Raiders from the North: Empire of the Moghul

by Alex Rutherford

  ‘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.

  ‘Men, let us rejoice and give thanks to God for the great victory you have won by your courage and belief in our righteous cause. We have shown ourselves once more worthy successors to the noble Timur and history will remember us as such. We celebrated last night and when we are back in Agra, which lies scarcely four days’ march away, I will again break open my treasuries and reward each and every one of you.

  ‘Last night I learned from a prisoner that late in the battle Rana Sanga – our insolent opponent who dared set his power against ours – was
wounded in the abdomen so badly that he had to be carried from the field in a litter slung between four horses. Today, scouts checking that the Rajputs were not regrouping came in sight of a great funeral pyre being built ten miles west of here. A peasant working in the fields told them it was for Rana Sanga, who had died nearby, and that those building it were the surviving members of his bodyguard. Our scouts hid in tall crops nearby until they saw it was indeed his body that was placed on the pyre. They rode away only after they had witnessed the torch applied to the base of the brushwood. Looking back, they saw orange flames flare to the sky. The rana did not live to boast of his eighty-first wound. The flames consumed not only him but Rajput ambitions to deprive us of our new lands.

  ‘To ensure any surviving rebels or others who wish ill to our empire understand the futility of opposing us, we will again follow the custom of Timur. I have ordered the corpses of our enemies to be decapitated and the heads collected to be piled in towers at every crossroad from here to Agra. Let the hopes of our enemies rot with them.’

  That evening Humayun made his way to the part of his father’s vast scarlet campaign tent that contained his private quarters. His mind was buzzing with images of battle and his ambitions for his own place in the new empire. He must be his father’s heir. After all, he was his eldest son – even though under the traditions of Timur and his descendants the eldest did not succeed by right – and also the son of Babur’s favourite wife. Now he had proved himself in battle too. Perhaps he should broach the subject of succession with his father now. Or, at least, seek a new command in which he could impress further.

  Pushing aside the heavy gold curtains which shielded his father’s quarters, he saw Babur stretched out on a low divan covered with gold-embroidered cream and purple cushions, a silver pipe at his side. He seemed neither to see nor hear Humayun enter but continued to gaze into the middle distance. Coming closer, Humayun saw that his father’s expression was of a benign content and that the pupils of his green eyes were dilated. He put out a hand and shook Babur gently by the shoulder. His eyelids fluttered briefly and his eyes began to focus. ‘Humayun, when did you come in?’

  ‘Only a minute or two ago.’

  ‘After dinner, I took a pipe of bhang and opium, which seemed to transport me away from this brown-baked land with its multitudes of people and all the cares of conquest. I was back on the hillsides of Ferghana. The emerald grass was waving, dotted with the scarlet of tulips and the blue of irises. I watched the waters of the cascading rivulets sparkle and glisten – each drop holding a world within itself. The sound of the soft breezes and the tinkling of water filled my ears. I felt the lightness, the carelessness of a young man. Peace washed over me and took away my worries and responsibilities.’ Babur smiled a tranquil, slightly dazed smile. ‘What do you say? Should we call for some of those excellent rosewater-flavoured sweetmeats?’

  Humayun realised it was no time to talk of his ambitions. His father was relaxing into some of his old distractions. Perhaps he should, too. The red wines of Ghazni were good. It wouldn’t be long before he at least would be drinking them again. ‘I only came in to tell you that the preparations are well under way for the beginning of our march back to Agra tomorrow and, of course, to say good night.’

  As he made his way back to his own tent, Humayun looked up into a night sky pricked by stars. As he watched, more appeared, patterning the heavens. Suddenly he felt impatient with the clamour of the camp, noisy with men and animals, and the crackling of fires whose flames seemed crude compared with the celestial light above. He called for his horse, mounted and rode out into the darkness to be alone with his thoughts beneath the silent stars.

  Chapter 26

  The Bondage of Kingship

  The waters of the Ganges were warm and Babur swam the thirty-three strokes it took to cross the river with pleasure. It felt good to fulfil the final part of his vow, made six years ago when, with Baburi, he had plunged into the icy Indus and sworn to swim every major river of his new empire. Shaking droplets of water from his hair and eyes, Babur hauled himself out on to the bank and lay down in the sun. On the opposite bank, the bodyguards and huntsmen who had ridden with him from his nearby camp at Kanauj, a hundred and fifty miles east of Agra, waited with the horses in the pool of green shade beneath a leafy neem tree. Tonight, when it was dark, he and his men would go fishing, holding candles just above the surface of the water. For some reason the shimmering light was irresistible to fish, luring them to the surface where their silvery bodies were easily grabbed.

  Babur closed his eyes and contemplated the river. According to the scholars he had ordered to draw him maps of Hindustan, the Ganges flowed eastward, passing through Bengal to spill into a great blue ocean. One day, Babur promised himself, he would see the great shining expanse of water he found so hard to visualise . . . How did it look, the horizon where the water met the sky?

  He was still finding Hindustan a bewildering, surprising place. Compared to his homelands it was indeed another world. Its

  mountains, rivers, forests and wildernesses, its villages and provinces, its animals and plants, people and languages, even its rains and winds were altogether different . . . But whereas when he had first crossed the Indus he had thought Hindustan alien, even oppressive, now he was starting to appreciate it. Since defeating Rana Sanga he had spent much of his time on the move, setting up vast encampments, cities in miniature, with his own red tent at the heart – just as Timur had once made tours of inspection from Samarkand. His journey had given Babur the opportunity to show himself to his new subjects but also to learn.

  At night, he took increasing pleasure in writing his diary, documenting everything from how the peasants tended their fields to the teams of deotis who, with their gourds of oil and thick wicks embedded in metal tripods, lit the streets of the towns and villages. He tried to describe creatures new to him, like the playful, leaping river dolphins with bodies shaped like waterskins, and the lizard-like, sharp-toothed crocodiles.

  Soon he’d return to Agra, where the gardens he had planted were flourishing and had recently yielded the first grapes and melons grown by the gardeners he had summoned from Kabul. In addition, seven hundred Hindustani stonemasons were at work on the mosque he had commissioned in Agra to celebrate his crushing of Rana Sanga. With its high recessed arches – iwans – elegantly tapering minarets and relief carvings of his favourite flowers – the Hindu craftsmen could fashion tulips and irises so lifelike they seemed to toss their fragile heads in the breeze – it would be a fine structure. He had also established a post system to link Agra with Kabul, with staging points every eighteen miles. Teams of post horses and riders were kept in constant readiness so that messages could be swiftly carried between Babur’s capital in Hindustan and his lands beyond the Khyber Pass.

  Having achieved so much, it was satisfying to reread some of the early passages of his diary, especially his despairing laments about his hopeless, throneless state and his yearnings for Samarkand. How ironic that he had not managed to hold Timur’s city long enough to create anything lasting whereas here, in Hindustan, he was building something permanent. When, eventually, he was called to Paradise, he would, God willing, leave his sons a rich and stable empire.

  Babur sat up and watched the river flow past. A bird’s wing flashed emerald in the sunlight as a green woodpecker swooped among the reeds. What about his sons? With Maham, Gulrukh and Khanzada, their aunt, Kamran, Askari and Hindal had made the long journey south-east to Agra as soon as Babur had thought it safe to send for them. He had marked their arrival with a grand ceremony, awarding his two elder sons robes of honour, yak-tail standards, drums, fine horses, ten elephants apiece and strings of camels and mules.

  He was proud of them. Khanzada had told him that Kamran – now twenty-one and sprouting a black beard – had heeded her advice and Baisanghar’s and had done well as regent in Kabul, a position since filled by Baisanghar. Thirteen-year-old Askari was also showing himself able and ambi
tious. And why not? Babur had been King of Ferghana at that age. Since their arrival he’d found plenty of employment for them, sending them on tours of inspection and occasional small campaigns to quash sporadic resistance.

  They should be content, but something in their manner towards Humayun – especially Kamran’s – occasionally troubled Babur. They seemed resentful, even jealous. But it was healthy, he tried to tell himself. After all, Humayun had been at Babur’s side throughout the conquest of Hindustan. It was inevitable that he and Humayun should have grown close and equally inevitable that Kamran, so near in age to Humayun, should feel excluded. Babur had talked it over with Khanzada, whose wise advice had been that he should ask Humayun to be a little more tactful towards his brothers.

  Maham, too, had noticed the friction but she blamed Kamran and Askari’s mother, Gulrukh, for stirring up her sons against her own, Humayun. Maham’s pleas that he formally declare Humayun his heir were growing more persistent, but that was a decision only he could take – and only when he was ready. The king’s right to choose his heir from among his sons was a good one – indeed, in the old days, sons had been expected to compete with one another . . . Only the strongest deserved to rule because only the strongest could protect the clans. Humayun was undoubtedly a good warrior but now, in addition to fighting skills, a king needed other talents to win loyalty and make alliances. Babur must be absolutely sure before making any final decision.

  At least ten-year-old Hindal did not seem part of this sibling rivalry. Maham still kept him close to her, although Babur must appoint a tutor for him. Hindal’s birth-mother, Dildar, had not come to Agra. She had been ill and had remained in Kabul with Hindal’s sister Gulbadan. When she was recovered Babur would send for them and his entire family would be with him, which was as it should be.