we can entice Rana Sanga into conflict.’ Humayun put his goblet down. ‘We both know that, for the Rajputs, honour — their personal honour, their family honour — is everything. We should occupy a place of particular importance to the rana so that he will believe his honour has been impaired if he doesn’t re-capture it quickly.’

  ‘A good idea in principle but have you actually got anywhere in mind?’

  ‘I asked some of the native chiefs we number among our allies. They tell me that Sanga’s mother was born in a small village called Khanua at the edge of his territories twenty miles north-west of Agra — about seventy-five miles south-west of here. He built a shrine there to one of his gods in her honour and still worships there once a year.’

  ‘You’ve certainly done some thinking. I’ll send scouts first thing in the morning to check the terrain between Khanua and here and also to see whether the place itself looks a good one for us to fight. If all goes well, I should be able to order our forces to concentrate there within a few days. But you’re not the only one who’s been thinking. I’ve been worrying about how to hearten those of our men unsettled by Sanga’s success in his hit-and-run raids.’

  ‘Where have your thoughts led you?’

  ‘Perhaps in a strange direction. All of my previous campaigns have been against armies that included at least some men who shared our faith. This time our opponents are all Hindus — that is to say, infidels. We will declare holy war — jihad.’

  ‘But now we’re in Hindustan, some of our allies among the local rulers are Hindus, too.’

  ‘We’ll make sure we detach them from the main army for this battle. In any case, I’ve been worried about the loyalty — or, at least, the effectiveness — of some of them for a while now. They can garrison rear areas or some such.’

  ‘It may work.’

  ‘It will work. . I’ve even thought of how to symbolise this change. This fine red wine of Ghazni I’ve drunk tonight will be the last alcohol I shall taste. I’ll pour the remainder of the shipment away in front of our men when I tell them of the jihad.’

  ‘But you’ve drunk all my life. .’

  ‘Yes and I’ve enjoyed spirits, bhang and the fruit of the opium poppy, I know. We people of Timur’s blood — and of Genghis’s — have taken strong drink since long before the mullahs brought the true religion to us. Fermented mare’s milk — kvass — was, after all, what kept Genghis’s people alive in the winter cold on the high steppes. All but the strictest mullahs realised it would be impossible to change people completely and at once. They lauded abstinence as the ideal and helped the pious and ascetic to achieve it but tolerated drinking among men of the world. They encouraged us to forswear it for short periods — such as during our holy month of Ramadan and as we became older and could sooner expect to be called to account by our creator.’

  Babur took another sip. ‘Yes, wine is good and I’m known to enjoy it. That’s why my renouncing it will have a big impact on morale. That’s why I’m expecting you to renounce it too.’

  Humayun grimaced.

  ‘You must — at least for a while. . I’ll make the announcement to our troops in a couple of days or so when I’ve had a chance to tell the mullahs and detach our Hindu allies to other tasks.’

  Babur’s army was drawn up in a hollow square at the centre of which was a raised wooden dais, covered with gold cloth, on which their emperor stood in his green robes. His belt was of intertwined pearls and round his neck he wore a gorget of uncut rubies and emeralds. His gold crown was on his head and his sword, Alamgir, was at his side. Next to him, Humayun was similarly royally attired, and they were surrounded by their senior mullahs, all in black and each with the Holy Book in his right hand.

  Babur began to speak: ‘Men, we march tomorrow for what I intend to be our climactic confrontation with this upstart Rana of Mewar, who dares invade our territories. He is not a man of our religion. He does not follow the one true God but worships many. He mistakenly believes he will be reincarnated on earth many times. That may be what makes him so reckless. We must show him the superiority of our religion and of our courage. We are not afraid to lose our one life because we are certain of Paradise if we fall martyrs in our battle against the infidel. I have consulted our mullahs, these wise and holy men you see around me. They have agreed that because we fight against infidels, to demonstrate the superiority of our divinely inspired courage, we should declare this a jihad, a holy war. We fight for our God, for our beliefs. We will conquer in their name. Allah akbar! God is great!’

  A loud cry of approval went up from the army’s front ranks, spreading and growing in volume and fervour as it was relayed to the outermost. Soldiers raised their swords and banged their shields.

  After a few minutes, Babur lowered his hands repeatedly, palms down, to signify he wanted silence once more. As the crowd hushed he spoke again: ‘You know me as a man who has not always succeeded in following all of God’s teaching. Weak, as we all are, I have indulged my senses. You know I have enjoyed alcohol. You may have heard of the wine of Ghazni — the finest of the year’s crop — that I had shipped down the Khyber Pass only a week ago to indulge myself. To show my passion for our holy war I now renounce alcohol and so does my son, Humayun. To symbolise this, we will pour away the fine Ghazni wine I imported into Hindustan with such effort.’

  As he spoke, he and Humayun both raised axes above their heads and brought them crashing down on the wooden barrels of wine that had been placed before the dais, smashing them open so that the ruby-red wine flowed out to soak into the dust. The roar that followed was
even greater than the first. Babur’s nobles and generals, as well as many of the common soldiers, vied with each other to shout that they, too, wished to reform and renounce intoxicants. . that, purified and renewed, they would conquer. .

  Babur stood at the top of a low hill overlooking the red sand of the Rajasthan desert at Khanua. Behind him was the village itself, mainly mud-brick houses but, at its centre, the intricately carved sandstone Hindu temple raised by Rana Sanga in memory of his mother. Babur had made the shaven-headed, white-robed priests watch while his men defaced or chiselled out all references to the rana or his mother on the temple. Then he had expelled the priests from the village, knowing they would take the news to the rana.

  Predictably, Rana Sanga’s Rajput honour had been unable to stomach the insult and he was now encamped about three miles away on the plain below. Although his camp was shrouded in early-morning mist, only a few minutes ago scouts despatched before dawn had reported back to Babur that they had heard and seen the unmistakable sights and sounds of preparation for battle — cooking fires doused, swords sharpened, horses saddled and orders shouted.

  Babur’s own deployments had been agreed a few days previously — immediately after the arrival of his army at Khanua — in the familiar surroundings of his scarlet tent.

  ‘I believe we should follow basically the same battle plan as at Panipat,’ he had begun, ‘but we should use the hill to strengthen our position further. Let us place the cannon on the hilltop and dig trenches and build ramparts around the hill to protect them.’

  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 melee 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 f
oot. 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.