Famous Battles of the Mughal Empire
The history of the Mughal Empire is, in large measure, the history of its battles and sieges. The territorial extent of the empire was determined by the outcome of a series of major engagements from the 1520s to the 1680s, and the slow disintegration of imperial authority in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was marked by an equally long series of military disasters, from the invasion of Nadir Shah in 1739 to the suppression of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The principal engagements of this history, the great set-piece battles, the prolonged sieges, and the campaigns of the late empire, are surveyed below in approximate chronological order.
The Founding Battles: Panipat, Khanwa, Chanderi, and Ghaghra
The dynasty was founded in a series of three great battles fought within a period of three years. The First Battle of Panipat in 1526 was fought on 21 April 1526 between the Mughal army of Babur and the army of the Lodi Sultanate under Ibrahim Lodi, near the town of Panipat in present-day Haryana. Babur’s force, perhaps twelve to fifteen thousand men, was substantially smaller than the Lodi army, which has been estimated at perhaps fifty thousand or more, but the integration of steppe cavalry tactics with matchlock-armed cavalry, the araba wagon-laager, and field artillery proved decisive. The Lodi army was enveloped by the Mughal tulughma columns and crushed in the centre, and Ibrahim Lodi himself was killed in the fighting. The battle demonstrated, for the first time on the subcontinent, the devastating combination of steppe cavalry tactics with gunpowder weaponry, and it established the Mughal dynasty in northern India.
The Battle of Khanwa in 1527 was fought on 16 March 1527 between Babur and the Rajput confederacy under Rana Sanga of Mewar, near the village of Khanwa in present-day Rajasthan. The Rajput army was considerably larger than the Mughal force, and it included a substantial elephant corps and a formidable body of heavy cavalry. Babur again deployed the araba wagon-laager and the tulughma tactics, and the battle was, like Panipat, a hard-fought and close-run engagement. The victory broke the power of the Rajput confederacy and confirmed the Mughal hold on the Gangetic plain.
The Battle of Chanderi in 1528 was fought between Babur and the Afghan chiefs of eastern Rajputana who had risen in revolt against Mughal authority. The fortress of Chanderi was stormed after a brief siege. The Battle of Ghaghra in 1529 was fought on 6 May 1529 between Babur and the combined Afghan and eastern Indian forces under the Afghan chief Mahmud Lodi and the sultan of Bengal. The Mughal victory effectively ended Afghan resistance in eastern India, established the eastern frontier of the new empire, and was the last major engagement of Babur’s career; the emperor died in 1530.
Humayun and the Sur Interregnum
The reign of Humayun was dominated by the struggle with the Afghan chief Sher Shah Suri, and the period 1539 to 1555 was a period of military setback and exile. The battles of Chausa in 1539 and Kannauj (also called Bilgram) in 1540, in which Humayun was defeated by Sher Shah, effectively ended the first phase of Mughal rule in India. The second Mughal conquest of India, the reconquest of the throne by Humayun in 1555, was a brief and unstable affair, and Humayun’s death in early 1556 left the throne to his young son Akbar.
The Second Battle of Panipat in 1556 was fought on 5 November 1556 between the army of the young Akbar, commanded in practice by the regent Bairam Khan, and the forces of the Hindu general Hemu, who had established a brief interregnum in northern India. The Mughal victory, although hard-fought, effectively re-established Mughal control of the Ganges plain and prepared the ground for Akbar’s consolidation of the empire.
Akbar’s Conquests: The Consolidation of the Empire
The military career of Akbar was the most extensive of the dynasty, and the campaigns of the 1560s, 1570s, 1580s, and 1590s established the territorial extent of the empire. The principal engagements included the sieges of the Rajput forts of Merta, Chitor, and Ranthambore; the conquest of Gujarat in 1572–73; the suppression of the eastern Afghan revolt in 1574–76; the long war with Rana Pratap of Mewar, including the famous Battle of Haldighati in 1576; the conquest of Kashmir, Sind, and Orissa; and the campaigns of the 1590s in Baluchistan and Afghanistan.
The Battle of Haldighati in 1576 was fought on 18 June 1576 between the Mughal army of Man Singh of Amber and the small but determined force of Rana Pratap of Mewar. The Rajput army, perhaps five thousand strong, included a famous elephant contingent under the celebrated war elephant Ram Prasad, and the battle was fought in the narrow pass of Haldighati in the Aravalli hills. The Rajputs charged with great ferocity and very nearly broke the Mughal line, but they were eventually overwhelmed by superior numbers, and Rana Pratap was forced to flee the field. The battle is notable as the symbolic beginning of the long Rajput resistance to Mughal authority.
The Siege of Asirgarh in 1601 was the last great siege of Akbar’s reign. The fort of Asirgarh, perched on a hill in the Satpura range of central India, was a stronghold of the independent state of Khandesh, and its capture required the deployment of a substantial Mughal army under the command of the emperor’s son Daniyal. The siege was conducted with a heavy artillery train, and the garrison, after a heroic resistance, was eventually compelled to surrender.
The War of Succession: Dharmat, Samugarh, and Khajwa
The seventeenth century saw both the geographical apogee and the first signs of the financial and military crisis of the Mughal state. The reign of Shah Jahan was marked by the great Deccan campaigns of the 1630s, the unsuccessful sieges of Qandahar in 1649 and 1652, the long struggle with the Portuguese at Hooghly in 1632, and the early conflicts with the rising Maratha power. The war of succession of 1657–59 was a major crisis of the Mughal state: Shah Jahan fell ill in September 1657, and his four sons promptly took up arms to contest the succession. The principal engagements were the Battle of Dharmat in 1658, the Battle of Samugarh in 1658, and the Battle of Khajwa in 1659.
The Battle of Dharmat in 1658 was fought on 15 April 1658 between the forces of the imperial prince Aurangzeb, commanded by the general Dara Shukoh’s lieutenant, and the combined armies of Aurangzeb and his brother Murad Baksh. The battle was fought near the village of Dharmat in present-day Madhya Pradesh, and the outcome was a decisive victory for Aurangzeb and Murad, who were then able to combine their forces for the subsequent engagement at Samugarh.
The Battle of Samugarh in 1658 was fought on 30 May 1658 between the army of Aurangzeb and the army of his elder brother Dara Shukoh, the designated heir of Shah Jahan. The battle was fought near the city of Agra, and the victory of Aurangzeb was decisive. Dara Shukoh fled the field and was subsequently captured and executed. The battle is engagements of Mughal history, and it determined the succession in favour of Aurangzeb.
The Battle of Khajwa in 1659 was fought on 5 January 1659 between Aurangzeb and his younger brother Shah Shuja, the governor of Bengal, who had taken up arms in the hope of seizing the throne. The battle was fought near the town of Khajwa in present-day Uttar Pradesh, and the victory of Aurangzeb was decisive. Shah Shuja fled to Arakan, where he was eventually killed, and the victory confirmed Aurangzeb’s hold on the throne.
Aurangzeb’s Deccan Conquests
The conquest of the Deccan sultanates was the principal military achievement of Aurangzeb’s reign. The sieges of Golconda and Bijapur in 1686 and 1687 marked the geographical apogee of the Mughal Empire, but the campaigns were enormously costly, and the long garrisoning of the newly conquered Deccan territories placed an intolerable burden on the imperial treasury. The simultaneous rise of the Maratha power under Shivaji and his successors, examined on the Mughal decline page, was a direct consequence of the Mughal commitment to the Deccan, and the long war of attrition that followed Aurangzeb’s death in 1707 was one of the principal causes of the eighteenth-century crisis.
The Late Empire: Jajau, Nadir Shah, and the Maratha Wars
The Battle of Jajau in 1707 was fought on 20 January 1707 between the forces of the imperial prince Bahadur Shah and those of his brother Azam Shah, immediately after the death of Aurangzeb. The victory of Bahadur Shah confirmed his accession to the throne, and the battle is notable as the first of a long series of succession wars that marked the eighteenth century and accelerated the disintegration of the empire.
The Battle of Karnal in 1739 was fought on 13 February 1739 between the Mughal army of the emperor Muhammad Shah and the invading Persian army of Nadir Shah. The Persian army, well equipped with heavy artillery and with a disciplined corps of musket-armed infantry, overwhelmed the Mughal force, and the emperor was forced to open negotiations. The subsequent sack of Delhi, in which the Peacock Throne and the Koh-i-Noor diamond were carried off to Persia, was one of the most catastrophic defeats in Mughal history.
The Maratha wars of the eighteenth century were a long series of campaigns in which the Mughal army, increasingly demoralised and under-resourced, was unable to suppress the Maratha light cavalry. The principal engagements included the Battle of Delhi in 1737, in which the Maratha general Baji Rao I threatened the imperial capital, and the campaigns of the 1740s and 1750s in which the Marathas extended their control over much of central and northern India. The Third Battle of Panipat in 1761 was fought on 14 January 1761 between the Maratha army of the Peshwa and the invading Afghan army of Ahmad Shah Abdali, and was one of the bloodiest battles of the eighteenth century. The Maratha army was ultimately defeated, but the victory was Pyrrhic, and the battle effectively ended the Afghan threat to northern India while weakening the Marathas sufficiently to allow the gradual British expansion into the subcontinent.
Plassey, Buxar, and the British Ascendancy
The Battle of Plassey in 1757 was fought on 23 June 1757 between the forces of the English East India Company under Robert Clive and the army of the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-Daulah, with the defection of the nawab’s general Mir Jafar deciding the engagement in favour of the British. The battle was fought at Plassey (modern Palashi) in present-day West Bengal, and the victory of the Company effectively established British control of Bengal. The Battle of Buxar in 1764 was fought on 22 October 1764 between the forces of the Company, commanded by Hector Munro, and the combined armies of the Nawab of Awadh, the Nawab of Bengal, and the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II. The decisive British victory confirmed the Company’s control of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, and led directly to the Treaty of Allahabad of 1765, by which the Mughal emperor granted the Company the diwani of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, laying the political and economic foundations of British India.
The Indian Rebellion of 1857
The Indian Rebellion of 1857, the last major engagement of the Mughal military tradition, was fought between the rebel sepoys of the Bengal Army, supported by a number of Indian rulers and by the aged Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, and the forces of the English East India Company. The principal engagements included the siege and recapture of Delhi, the relief of Lucknow, the battle of Kanpur, and the campaign in central India that culminated in the recapture of Gwalior. The recapture of Delhi in September 1857, after a prolonged siege, marked the effective end of the rebellion. Bahadur Shah Zafar was captured, tried, and exiled to Burma, and the Mughal dynasty, which had nominally persisted for more than three centuries, was formally extinguished. The suppression of the rebellion was followed by the formal dissolution of the East India Company and the transfer of its authority to the British Crown.
The Pattern of Mughal Warfare
The great battles of the Mughal dynasty illustrate several recurring patterns. The set-piece field battle, fought in the open plain, was the standard form of engagement for the major contests of the dynasty, and the great Panipat battles, the battle of Khanwa, and the battle of Samugarh are all examples. The siege, treated in more detail on the Mughal artillery page, was a more demanding and more time-consuming form of operation. The combination of the field battle and the siege was the standard pattern of Mughal warfare: the army would first meet the enemy in the field, defeat his field army, and then proceed to the systematic reduction of his fortified positions. The pattern was reversed in the late empire, when the empire’s enemies increasingly avoided the field battle and retired into the inaccessible hill forts of the Deccan and the Aravallis, and the long war of attrition of Aurangzeb’s later years was a direct consequence of the enemy’s refusal to offer a decisive engagement.
Sources
- John F. Richards, The Mughal Empire (NCHI I.5, 1993), chs. 2–6.