Raiders from the North: Empire of the Moghul (55 page)

Babur hoped his own men would heed his command to hold their fire until they could reach their target. But first let Ibrahim’s men and beasts feel the effect of his new weapon from the west: the cannon. Babur waved Alamgir twice above his head – the prearranged signal to Ali-Quli to open fire. He saw the first artilleryman bend to put a lighted taper to the powder in the firing hole. Then there was a flash, a roar, and white smoke emerged from the barrel as the cannon ball was propelled towards the enemy.
Other flashes followed from the rest of the cannon and smoke began to drift across the barricades.

Through it Babur saw one of the leading elephants fall, dislodging its
howdah
and sending the occupants sprawling to the ground. Then the wounded beast staggered upright again, turned, trunk raised in what looked like a trumpet of pain, and crossed the path of its neighbour, bringing it down, too, before collapsing again, blood pouring from the stump of one of its front legs. As it lay, thrashing its head back and forth in agony, the scimitar on its tusk cut into an elephant following, which – frightened and in pain – bolted. But although such incidents were being repeated the length of the advancing line, Sultan Ibrahim’s forces were still pressing on.

Suddenly, Babur heard the crackling discharge of muskets. More of his enemies fell. Then his archers started to fire, some riding out from behind the barricades to get closer to their targets – the drivers sitting behind the elephants’ white-painted ears. Ibrahim’s front line wavered. More elephants trumpeted in fright and turned to the rear, bringing a crashing halt to those behind, provoking yet more to panic and trample their own men beneath their great feet as they fled.

Babur yelled for more mounted archers to ride out and fire into the swiftly disintegrating enemy ranks. As he did so, he felt, rather than heard, a loud explosion near him and pieces of hot metal showered around him while something warm and soft stuck to his face. Dazed and partly deafened, he could not think what had happened. Then he realised one of his cannon had exploded and Ali-Quli had been blown apart. Raising his hand to his cheek he discovered it was a piece of his master-gunner’s flesh that had struck him. Ali-Quli would now receive his reward in Paradise, not on earth, but his work had been well done. More and more of Sultan Ibrahim’s troops were fleeing when they could, in particular the infantry, many of whom were barefoot, wearing only a loincloth and with just a spear to defend themselves.

Pulling himself together, Babur waved his sword in a gesture for his best cavalry to follow, kicked his heels into the flanks of his black horse and led them at a gallop through the smoke and dust
the half-mile into the heaving, shouting mass of fleeing, frightened men.

Some of Ibrahim’s troops were made of more determined stuff and were putting up a brave fight, grouping themselves tightly into defensive formations. Babur made for a small hillock on which one such group of cavalry – about a hundred men all wearing gold turbans – were succeeding in driving off all attacks.

‘It’s Ibrahim’s bodyguard,’ one of his men yelled. Babur rode directly towards the tall officer who appeared to be commanding them. Swerving to the left at the last minute to pass him, Babur slashed with his sword in his right hand but the officer raised his shield in time to deflect the blow and, with his other hand, cut deep into the rump of Babur’s black stallion with his sword. The animal reared in pain and Babur was thrown to the earth. As he struggled to regain his feet, he saw the officer urge his white horse towards him, bent on finishing him off.

Babur stood his ground until the last minute, then jumped to the side slashing wildly with Alamgir as he did so. The sword skimmed along the left side of the white horse’s neck and then penetrated deep into the thigh of its rider. However, he was clearly an expert horseman and despite his wound stayed in the saddle, controlling his horse and wheeling it – bright red staining its white coat – ready to attack Babur once more.

This time, Babur ducked low as the officer swung his sword with the aim of decapitating him, and cut with Alamgir at the back of the white horse’s foreleg. He hit his target and the horse fell, trapping its rider beneath it and causing his sword to fly from his grasp. As the officer struggled to reach for it, Babur put his foot on his wrist and Alamgir to his throat. ‘Surrender. You deserve to live for your bravery.’ As he spoke, more of his men assembled around him, having at last killed or put to flight the rest of the gold-turbaned warriors. Seeing further resistance was useless, the officer lay still. ‘I will give you my word not to renew the fight,’ he said.

‘Help him to his feet . . . What was it you and your fellows were struggling so bravely to protect?’

‘The body of Sultan Ibrahim. It lies over there. He was mortally wounded by the sting of one of your new weapons. They have rendered bravery useless.’

‘No weapon is more powerful than he who aims it.’

All the while they had been speaking, the officer’s white horse had been neighing and thrashing in pain, blood running from the cut on its neck and unable to support itself on the foreleg where Babur had slashed its tendon. Now, bleeding from the mouth and speaking with increasing difficulty – probably from the effect of being crushed by his mount – the officer said, ‘Allow me to have my sword to put my stallion to rest. I have ridden him in many battles. He will face death more calmly if I am the one to inflict it.’

Babur signed to one of his men to return the sword. The officer – scarcely able to walk from the wound in his own thigh as well as his shortage of breath – moved over to the horse. Taking its gold leather bridle he stroked its nose, cradled its head and whispered into its ear. His words seemed to calm it. Then he quickly drew his sharp sword across its throat severing its windpipe and artery and more red blood spurted. The horse collapsed instantly and within moments was still, its blood welling up into the dust. However, the officer was not finished. He thrust the sword into his own abdomen. ‘I can no more survive crippled than can my horse.’

‘May your soul rest in peace.’

‘I pray so, but remember that to subdue Hindustan you’ll need to subdue many men braver than I.’

As the last words bubbled scarcely audibly through the froth of blood in his throat, he too died, his body slumping across that of his stallion while his gold-turbaned head hit the bloodstained earth.

‘Majesty, the battle is yours.’

The words of his
qorchi
roused Babur from contemplation of the scene before him. Looking around, he realised that the battlefield was falling silent, that the fighting was over . . . He had triumphed. ‘Praise God.’ He felt an enormous sense of relief. Then at the thought of what his victory meant, he punched the air in joy. He – like Timur – would enter Delhi in triumph . . .

Dragging his mind back to the present, Babur addressed the riders around him. ‘We have done well. Let us hope that Humayun and Baburi succeed in capturing or thoroughly dispersing Ibrahim’s retreating forces. At least with him dead they will have no leader to rally round. Bury Ibrahim – and indeed this brave officer – with due ceremony. I will return to our camp to await news of the pursuit.’

His victory had been so swift that it was not yet midday when Babur turned his horse and rode back towards his camp, past the bodies of elephants lying like great boulders amid the dust, mostly surrounded by the wreckage of their
howdahs
and the crumpled bodies of the soldiers fallen from them. In the heat, his own men had already begun to gather up their wounded, placing them on rough stretchers, binding their wounds and offering them water and what other comfort they could.

In his red tent once more, Babur paced back and forth. Where were Humayun and Baburi? He was less worried about his friend than his inexperienced son. Although Humayun had fought in skirmishes before, and performed well, this was his first command at a big battle and the leadership of the right wing in the pursuit was a major and novel responsibility for him.

Babur distracted himself by making short visits to the wounded and to reward soldiers reported to have fought particularly bravely, as well as in hearing reports of the plunder captured from Ibrahim’s camp. Already it seemed he had a vast haul of jewels and gold at his disposal.

Six hours had passed before a guard entered Babur’s tent to announce, ‘The pennants and flags of Prince Humayun’s column have been seen approaching.’

He had barely finished speaking before a breathless Humayun entered, rushed to his father and embraced him. ‘Our victory is complete. We are masters of Hindustan. We followed a large group of Ibrahim’s men more than ten miles to the south-west until they made a stand in a mud fortress by a river. After an hour’s fight we forced them to surrender. A little further to the west we found a group of nobles’ tents that were being defended by a few guards
or servants against what looked more like bandits or looters than soldiers from any army.

‘When we had killed the attackers, a beautiful woman of about my mother’s age emerged from a white tent with cream and gold awnings. She was wrapped in one of those garments the Hindustanis call saris. It was a fine silk and had many pearls and jewels sewn on to it. She asked who was in command, and on being told it was I, and that I was your son, requested to be brought before me. She told me she was the mother of the ruler of Gwalior, a wealthy kingdom to the south of Delhi. She had heard her son had been killed fighting courageously for Ibrahim.

‘Instead of fleeing when she learned the news she had determined to wait to receive his body and perform the proper funeral ceremonies. They’re infidels who cremate the bodies of their dead on pyres. Then a fleeing soldier galloping past their camp had yelled that our forces were killing the prisoners, so many of her men, except a brave few, had abandoned her. And the brigands – dacoits, she called them – whom we defeated had seen their chance of plunder and had attacked the camp. She had feared for her life and her honour but, most of all, she had feared for her six-month-old grandson who, with his young mother, the dead ruler’s favourite wife, was still in the tent.

‘I told her to fear no more, that we were a cultured, civilised people, not savages like the dacoits. Tears of gratitude wetted her face and she gave me this, which I now give you as a token of our great victory.’ As he spoke Humayun handed Babur a soft red leather pouch secured by a gold leather thong. Babur undid the tie and pulled out a large stone that glistened and sparkled in the gloom of the tent. ‘It’s a diamond, Father, from the mine at Golconda a thousand miles to the south – the biggest I’ve ever seen. The jeweller of the royal family of Gwalior once valued it as worth half of the daily expenditure of the whole world. It is called the Koh-i-Nur, the Mountain of Light . . .’

Babur was held by the gem’s perfect purity and brilliance. Light radiated from it as if from a star – the Canopus, he thought, smiling at his fancy . . . Still, the jewel’s intense brightness seemed to belong to the heavens rather than the earth whence it had been dug . . .

‘Indeed, my son, you have merited your name, Fortunate. Long may it continue until—’ Babur broke off in mid-sentence. Through the open entrance of the tent he had glimpsed two attendants carrying a stretcher covered with a sheet towards him. From all the shouting and bustle, it was clear that Baburi’s column had now also returned. Where was he? Why hadn’t he come to report and share in the joy of conquest? Then Babur saw that a hand wearing a richly chased golden ruby ring was trailing in the dust from beneath the sheet. He had given that ring to Baburi many years ago to mark the success of one of their campaigns. As the two handsome young men carrying the bier lowered it gently to the ground before Babur, he recognised them as Baburi’s attendants.

Slowly Babur bent and, with a trembling hand, pulled back the bloodstained cloth and gazed at the monstrously mangled body of his brother-in-arms.

‘We came upon a large body of Ibrahim’s men retreating towards Delhi in good order with forty elephants in their vanguard and the same number in their rear. Our master Baburi ordered an immediate charge and we routed your enemies, who fled in all directions. But during the last moments of the fight, our master was knocked down, trampled and crushed by one of the elephants, wounded and enraged by a spear thrust deep into its mouth,’ said one of the attendants.

Only Baburi’s face – even paler than in life – was untouched. His intense indigo eyes still stared up at Babur and there was a half-smile on his face. Babur could not prevent himself weeping as, leaning over the bier once more, he closed Baburi’s eyes and kissed him on his forehead. ‘Goodbye, my brother . . .’

T
he sun’s metallic glare hurt Babur’s eyes. Advancing over the arid landscape where even the scrubby bushes were coated with dust, he was glad of the shade of the green and yellow brocade canopy supported on golden poles by the four riders around him. A strong wind was whipping up the dust – he had already learned that his new subjects called it
andhi
and that it meant the rains were not far off.

Immediately after Panipat, he had ordered Humayun and four of his commanders with their men to leave behind their heavy baggage and ride hard and fast to Ibrahim’s capital at Agra – a hundred and twenty miles south-east of Delhi along the Jumna river – to seize the fort and the imperial treasuries there before the garrison had time to organise their defences. Now, three days later, Babur was taking the bulk of his victorious army south to Delhi. At the rear, almost obscured beneath a billowing cloud of dust, were ranks of plodding war elephants – still streaked in red paint – that his men had rounded up after the battle.

Babur should have been jubilant but grief for Baburi was blunting his triumph. In the first hours after he had learned of Baburi’s death, he had shut himself away in his tent, unwilling to see anyone or to address the many tasks and decisions that awaited him as the new ruler of Hindustan. Baburi’s death wasn’t just the loss of a
best friend – it felt like the passing of his previous life. He would never – could never – have a friend like that again – a friend who had shared his youth and his fluctuating fortunes.