Raiders from the North: Empire of the Moghul

by Alex Rutherford

  As soon as the sky began to pale, the teams of oxen would be yoked. The long lines of pack-beasts – double-humped camels, donkeys, ponies – would be loaded with their burdens of grain, cured meats and other stores. The merchants who would follow Babur’s army to set up the camp market would also be preparing their baggage and animal trains – a long, successful campaign offered the prospect of huge profits. With them would come the usual mass of camp-followers – labourers, scavengers, water-bearers, women with children at the breast, anxious to be near their men, other women hoping to survive by selling their bodies, the acrobats, dancers and musicians who knew soldiers would pay well for a bit of entertainment to distract them from thoughts of war. A whole city was on the move.

  A few hours later, just before midday, with the winter sun shedding its silvery light over the landscape, Babur rode out from the citadel of Kabul, Timur’s gold ring on his finger and Alamgir as his waist, to a glorious cacophony of trumpets. As he passed the high walls of the city a knot tightened in his stomach – apprehension, anticipation, excitement? It was all of those things and he had known them many times.

  But this time it was different. He felt an awesome solemnity. Truly, fortune was extending her hand . . . if only he could grasp it, all that had gone before – his fight for his throne in Ferghana, his attempts to overcome the Uzbeks and hold Samarkand, his rule over Kabul – would prove simply stepping-stones to a greater destiny for himself and his dynasty . . .

  ‘The astrologer was right. Fortune is favouring us,’ Babur told Humayun and Baburi, lounging beside him on cushions beneath leather awnings on a large raft being navigated by oarsmen down the swift-flowing Kabul river. Around them, on a string of larger craft, were the cannon and much of the heavy baggage, while the bulk of the army made its way along the banks.

  ‘You did well, Humayun, to raise so many troops among the northern nomads.’ Ten days after Babur and the main force had left Kabul, his son had joined them with more than two thousand soldiers from the wilds of Badakhshan.

  ‘It wasn’t difficult, Father – not with all the gold we had to offer.’

  ‘They’re good fighters, the Badakhshanis, though they’re quick to quarrel among themselves or with others,’ said Baburi, drawing his blue cloak more tightly round him against the chill air blowing off the water.

  ‘The pace they’re having to keep up should sap their surplus energy,’ Babur said.

  The sight of the rushing jade waters bearing him downriver towards Hindustan pushed thoughts of troublesome tribesmen from his mind and filled him with euphoria. Soon he’d call for some bhang mixed with opium. Once it had provided an escape from reality but now it enhanced the happiness of the present and heightened his optimism for the future. Each time he took it, even the austere, stony grey landscape they were passing through seemed drenched in a golden light and every feature – every tree, every flower, even the flocks of fat, shaggy sheep – was endowed with a fresh, startling beauty. When he closed his eyes, other images crowded his mind – of his men galloping joyously across battlefields strewn with the bodies of his enemies, their horses’ hoofs scarcely touching the ground, of himself wearing a golden crown glittering with rubies and sitting on a golden throne beneath an infinite sky . . .

  ‘What are you smiling about?’ asked Baburi.

  ‘I’m thinking about what’s ahead. Where we’ll be in a year from now.’

  ‘In Delhi, I hope . . .’

  ‘And where d’you think we’ll be, Humayun?’

  ‘I don’t know, Father . . . but, God willing, we’ll have slain your enemies and won an empire.’

  Babur and Baburi exchanged an amused glance at his naivety but then their expressions sobered. Grandiose words, perhaps, for one so young but weren’t their sentiments exactly the same?

  ‘Majesty, the scouts have returned. They have found a suitable place to cross the Indus.’

  Babur’s heart leaped. This was the news he had been waiting for ever since, leaving the Kabul river behind, he had marched his army safely beyond the bare, pebbly defiles of the Khyber Pass and south-eastwards towards the Indus. He and Baburi had just set out to go hunting – villagers had reported two rhinoceroses browsing beneath the interlaced branches of an oak wood five miles beyond his camp – but that would have to wait.

  ‘Come!’ Babur called to Baburi, then galloped back to where the scouts were waiting outside his scarlet campaign tent.

  ‘Majesty, there is a place a day’s march from here where, if we build rafts, we can float everything across,’ the commander of the scouts reported.

  ‘What about the currents?’

  ‘The crossing place is just below a sharp bend in the river that reduces the strength of the current at that point – we experimented, floating three pack-mules across, and it went well. Also, there are enough trees to cut down for the rafts and there was no sign of any habitation along that stretch of the bank. We should be able to cross unmolested.’

  Next day, Babur and Baburi looked for the third time in their lives on the Indus.

  ‘You’re not going to go swimming again, are you?’ Baburi asked. ‘Because if you are, I’m not coming in this time . . .’

  ‘No more swimming until I have my empire. We’re in luck – the level of the river is lower than when we last saw it.’ Babur stooped, picked up a stick and flung it in. ‘The scouts were right. That bend in the river does reduce the force of the current – the stick is floating away quite slowly . . .’

  ‘You sound almost disappointed. Do you want some symbolic epic struggle to get across?’

  ‘I don’t want it but I expected it. We’ll camp here, and as soon as our carpenters have built enough rafts, we go over.’

  Constructing the rafts – felling trees, hewing wood into rough planks, securing them together with rope and covering the surface with hide cut from spare tents – took three days. On the fourth, they crossed. Although a thin veil of cold rain was falling, turning the banks to oozing mud and making the rafts slippery, getting so many men and beasts over the Indus took only from first light until midday. The advance guard went first, then the horses, camels, bullocks, and the all-important cannon and muskets. Next came the soldiers, merchants and the camp baggage, leaving the camp-followers to make their own crossing. The only losses were three camels that, badly laden and not properly tethered, had capsized a small raft and drowned.

  As soon as he arrived on the other side, Babur ordered a small tent to be erected. Entering it alone he fastened the flaps. Then, he knelt, leaned forward and pressed his lips to the bare earth. ‘I claimed you once and I do so again,’ he whispered. ‘I claim you for the House of Timur, for myself and my descendants.’ Taking a small agate locket that hung on a chain round his neck, he opened it and very carefully, with the tip of his dagger, dug a few grains of earth and tipped them inside. Then closing the locket again he tucked it back inside his tunic where it rested against his heart.

  In the February sunset, the waters of the Sutlej river beside Babur’s camp glowed amber. It was the final great waterway before the north-west plains of Hindustan and Sultan Ibrahim’s great city of Delhi. They had done well to get there so quickly, Babur thought. After crossing the Indus, the winter rain had stayed with them for a while. The soft ground had slowed their pace as the horses and pack-animals had struggled, especially the beasts drawing the cannon. But at last the rain had ceased and they had advanced steadily, crossing the network of tributaries of the Indus.

  So far they had faced only wild, lawless tribes. One – the Gujars – had descended on Babur’s men as they negotiated a narrow pass but his rearguard had easily repulsed them. The piles of Gujari heads left in neat stacks had been an effective deterrent and no others had dared attack. Once across the Sutlej, it would be a different matter. They would be entering the lands of powerful chiefs who were vassals of Sultan Ibrahim. A few days ago, Babur had sent messengers over the river with an ultimatum to one of these – Firoz Khan – whose lands lay
directly between him and Delhi: ‘Your lands once belonged to Timur and I claim them as my birthright. Surrender them and pledge me your allegiance. Then you may continue to rule as my vassal and there will be no pillage or plunder.’

  In reply, the chieftain had sent back the gift of a fine, mail-clad horse, the colour of pale almond blossom, with a message: ‘Your claim is artificial. My allegiance is to Sultan Ibrahim in Delhi, the rightful ruler of Hindustan. After your long journey into lands that do not belong to you, your own horse will be tired and thin. May this beast carry you swiftly back to Kabul.’ Babur had laughed at the man’s arrogance and given the horse to Baburi.

  Firoz Khan would regret his impudence, Babur thought, as he made his way back to his campaign tent. Humayun had begged to be allowed to take a small advance force of his Badakhshani nomads over the Sutlej to spy out the terrain in preparation for the advance of the main force on Firoz Khan’s stronghold and Babur had agreed. Soon, God willing, he would rendezvous with his son after crossing the river and show Firoz Khan weapons he had never seen . . . In his tent, he paced up and down, restless and conscious that the success of his long-pent-up ambition would soon be decided. Towards midnight, he ordered his attendants to bring him some opium mixed with wine. It would help him relax, maybe even sleep – something he was finding it harder and harder to do.

  The heady concoction did its work and Babur’s mind began to wander down pleasant paths . . . he’d no idea how long had passed when suddenly the crack of thunder intruded into his dreams. The day had been hot and humid. Perhaps the rains would bring freshness to the air.

  Soon heavy rain was pounding the roof of his tent. After a while, droplets started to ooze through the seams. He began to count them – one, two, three, splash . . . one, two, three, splash . . . His eyelids were drooping when suddenly he heard Baburi’s voice and felt a strong hand shaking him to full consciousness. ‘The river’s burst its banks! The camp’s being washed away.’

  ‘What?’ Dazed with the opium, he found it hard to take in Baburi’s words.

  ‘We’re being flooded. The river’s turning into a lake. We’ve got to move.’

  Grabbing Alamgir in its scabbard and chaining it to his belt, Babur rushed outside and could hardly believe what he saw: the whole camp was already beneath a foot of muddy water. His commanders, struggling through it towards his tent from all directions, were looking to him for orders.

  His poppy-induced languor vanished. ‘Abandon the tents and the heavy baggage. Get the horses and the men to higher ground.’ Through the rain – falling so heavily that it stung – he could just make out the low hills to their rear. ‘Carry with you as many of the muskets and as much of the gunpowder as you can. Leave the cannon – the water cannot move them. Untether the pack-animals. They must fend for themselves, as must all in the camp . . . There is little time.’

  Babur shouted through the teeming rain to his attendants to bring his horse and Baburi’s. Together they rode through the rising waters, encouraging men to save what they could, but then – when the water was almost up to stirrup level – they made for the hills. Their frightened horses, half swimming, struggled at first. Bending low over their necks, Babur and Baburi whispered encouragement into their ears. Detritus from the camp floated all around them – cooking pots, riding boots, drowned chickens and sheep. When they finally reached the higher ground, Babur found many of his horsemen already gathered there. Some had managed to bring others to safety with them – women and children, sodden and miserable, were among those sheltering beneath the trees.

  About dawn, the rain stopped and a few hours later the floodwaters were receding. Closing his eyes, Babur gave thanks. At least nearly all of the army seemed to have survived. As soon as the waters had subsided they would return to the camp and retrieve everything they had abandoned – the cannon, their chain-mail, armour, weapons, tents and whatever provisions were still fit to eat. Then they would round up the pack-beasts. He would take no more opium till Hindustan was his.

  The whine of a mosquito landing on the back of his sunburned neck distracted Babur and he slapped it, leaving a smear of dark-red blood – his own. But it was others’ blood that was about to flow. He had no need of his court astrologer to tell him that. First Firoz Khan’s, and then anyone else’s who opposed him on the road to Delhi. Nobody would stand in his way.

  Chapter 22

  Panipat

  Babur’s men had erected his large, scarlet command tent at the very centre of the camp they had pitched two days previously at the small village of Panipat on the plains north-west of Delhi. The tent gave little respite from the intense dry heat of an April afternoon to Babur and his military council gathered around him. When the side flaps were down the atmosphere soon grew stifling. When they were pulled back and secured with leather thongs, the omnipresent wind blew in gritty dust that clogged noses and stung eyes. The windbreaks of thick brown cloth erected some yards from the tent had improved things only a little.

  Babur sat on his gilded throne with his back to the breeze, drinking a sherbet made from local limes mixed with water and some of the last of the carefully preserved ice they had brought down from the mountains. Baburi, squatting on his haunches by Babur’s left side, was doing likewise, lowering the thin yellow cotton cloth he had tied over the lower part of his face to protect against the dust each time he took a sip.

  Just a month after his eighteenth birthday Humayun was seated on a stool to his father’s right. He was wearing a deep green tunic woven from the thinnest cotton loosely belted over baggy trousers of the same material. Like several other commanders, he was being cooled by a great peacock feather fan wielded dextrously above

  his head by servants stripped to the waist but still perspiring copiously with the effort.

  ‘What do our scouts tell us about the movement of Sultan Ibrahim’s troops, Baburi?’

  ‘They’re still moving towards us but taking their time about it. They break camp only every other day and even then they only travel five or six miles before making camp again, partly because of the size of their baggage train but also, I think, because they’ve no great appetite for an early engagement. They’d rather leave us to eat up our supplies or – in our impatience – make an unwise attack of our own.’

  ‘No chance of that, I hope. We must tempt them to attack us so that we can make the most of our cannon and muskets, firing from defensive positions and thus reducing the effect of their greater numbers. While we’re on the subject, what are the latest estimates of their strength?’ Babur put down his sherbet.

  ‘About a hundred thousand – two-thirds cavalry, the rest foot-soldiers. The latter probably with plenty of eagerness for plunder but little for battle. And then, of course, there are the war elephants. Our spies say there are around a thousand, nearly all in good condition, well trained and armoured. They’re a real worry. Even if we sit on the defensive we’ll need to blunt their charge before they get into our lines. Otherwise, if they do get in amongst us, we’ll find it difficult to keep our men disciplined. Most have scarcely seen an elephant, never mind fought one—’

  ‘The cannon will help,’ interrupted Humayun.

  ‘Yes, but we’ll need to protect them too if they’re to be reloaded and get off enough shots to make a difference. We musn’t let them be overrun after firing just a couple of rounds.’

  ‘ We could position them at the centre of our formation, just as this tent is at the centre of the camp for protection,’ Humayun said.

  ‘But they’ll need a clear field of fire . . .’ Baburi went on.

  ‘Let me speak.’ Babur motioned both Humayun and Baburi to be silent. ‘Baburi, do you remember what that old woman – Rehana – told us all those years ago, when we were not much older than Humayun is now, about Timur’s strategy when he took Delhi? Last night I was thinking about our battle plan and what my great ancestor might have done when I remembered Rehana – and that I had had the good sense to have her account transcribed and still h
ad it in the chest where I keep important royal papers and my diary . . .

  ‘When I read it I found it provided the main elements of a battle plan against the elephants. Timur had trenches dug and used the earth to build ramparts in front of his lines. Then he ordered tethered bullocks to be roped together as a further line of protection. I thought we, too, should dig trenches and throw up earth barricades – but instead of tying bullocks together, we should link our baggage wagons by knotting their traces to each other, leaving gaps at intervals through which our cannon – placed as you suggested, Humayun, at our centre – can fire and our cavalry make sorties when necessary. We could station the musketeers and some of our best mounted archers to protect the gaps between the wagons with crossfire.’

  Nods of agreement followed, but Baburi asked, ‘That begs the question of how you’ll make sure they actually attack us, rather than try to force us into retreat by cutting off our supplies.’

  ‘Once we’ve prepared our positions, if they don’t attack after a few days we’ll attempt to provoke them. We’ll make a flanking movement apparently aimed at their camp and its treasure or – better still – launch a limited attack and then feign retreat. We’ll make them think they’ve bested us and that an easy victory will be theirs if only they follow through . . .’

  Over the next few days, Babur’s soldiers worked from the cool hours of dawn through the hottest part of the day, when the horizon shimmered in a heat haze, and on to dusk, digging the hard, dry ground to scrape out trenches and throw up earth barricades. It was slow, exhausting work. Many collapsed from the effect of the sun, all too many falling into a delirium – eyes rolling, tongues lolling – from which they were never to rise.