Part 21 (1/2)

One thing may be said in his favour: he never let wine interfere with his activities, either of body or of mind. He was ready, as ever, to detail the flowers he saw in his marches, to expatiate on a beautiful view, to turn a _ghazel_ or quatrain, to rise ere dawn, to spend arduous days in the saddle or on foot.

The portraits of him belong to this period, and they show us a man tall, strong, sinewy, with the long straight nose of his race, a broad brow, arched eyes, and a curiously small, sensitive mouth.

Such was the man who conquered India, and in the beginning of his conquests set Timur before himself as an example to such purpose that it is hard to believe that the ardent and bloodthirsty Mahomedan of his first campaign is our sunny, genial Babar.

In fact the taking of Bajaur is sad reading. ”The people,” writes Babar, ”had never seen matchlocks, and at first were not in the least afraid of them, but, hearing the reports of the shots, stood opposite the guns, mocking and playing unseemly antics.”

By nightfall, however, they had learnt fear, and ”not a man ventured to show his head.”

This was, nevertheless, not the first time that we hear of guns and matchlocks in Indian warfare, although it is the first absolutely authentic mention of them. But a hundred and fifty years before this, Mahomed-Shah Bhamani, King of Guzerat, is said to have employed them.

As a digression, it may be observed that Babar's Memoirs give us an interesting account of the casting of a big gun by one Ustad-Ali, ”who was like to cast himself into the molten metal” when the flow of it ceased ere the mould was full! Babar, however, ”cheered him up, gave him a robe of honour,” and ”succeeded in softening his humiliation.”

Which, by the way, was unnecessary, since when the mould was opened the mischief was found to be reparable, and the gun, when finished, threw over 1,600 yards.

To return to Bajaur. The influence of Timur was strong upon Babar, and though women and children were spared, the less said about the fate of the town the better. Once or twice in his life the Tartar which lay beneath his culture showed in Babar's actions; but only once or twice.

Ere he arrived at the next town he had found an excuse for clemency.

He claimed the Punjab as his by right of inheritance. ”I reckoned,” he writes, ”of the countries which had belonged to the Turk as my own territory, and I permitted no plundering or pillage.” An admirable compromise, which allowed him to read his great ancestor's account of his campaign with a clear conscience.

After a short expedition he returned to Kabul, having set a faint finger-mark on the extreme north of India. In the next five years he is said to have made three more expeditions into the Punjab, but the Memoirs are again silent as to these, and they appear to have been insignificant. But the idea of Indian conquest was not dead, and in A.D. 1524 it burst forth again into sudden life. The cosmic touch which roused it being the appeal of the rightful heir to the Kingdom of Delhi for help against his nephew Ibrahim Lodi, who, he said, had usurped the throne. At the same time Babar's governor in the Punjab begged the emperor to come to his aid.

It was the psychic moment, and Babar was prepared for it. He marched instantly on Lah.o.r.e, and finding affairs unsatisfactory, paused ere going further to return to Kabul, and beat up reinforcements with which to secure his line of retreat. Coming back, he found it necessary to settle the governor, an old Afghan, who had broken into rebellion, and who, girding on two swords, swore to win or die. He did neither, for Babar, catching him red-handed in rebellion with the two swords still hanging round his neck, forgave him--as he was inclined to forgive all men.

So, free at last, he set his face towards Delhi. What the state of India was at this time we know. It was one of countless jealousies, seething rebellions, open disunion--on all sides conquest seemed possible; but Delhi had been the goal of Timur, so it must be the goal of his descendant.

Curiously enough, this last, and in all ways most decisive attack from the North-West on India did not come as those of Mahomed of Ghuzni, of Mahomed Shahab-ud-din Ghori, and of Timur had come, with the returning flight of migratory birds from the summer coolth of the high Siberian steppes. The birds were winging westward in this April A.D. 1526, when Babar, choosing with the eye of a general the old battle-field on the plain near Paniput, set to work entrenching himself in a favourable position. This was a new method of battle to the Indians. So was the laager which he made out of his seven hundred gun-carriages linked together by raw cow-hide to break a possible cavalry charge, and strengthened by s.h.i.+eld shelters for the matchlock men. For a whole week, though the army of Delhi--consisting of a hundred thousand troops and a thousand elephants--lay before him, Babar, whose total force numbered twelve thousand, was neither let nor hindered in his work. But then Sultan-Ibrahim, who commanded the enemy himself, is briefly dismissed by the man whose whole life had been one long fight, as being ”inexperienced, careless in his movements, one who marched without order, halted or retired without method, and engaged without foresight.”

It was on the 21st that Babar accepted the challenge which followed on a repulsed night-attack which he attempted in order to draw the enemy.

It is interesting to note the formation Babar adopted. The laagered guns in front; behind them--the line broken at bowshot distances by gaps through which a hundred hors.e.m.e.n could charge abreast--the right and left centre, right and left wing. Behind that again the reserve, and the cavalry left over from the flanking parties at the extreme right and left.

On came the Indians at quick march, aiming at Babar's right; finding the enemy entrenched, they hesitated, and pressure from behind threw them into disorder. In an instant the Mongol cavalry charged through the gaps, took them in rear, discharged their arrows, and galloped back to safety. This is their national man[oe]uvre, and proved once more of deadly effect, as it had done in the days of Timur.

But the battle waged fiercely, uncertainly. At one time Babar's left, over-rash, might have been overwhelmed, but for his watchful eyes, his instant support.

So as the sun rose high, the wavering victory chose the side of the Northerners. The Southerners, driven into their centre, were unable to use what strength they possessed, and by noon Sultan-Ibrahim himself lay dead, with fifteen thousand of his finest troops. The rest were in full flight. It had been ”made easy to me, and that mighty army in the s.p.a.ce of half a day was laid in the dust.”

So wrote the victor modestly, though there can be no question that the battle was won by superior generals.h.i.+p.

The way was now clear before him. He seized on Delhi and Agra without, apparently, much bloodshed, and immediately distributed the treasures gained amongst his followers, only reserving sufficient for the State to send a silver coin to every living soul in Kabul, bond or free, and to pay the army and the Government.

He kept nothing for himself; he was not of those to whom gold brings pleasure. Yet in Hindustan he found few things for which he cared.

There can be no question that it was a disappointment to him.

”It is a country,” he writes, ”that has few pleasures to recommend it.