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

Apart from stocking all that was required for the soldiers, the army camp also stocked immense quantities of grass and straw, needed to feed the vast number of animals in the army. ‘Anyone can imagine what amount of grass and straw would be required each day for the consumption of 32,400 horses and 551 elephants, to say nothing of the sumpter-mules and asses, and the great number of oxen which carry all the supplies and many other burdens, such as tents and other things,’ writes Nuniz.

AS IN THE case of military encampment, so also there were detailed and well-established conventions about the array of the army for battle, in the Hindu as well as the Sultanate armies. In the Delhi Sultanate, the battle array consisted of the centre, two wings, two flanking contingents, a vanguard and a rearguard. Armour-clad elephants carrying soldiers in the howdah mounted on them were usually deployed in front of this array, with a protective contingent of infantry and archers in front of them. Wide gaps were left in this frontal formation, for the cavalry, stationed at the back, to charge through the gaps and attack the enemy.

Military campaigns were normally launched, by rajas as well as by sultans, on days chosen by astrologers as lucky. This was a major factor in infusing confidence in soldiers. The king also usually went around the camp on the eve of the battle, to rouse the spirit of his soldiers. And the army stormed into battle to the sound of martial music, with the soldiers themselves yelling war cries and flinging challenges at the enemy, to psyche themselves up and to scare the enemy. Rajputs customarily entered the battle blowing conch-shells, as in a religious ritual, while Muslims struck kettledrums and blew trumpets.

At daybreak on the day of the battle ‘they strike up their music as sign that they are about to give battle,’ writes Nuniz about the practice in the Vijayanagar army, which he had probably observed personally, as he had spent about three years in the kingdom, during the reign of Achyutadeva. ‘The drums and trumpets and other music in the king’s camp then began to sound and the men to shout, so that it seemed as if the sky would fall to the earth; then [there was] the neighing and excitement of the horses, and the trumpeting of the elephants … [So fearsome was the din of all this] that even the very men that caused the noise were frightened by it. And the enemy on its part made no less noise, so that if you asked anything you could not hear yourself speak, and you had to ask by signs, since in no other manner could you make yourself understood.’ Timur in his autobiography records that the soldiers of the raja of Jammu ‘howled like so many jackals’ while confronting Mongols

Nearly everywhere in medieval India, the battle began with the rival armies shooting arrows at each other. Then, ‘when the time for shooting arrows was past, they used their spears and swords,’ writes Afif. ‘And when the conflict became even yet closer, the brave warriors seized each other by the waistbands, and grappled in deadly strife.’ It was a savage scene, an animal fight, except that the combatants used sword and spear and axe, instead of tooth and claw. The battlefield after a clash was usually slush with blood, and strewn with the bodies and limbs of the fallen soldiers.

Fortunately, medieval Indian battles were usually, again like animal fights, very short affairs, lasting just a few hours, seldom more than a day. Sometimes however, though rarely, a battle lasted several days. Thus Mahmud Ghazni in one of his campaigns in Punjab fought a battle ‘for three days and nights,’ according to medieval Arabic chronicler Al-Utbi. ‘On the fourth morning [Mahmud] made a most furious onslaught with swords and arrows, which lasted till noon,’ and that carried the day for him.

Desertions were fairly common in Indian armies, and were generally not taken as a serious matter by kings, though we do sometimes hear of severe action being taken against runaways. Thus, according to Nuniz, Krishnadeva during one of his campaigns commanded his loyal soldiers ‘to slay without mercy every one of those who had fled.’ But if deserters were common in Indian armies, so were warrior heroes, who preferred to fight to death rather than to flee and save their lives, thinking that it was ‘worse to be conquered than to die,’ as Nuniz puts it.

One of the most difficult tasks in medieval wars was to capture forts, because armies those days did not have the heavy weapons needed to breach fort walls, which were usually several feet thick. Even after field artillery came into use in India, these crude weapons were of little use in breaking through fort walls. To get around this difficulty, the attackers tried to mine the fort walls, or to ram down the fort gates. They also cannonaded the fort by hurling stones and fireballs into it with catapults, and they shot at targets inside the fort by raising earthen mounds as tall as the fort wall and mounting cannons on them. Mahmud Ghazni is said to have hurled sacks of live serpents into an enemy fort by using catapults. The besiegers also used zigzag trenches or covered trenches to approach the fort walls without exposing themselves to enemy missiles.

Typical of the attack on a fort was Ibrahim Lodi’s siege of Gwalior. According to Yadgar, the sultan had ‘trenches dug [alongside the fort] in which he sheltered his men whilst he made his approaches, and distributed several batteries amongst his officers. He then projected fiery missiles, or shells, into the fort.’ But none of these measures was particularly effective, as the defenders on the fort walls countered them by throwing down heavy stones or ignited bundles of cloth on the attackers. ‘Hindus filled bags with cotton steeped in oil, which they ignited and threw down upon the enemy,’ states Yadgar. Similarly, during the eighth century Arab conquest of Sind, according to Chach-nama , ‘the garrison [in the local raja’s fort] began to beat drums and sound clarions, and they threw down from the ramparts and bastions stones from mangonels and ballistas, [shot] arrows, and [hurled] javelins’ at the assailants.

Quite often the only means of reducing a fort was to starve its defenders to submission, but that took a long time, for forts were usually well-stocked with provisions. So it often took several weeks or even several months, to capture a fort. Sometimes the only means of capturing a fort was by bribing some of its defenders.

ONE OF THE puzzles of the history of early medieval India is why the Hindu kings of the age were invariably routed in battle by Muslim armies, first by the Arabs, then by the Turko-Afghans in North India, and in the peninsula by the Deccan sultans, even though the rajas usually had more extensive territories, greater population and resources and much larger armies than the sultans. Devaraya II, the mid-fifteenth century king of Vijayanagar, once posed this puzzle to his courtiers. The courtiers then discussed the issue in detail among themselves, and came to the conclusion that the sultans invariably won their battles because of the superiority of their cavalry and archers.

This was not quite true. There was no difference at all in the quality of the horses used by Bahmani sultans and Vijayanagar rajas, for in both cases the horses were imported from the Middle East and Central Asia. As for cavalrymen and archers, their quality difference in the two armies could not have been the crucial factor in their military fortunes, as is evident from the fact that the induction of a large number of Muslim cavalrymen and archers into the Vijayanagar army did not make any significant difference in the outcome of its battles with Bahmani. Except Krishnadeva and Ramaraya, hardly any of the other Vijayanagar kings was ever victorious in his battles against the sultans. Equally puzzling is why the Delhi sultans in turn were defeated by the smaller invading forces of Timur and of Babur.