The Mughal Empire at War

Babur, Akbar and the Indian Military Revolution, 1500-1605

Andrew de la Garza

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317245308
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Studi regionali

The Mughal Empire was one of the great powers of the early modern era, ruling almost all of South Asia, a conquest state, dominated by its military elite. Many historians have viewed the Mughal Empire as relatively backward, the Emperor the head of a traditional warband from Central Asia, with tribalism and the traditions of the Islamic world to the fore, and the Empire not remotely comparable to the forward looking Western European states of the period, with their strong innovative armies implementing the "military revolution". This book argues that, on the contrary, the military establishment built by the Emperor Babur and his successors was highly sophisticated, an effective combination of personnel, expertise, technology and tactics, drawing on precedents from Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and India, and that the resulting combined arms system transformed the conduct of warfare in South Asia. The book traces the development of the Mughal Empire chronologically, examines weapons and technology, tactics and operations, organization, recruitment and training, and logistics and non-combat operations, and concludes by assessing the overall achievements of the Mughal Empire, comparing it to its Western counterparts, and analyzing the reasons for its decline.

1 A Mughal military revolution?

The aging general looked on and saw his doom advancing towards him across the plain. All the clans and tribes of the enemy were arrayed there, an untold multitude of warriors fierce and well-armed, adorned in savage finery and shouting for the blood of the invaders. As one survivor later recounted, ‘like ants they swarmed … thousands upon thousands’.¹ How many were there? 100,000? 200,000? No one seemed to know. Later chroniclers would suggest that this commander was prone to exaggerate the number of his enemies as a way to magnify his achievements and prestige. At this moment however, any errors in calculation were more likely due to inexperience than to vanity. Even after almost four decades of campaigning, he had simply never seen an army nearly as large as this. He had fought and led in almost every possible capacity – as a knight, as a mercenary, as a brigand, even as a prince – but once the inevitable happened and his terribly outnumbered army was swept away, the best he could hope for was to leave his last battlefield as a captive. More likely than not, he would be buried there.

It had seemed like a perfect plan. The great kingdom to the south – a land of legendary wealth and wonders – was in disarray. His spies had informed him of strife between the nobles and their king. Soon enough some of those same chieftains approached him to enlist his aid in overthrowing a ruler they now saw as an insufferable tyrant. The commander, however, had much greater ambitions than that. He meant to take the kingdom for his own and claim power and riches almost beyond imagination. At first things went well. From advance bases in the northwest his forces raced towards the enemy capital. Not far from that city, the king moved to intercept them. The royal army, however, was greatly weakened by the absence of disaffected nobles and their contingents. The loyalists were routed and their sovereign died on the battlefield. The commander was now a king – but not for long. Another great native warlord, who had long aspired to claim that same throne for himself, saw the invasion as a golden opportunity. He mobilized all the clans and war bands of his tribal confederation along with the remnants of the rebellious nobility and marched on the capital. Less than a year after his conquest, the new ruler received word of a vast horde approaching from the west.

Now the commander faced the end of all his dreams. At the last moment, he turned to his God for assistance. A man well known for his vices and a self-confessed drunkard, he swore to never drink again if the Lord saved him and his army. Soon, however, the time for prayer was over, and battle was joined. The enemy launched a furious frontal assault. For a time it appeared that they would prevail through simple brute force. The commander, however, had one precious advantage – gunpowder. His cannon and muskets inflicted terrible punishment on the enemy as they advanced. Even though they had never faced such weapons, the native warriors fought on with reckless courage. Yet in the end, mere bravery was not enough to overcome firepower and the invaders’ superior discipline. As the assault began to slacken, the commander’s infantry left the shelter of their entrenchments and began to methodically push the enemy back. At the same time his cavalry emerged from the rear and swept around the flanks. These coordinated maneuvers left the enemy exposed on three sides, and they were forced to retreat. As their casualties mounted, that retreat became a rout. The native army scattered, and its leader fled for his life. At the end of a long, long day, the commander had not just survived – he had conquered.

Who was this great captain? Hernan Cortes? Francisco Pizarro? Afonso de Albuquerqe? This battle involved none of those men, and it did not take place in Cuzco or Aceh or at the gates of Tenochtitlan but at the small Indian town of Khanua, on the approaches to Delhi. It was fought by another great figure from the age of exploration and conquest – one whose story and achievements are even more remarkable. Zahir–ud-Din Muhammad, better known as Babur, was a descendant of Timur and Chingiz Khan. Denied the Central Asian kingdom he had claimed as his birthright, he instead launched an invasion of India in the year 1526. There he defeated the last dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate and Rana Sanga’s Rajput confederation, enemies far more formidable than the empires of the Aztec or the Inca. This he did against odds as terrible as those faced by the conquistadors, leading a force that at times may have been fewer than 10,000 against vast armies of native warriors – men who were armed with steel weapons, horses and fully functional immune systems. Babur’s conquest yielded more than wealth and personal glory. It also laid the foundations of the Mughal Empire, one of the great powers of the early modern world.

The creation of the Empire was more than a political transition. The achievements of Babur and his successors – and even those of their enemies – irrevocably changed the nature of warfare in South Asia. A new style of combat built around gunpowder, infantry and combined arms tactics replaced an old order based on the warhorse and elephant. This process changed not only how Indian armies fought on the battlefield but how they were assembled, deployed, supported and financed. As these armies evolved they posed unique challenges to the states that maintained them and required the creation of new civilian institutions – political, administrative and economic. The transformation reached its culmination in the seventeenth century, when the Mughal Empire emerged as what was arguably the world’s most powerful state – guarding borders from Central Asia to the southern tip of India, keeping more than a million soldiers under arms and controlling nearly a quarter of the world’s economic output. What had started as a ragtag band of fallen nobles and soldiers of fortune armed with a few newfangled weapons and clever tactics had become the ‘Moguls’ of myth and legend, regarded with awe and fascination by their Western contemporaries and enshrined in European languages as the very embodiment of wealth and success.

Surprisingly, however, the Mughals did not maintain such a prestigious place in the estimation of the West’s military historians. Their eventual decline and fall, followed by the colonization of India, had much to do with this. More than two centuries after Babur, the soldiers of the British East India Company began to dismember what remained of the Mughal Empire. In a series of battles they defeated the chieftains who had arisen to rule its various provinces – warlords whose allegiance to the Emperor was more theoretical than factual. Time and again small forces of Europeans and European-trained Indians triumphed over seemingly impossible odds, routing vastly larger native armies, just as Babur had done at Panipat and Khanua. In 1757, at Plassey, a contingent of 3,000 British soldiers and sepoys defeated the supposed Mughal governor of Bengal and his army – a force that may have exceeded 50,000 – in an engagement that at times seemed closer to low comedy than legendary battle. Beyond setting the stage for a new order in India, this engagement and others like it overshadowed the earlier accomplishments of the Mughals in the collective memory of the West. Indian failures at the onset of the colonial era were assumed to be the culmination of decades and centuries of ineptitude. The earlier, revolutionary achievements of Babur and his successors would be overlooked in a narrative of the early modern period emphasizing an exclusively European ‘Military Revolution’.

The Military Revolution is a theory intended to explain the military, political and economic transformation of Europe during the early modern period and by extension explain that region’s eventual rise to world dominance. The timeframe and specifics vary from author to author, but the basic principles remain the same. In the period between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries a series of innovations in military technology and organization reshaped not only the conduct of warfare but also the whole of European society. These changes included the introduction of more lethal missile weapons – especially those powered by gunpowder – and the resulting rise of infantry as a decisive force. There was also a new science of organization at all levels, from drill and small unit tactics to logistics and grand strategy. The management of such sophisticated machinery and complex systems demanded standardization and extensive training – hastening the emergence of a truly professional military class. The human and economic costs of maintaining these new model armies led to the development of more advanced methods of civil administration and social control – the elements required to create truly centralized ‘military-bureaucratic’ modern states. Order led to prosperity as unified nations created more efficient systems of industry and trade. Emerging European powers refined their tools of war, commerce and statecraft in their conflicts with each other – and then used them to impose their will on the Americas, Africa and Asia.

The idea of the Military Revolution has roots dating back to at least the early twentieth century, and is hinted at by authors like Hans Delbruck and C.W.C. Oman. Its first formal presentation, however, was in Michael Roberts’ seminal essay, ‘The Military Revolution 1560–1660’. Roberts argues that tactical innovations and the development of linear formations increased the relative power of infantry, allowing for and eventually mandating the development of larger and larger armies. Rationality and discipline became essential qualities, both at the army level where an increased level of competence was required to master new doctrine and tactics, and at the state level where governments had to develop new institutions and expand their powers in order to manage growing manpower and resource demands. Military advances also fostered economic advances. The tremendous expense of this new style of warfare encouraged the development of banking and credit. Some scholars, most recently Jan Glete in his study War and the State in Early Modern Europe, even describe acts of violence and protection as quantifiable commodities that are the basis of negotiation and contract between the rulers and ruled in emerging ‘fiscal-military states’. New career opportunities also opened for individuals outside of traditional elites, not just as soldiers but in a number of support capacities – as clerks, logisticians and technicians.

Other authors produced revised versions of Roberts’ theory. The most notable is Geoffrey Parker. In the essay ‘The Military Revolution 1560–1660: A Myth?’ and his later book-length treatment, he argues that Roberts’ timeframe is incorrect and that significant changes were already underway by at least 1520. He claims that the tactical innovations Roberts has credited to figures like Maurice of Orange and Gustavus Adolphus actually had their origins in the Spanish military practice of this earlier period. Parker also gives special emphasis to the emergence of new artillery-resistant trace italienne fortresses. He asserts that these structures lie at the root of a number of the revolution’s signature elements. Artillery and infantry were required in large numbers both for defending and besieging them. Their extreme cost forced governments to adopt new administrative and economic tools. Their durability encouraged the adoption of conservative, defensive-minded tactics.

Jeremy Black, in his article ‘A Military Revolution? A 1660–1792 Perspective’ and book European Warfare, 1494–1660, diverges even further from the original timeframe. While acknowledging the importance of earlier developments, he argues that the truly decisive revolution happened during the creation of the ancien regime armies of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He cites specific developments such as close-order drill, flintlocks, socket bayonets, and more powerful field artillery that led to a definitive advantage for infantry over cavalry and fire over shock. More generally he argues that this is the period in which governments attained an effective monopoly on violence and technical advances became truly decisive. There was no longer a realistic chance for a technologically inferior force to prevail through superior leadership or motivation. Not coincidentally, this is the era in which Western armies and states finally achieved clear superiority over their Asian and African enemies.

Western superiority, even if it was slow in coming, is often described as an inevitable outcome of this process. Discussion of the Military Revolution is frequently accompanied by assertions of European exceptionalism and references to another recurrent meme in recent military history – the ‘Western Way of War’. This is a theory devised to explain the rise to worldwide military and political dominance of Europe and, eventually, North America. This paradigm is most closely associated with Victor Davis Hanson, who outlined its basic tenets in his books The Western Way of War and Carnage and Culture. Hanson argues that key elements of Western culture provided a foundation for military prowess and that these values have persisted virtually without interruption since they were first expressed by the citizen hoplites of Ancient Greece.

In Carnage and Culture, Hanson uses a series of case studies to explore the cardinal virtues of Western soldiers and armies. Perhaps the most important of these is freedom. This is the concept of soldier as citizen and stakeholder, one who fights not merely out of obedience or self preservation but to protect the state of which he is an integral part. The armies of the West also fight with discipline. Teamwork is valued over individual prowess – it is the difference between simple warriors and true soldiers. Rationality, an outgrowth of rich Western intellectual traditions extending from classical scholars to the Enlightenment and beyond, allows European armies to outsmart their foes. A devotion to problem solving leads to critical advances in tactics and technology. Closely related virtues are initiative, the ability to improvise in the face of unexpected events, and self-criticism, which allows Westerners to learn from mistakes and turn rare defeats into a foundation for future victories. Freedom and rationality promoted the evolution of capitalism, an economic system that promoted innovation through competition and most efficiently turned resources into military strength. Westerners also valued decisiveness – the ability to achieve total victory and win a so-called ‘battle of annihilation’. While Western armies were fearsome in victory, they were equally resolute in defeat. The states that they served showed remarkable resiliency, a synergy derived from other key traits – the devotion of free citizens, agile, flexible systems of government and commerce and the intellectual wherewithal to adapt to adversity.

A number of other authors have made similar claims. The most notable of these is John Keegan. In A History of Warfare, he argues that culture and war are inextricably connected. While Hanson emphasizes the individual’s relation with the state – as its owner in the Western case and as its property in the East – Keegan describes the individual combatant more explicitly as a product of his culture. He asserts that, like religion and ethnicity, war was a cultural construction that actually predated the creation of the state. In its elemental form it had as much to do with taboo, myth and ritual as with self defense or material gain. Keegan contrasts ‘Western’ and ‘Oriental’ ways of war – the former based on directness and decision, the latter on evasion and misdirection. Central Asian nomads, the predecessors of the Mughals, figure prominently in this narrative, serving as the proverbial villains of the piece. Their mode of warfare is not just ultimately ineffective – it is seen as treacherous and even immoral. Keegan goes on to state that an essential source of the West’s military superiority was its ability to adapt, to transform warfare from a cultural norm to a practical and constructive tool of statecraft. A system based on individuality, flexibility and aggression triumphed over societies that emphasized obedience, tradition and restraint.

Another related theory, as explained by William McNeill in The Pursuit of Power and elsewhere, describes so-called ‘Gunpowder Empires’. He asserts that while Asian powers such as the Mughals, Safavids and Ottomans achieved a superficial technological parity with Western states, they never completely integrated new inventions into their military and political systems. Firearms and other modern gadgets were simply used as force multipliers for decidedly old-fashioned armies and administrations. Whenever an Oriental army encountered an immovable object – such as a fortified city – the great siege guns were brought out to smash it apart. Once that was done, the soldiers and their leaders returned to business as usual, going about their duties much as they had in centuries previous.

Such arguments have their problems. In light of the terrible challenge that they offered to the West, it is very difficult to write off the Ottomans as a simple ‘gunpowder empire’. This contradiction is often resolved by inducting the Ottoman Empire into the ranks of European states and including its accomplishments in the narrative of the Military Revolution, but such a solution cannot be applied to developments further afield. There were in fact parallel military transformations in regions not under the direct control of or in direct opposition to Europe. One of the most notable of these was the shogunate of Sengoku-era Japan. Geoffrey Parker, in his book The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West 1500–1800, addresses Japan’s military transformation in considerable detail. He argues that while their gunpowder weapons were based on designs imported from Europe, the Japanese were informed consumers, not mere imitators. They adapted their new weaponry to the unique demands of their environment, and they were fully aware of the advantages and limitations of these devices. Parker notes that the Japanese independently produced such innovations as the artillery fortress and volley fire at the same time – or in some cases even earlier – than they were introduced in the West. Mastery of these technologies allowed leaders like Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu to impose central authority and bring an end to the era of warring states. The menacing presence of a unified, well-armed and expansionist Japan in turn prompted its neighbors Korea and Ming China to make great advances in artillery and naval tactics and technology.

In The Asian Military Revolution: From Gunpowder to the Bomb, Peter A. Lorge makes even more provocative arguments about the development of warfare in the East. He asserts that the military revolution in Europe was not the first of its kind – that a similar transformation, based on ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Introduction
• 1. A Mughal military revolution?
• 2. Changing ways of war
• 3. Tools of war: Weapons, equipment and technology
• 4. Waging war: Tactics and operations
• 5. Learning war: Recruitment and training
• 6. Supporting war: Logistics and non-combat tasks
• 7. An unfinished revolution
• Conclusion
• Index