Abraham Eraly - The Age of Wrath - A History of the Delhi Sultanate

According to Barbosa, the king of Vijayanagar had ‘more than a hundred thousand men of war continually in his pay.’ And Krishnadeva in his battle against Adil Shah of Bijapur is said to have led an army ‘of about a million men, if camp-followers are included,’ according to the report of Nuniz. And Ramaraya in the battle of Talikota is said to have deployed, according to one estimate given by Ferishta, 900,000 infantry, 45,000 cavalry, and 2000 elephants, besides a large number of auxiliaries.

Most of these figures are quite probably hyperbolic. But whatever be the factuality of these figures, Indian armies were usually of mammoth size. Large size however did not necessarily mean great strength. In fact, the huge size of Indian armies often turned them into unwieldy, uncontrollable rabbles, which could be easily routed by a small, tightly organised army, as Mahmud Ghazni proved again and again during his Indian campaigns, and as Babur would later prove in his battle against Ibrahim Lodi. Similarly, in the peninsula, the Bahmani sultans usually won their battles against the much larger forces deployed by the rajas of Vijayanagar.

Adding to the unwieldiness and bedlam of Indian armies were the hordes of non-combatants that accompanied the army, such as various vendors and service providers, as well a large number of prostitutes. In the train of the Vijayanagar army there were, according to Barbosa, five or six thousand women, paid for by the raja, evidently to provide the soldiers with essential sexual services. The army on the march was also invariably followed by hordes of irregulars, adding to the chaos in the army and the devastation it caused all along the route of its march.

INDIAN ARMIES IN the early medieval period consisted of four main divisions: elephants, cavalry, archers, and infantry. The army usually also had a few non-combatant wings in it, such as engineers — to serve as sappers and miners, and to man siege engines — surgeons, physicians, and scouts.

In time two new corps — cannoneers and musketeers — were added to the Indian army, and they would play an increasingly prominent role in battles. But chariots, which had a crucial role in battles in ancient India, had virtually disappeared from the scene by the late classical period; they are not even mentioned in Harsha’s army. As for the navy, some South Indian kingdoms, the Cholas for instance, had a strong naval presence in the Indian Ocean in the classical period, but their role sharply declined by the early medieval period, and the control of the seas around India passed on to Arabs and Chinese, and eventually to Europeans. Some Indian kingdoms probably still maintained small naval fleets at this time, but there is hardly any information on this. There was however a strong presence of pirates on the western peninsular coast of India, with some of the pirate chieftains commanding as many as thirty warships.

The major reliance of Indian armies in the early medieval period was on their war elephants, and kings and generals usually rode into battle on elephants, for safety as well as to have a commanding view of the battle. War elephants have been in use in India from ancient times. King Porus of northwestern India is recorded to have deployed 200 elephants in his battle against the invading army of Macedonian king Alexander in the fourth century BCE. Alexander however did not think much of the value of elephants in battle, and he devised a tactic to turn them against their own side, and thus rout the raja. Similarly, Timur in his battle against sultan Mahmud of Delhi in the late fourteenth century [7] See Part 5, Chapter 5 also devised a tactic to counter the threat of elephants, and win the battle.

But these were rare incidents. Elephants normally played a decisive role in Indian battles. And the size of the elephant corps in Indian armies grew greatly over the centuries, and in time their use in war spread from India to Central Asia, and even to Europe. Ghaznavids were the first Muslim kings to use elephants in large numbers in battle — Mahmud Ghazni is said to have maintained a stable of 1000 elephants, tended by Hindu mahouts. Balban valued elephants very highly, and held that ‘one elephant was worth 500 horsemen.’ The ‘elephant possesses more intelligence than any other animal in the world,’ states Varthema. ‘I have seen some elephants which have more understanding, and more discretion and intelligence, than many kind of people I have met with.’

Confronting elephants in the battlefield was a horrifying experience for most invading armies. Elephants, notes Razzak, ‘in their size resemble mountains and in their form resemble devils.’ In battle they were usually made even more terrifying by being armoured and armed. ‘Large scythes are attached to the trunks and tusks of the elephants, and the animals are clad in ornamental plates of steel. They carry a howdah, and in it are twelve men in armour with guns and arrows,’ reports Nikitin. These soldiers, according to Timur, also threw grenades and fireworks, and shot rockets at the enemy.

The very sight and smell of elephants, as well as their trumpeting, threw the horses of invaders into panic. And the terrifying charge of elephants, which could reach speeds of up to thirty kilometres an hour, usually disarrayed the enemy infantry and cavalry, and made them flee pell-mell. All this made elephants an object of absolute terror for invading armies, more so as the all too real terrors of these beasts were magnified fantastically in the legends about them. Even as late as the close of the fourteenth century, when Timur invaded India, these legends persisted, and they dispirited the Mongol soldiers.

A major problem with elephants in battle was that they often ran amuck, throwing their own army into disarray. Still, elephants continued to play a crucial role in Indian battles till the late medieval period. But their role gradually declined thereafter, for the use of firearms made them obsolete. Moreover they were easy targets for cannons. The role of elephants in the army then became limited to hauling heavy military equipments.

NEXT IN IMPORTANCE to elephants in the early medieval Indian armies were mounted archers, who usually carried spears, swords and battle-axes, apart from bows. Their arrow heads were sometimes poisoned. Several thousands of these cavalrymen simultaneously charging at full tilt and shooting arrows was an onslaught which few infantry formations could withstand. Balban, according to Barani, held that a cavalry force of six or seven thousand could easily rout a hundred thousand strong infantry force.

India did not breed good quality horses at this time, so they had to be imported in large numbers from the Middle East and Central Asia. This was done by rajas as well as sultans. ‘The king,’ says Nuniz about the raja of Vijayanagar, ‘every year buys thirteen thousand horses of Ormuz, and country-breds, of which he chooses the best for his stable, and gives the rest to his captains.’ This had to be done every year, for, as Barbosa states, ‘horses do not thrive well in their country and live therein but a short time,’ because of the hot and humid climate of India.

Indian kings also regularly recruited a good number of foreign cavalrymen — Turks and other steppe people — as they were far superior to local cavalrymen. But they too, like imported horses, had to be recruited afresh periodically, as the spirit and energy of foreign soldiers tended to decline in the enervating climate of India.

Elephant and cavalry divisions were the most powerful units of the early medieval Indian armies, to which artillery and musketry divisions were later added. But the largest numerical constituent of Indian armies has always been the infantry. This however was also its weakest wing, being an ill-disciplined horde with hardly any military training, many of them just temporary recruits from among peasants.