The Second Battle of Panipat 1556
The Second Battle of Panipat, fought on 5 November 1556, was the engagement that confirmed Mughal rule in North India for the next three centuries. Barely six months after Humayun’s accidental death, the young emperor Akbar, then thirteen years old, and his regent Bairam Khan defeated the Afghan-Hindu army of Hemu on the same plain north of Delhi where Babur had triumphed thirty years earlier. The victory removed the most dangerous rival to Mughal authority and set the stage for the half-century of consolidation under Akbar that produced the territorial and institutional foundations of the empire.
Background: Hemu’s Rebellion
Hemu, also known as Samrat Hem Chandra Vikramaditya, was a Hindu general and administrator who had risen to a position of considerable authority in the court of the last effective Afghan ruler of the Suri dynasty, Islam Shah. After the death of Islam Shah in 1554, the succession to the Afghan throne was disputed among a series of weak claimants, and Hemu, as the most capable of the kingdom’s military and administrative officers, gradually assumed effective control of the state. In October 1556, only a few weeks before the battle, he had captured Delhi and Agra from the Mughal governor and had himself crowned as a sovereign, assuming the regnal title of Vikramaditya.
The Two Armies
The Mughal army that took the field at Panipat in November 1556 was a small force, probably numbering between 10,000 and 20,000 men. It included a substantial body of matchlock-armed infantry, several hundred cavalry, and a number of war elephants. Bairam Khan commanded in person, and Akbar, who was nominally the sovereign, was present in the camp. The army’s cohesion derived from the loyalty of its commanders to Bairam Khan and to the wider Timurid cause.
Hemu’s army was considerably larger, with estimates ranging from 30,000 to 100,000, although the composition of the force was more heterogeneous than the Mughal army. The army included a substantial body of Afghan cavalry, a number of war elephants, and a large number of Hindu infantry and auxiliary cavalry drawn from the chiefs of the eastern Gangetic plain. Hemu himself had been wounded by an arrow in the eye in a recent engagement, and he was in considerable pain on the day of the battle, although contemporary accounts disagree about the seriousness of his condition.
The Course of the Battle
The two armies met on the same plain that had been the site of the first engagement of that name in 1526, a broad and open alluvial tract north of Delhi. The battle opened in the early morning, and the Mughal army was at first hard pressed by the larger Afghan-Hindu force. Hemu’s war elephants, deployed in a long line, drove into the Mughal centre and threatened to break the line. The matchlock fire and field guns of the Mughal army, although less numerous than they had been at the first Panipat, were sufficient to halt the initial attack.
According to the principal Mughal sources, Bairam Khan was at one point advised to retreat, and Akbar himself is said to have urged the continuation of the engagement. The exact details of the council of war are obscure, but the decision to stand and fight proved decisive. After several hours of close combat, the Mughal line held, and Hemu’s army, after suffering heavy losses, began to disintegrate.
The Death of Hemu
The pivotal moment of the battle came when Hemu, who had been directing the engagement in person, was struck by an arrow and incapacitated. The arrow, which struck him in the eye, is said to have been shot by a Mughal matchlockman. With Hemu unconscious, the cohesion of his army collapsed, and a general rout ensued. Hemu was captured and brought before Akbar, who, according to the principal sources, struck the captive with his sword, in keeping with the Timurid tradition that a sovereign should himself strike the first blow at an enemy king.
The Establishment of Mughal Authority in North India
The Second Battle of Panipat did not by itself complete the Mughal reconquest of Hindustan. Significant pockets of Afghan resistance persisted into the 1560s, and the consolidation of Mughal authority in Bengal, Bihar, and the central Gangetic plain required a further decade of campaigning. The administrative and military institutions through which this consolidation was accomplished are treated on the Mughal administration overview and the provincial administration pages.
Nevertheless, the battle was the turning point. It removed the most serious indigenous threat to the dynasty, demonstrated the continued effectiveness of the Mughal gunpowder army, and established the political ascendancy of the regency of Bairam Khan. The regency itself was, in due course, brought to an end by Akbar, but the institutions that Bairam Khan helped to consolidate in the years immediately following the battle laid the foundations for the long period of expansion that followed.
Casualties and Historical Significance
The casualties at Panipat in 1556 were heavy, although the contemporary accounts are prone to exaggeration. The most cautious modern estimate places Hemu’s losses at perhaps 5,000 to 8,000 dead, with a comparable number of wounded and captured. Mughal losses were probably in the range of 1,500 to 3,000.
The historical significance of the battle lies in the establishment of Mughal authority in North India and in the demonstration, on the same ground where the dynasty had been founded thirty years earlier, that Mughal rule was not a transient phenomenon. The Second Battle of Panipat thus stands alongside the First Battle of Panipat 1526 and the Battle of Khanwa 1527 as one of the three engagements that determined the political shape of early modern North India. The full arc of Mughal expansion in this period is sketched on the famous battles of the Mughals and the Mughal military overview pages.
Sources
- Jadunath Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, vol. I (1912), pp. 30–48.