Matchlock Weaponry in the Mughal Army
The matchlock, the banduq or tamancha of the Mughal chroniclers, was the personal firearm of the Mughal soldier from the early sixteenth century until the gradual introduction of flintlock and percussion weapons in the nineteenth. It was the weapon with which Babur and his Central Asian followers defeated the much larger Lodi army at the First Battle of Panipat in 1526, and it remained a standard item of Mughal military equipment down to the close of the imperial period. The development, the mechanism, and the tactical employment of the matchlock are examined below, with attention to its place within the broader Mughal artillery and firearms establishment and to the long-running comparison with the older weapon of the Indian soldier, the bow and arrow.
The Mechanism and the Central Asian Inheritance
The matchlock was a hand-portable firearm in which the priming powder in a small pan beside the touch-hole was ignited by a piece of smouldering cord, the match, held in a spring-operated lever, the serpentine. The lever was pulled down by the trigger, the descending match dipped into the priming, the priming flashed through the touch-hole into the main charge, and the ball was expelled through the barrel by the combustion of the powder. The mechanism was simple, robust, and slow: a trained musketeer could fire perhaps two to three rounds per minute under ideal conditions, and substantially fewer in the rain or in the dust of a march.
The technology had reached the Islamic world from China via the Mongol empire in the thirteenth century, and by the late fifteenth century the matchlock had become a standard weapon of Ottoman, Mamluk, and Safavid armies. The Central Asian Timurid and Uzbeg powers acquired the weapon in the same period, and the mounted matchlock-armed cavalryman, the banduqchi sawar, was a distinctive component of the Turko-Mongol armies of Central Asia well before the Mughal conquest of India. The matchlocks of Babur’s army, accordingly, were of Central Asian and Ottoman derivation, and the Mughal matchlock of the seventeenth century, often of great length and considerable weight, was the direct descendant of these earlier designs.
The Matchlock at the Founding Battles
The matchlock played a decisive role in the three great battles that founded the dynasty. At the First Battle of Panipat in 1526, Babur deployed his matchlock-armed cavalry, his field artillery, and his araba wagon-laager against the Lodi army of Ibrahim Lodi, and the combination of the new gunpowder weapons with the classic steppe tulughma proved decisive. At the Battle of Khanwa in 1527, the matchlock-armed Mughal cavalry again proved its worth against the heavy Rajput lancers of Rana Sanga of Mewar, and at the Battle of Ghaghra in 1529 the Afghan and eastern Indian forces of Mahmud Lodi were defeated in large measure by the disciplined fire of the Mughal matchlockmen. The matchlock had, in effect, made the dynasty.
The Mughal conquest of Gujarat in 1572–73, the suppression of the eastern Afghan revolt of 1574–76, the long war with Rana Pratap of Mewar, and the campaigns of the 1590s in Baluchistan and Afghanistan all made substantial use of matchlock-armed infantry and cavalry, and by the end of Akbar’s reign the matchlock was the standard firearm of the imperial army. The technical development of the weapon over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a story of gradual refinement rather than radical innovation: the barrels became somewhat longer and more heavily constructed, the stocks became more ergonomically shaped, and the locks became more reliable, but the essential mechanism remained unchanged.
The Organisation and Training of the Musketeers
The matchlockmen of the Mughal army were organised into formal units under the supervision of the mir-i-atish and the topkhana establishment, and they fell into several distinct categories. The banduqchis of the imperial household were the elite corps of musketeers attached directly to the emperor’s person, and they served both as bodyguards and as the nucleus of the imperial matchlock infantry. The qarabardars were the matchlock-armed infantrymen attached to the artillery train, whose task was to provide close support and protection to the gun crews on campaign. The mansabdari contingents included their own matchlock-armed retainers, and the ahadi and dakhili cavalry, treated in detail on the Mughal cavalry page, increasingly included substantial numbers of mounted musketeers.
The training of a Mughal musketeer was a long and demanding process. The recruit was first taught the basic drill: the loading of the piece, the priming, the application of the match, the aiming, and the firing. He was then taught the manual of arms, the use of the bayonet when available, and the formal movements of the musketry drill. Finally, he was required to practice at the butts, the formal range at which the imperial musketeers were required to demonstrate their proficiency. The training of the mounted musketeer was even more demanding, for he was required to load and fire his piece from the saddle, often at the gallop, and to do so while maintaining his formation.
The Supply of Gunpowder and the Karkhana
The gunpowder required by the matchlockmen of the Mughal army was manufactured in the imperial karkhanas, the workshops attached to the topkhana and to the principal provincial centres. The basic constituents of black powder — saltpetre, charcoal, and sulphur — were available in India in substantial quantities, and the saltpetre of Bihar, in particular, was an important article of both internal and export trade. The karkhanas of the larger cities, including Agra, Delhi, Lahore, and Ahmadabad, were substantial industrial establishments, employing hundreds of workmen, and the production of gunpowder was a major industry in its own right.
The manufacture of the matchlock itself was carried out by specialist armourers, the sazandars, in the same karkhanas. The barrel was forged from iron or, for the more prestigious pieces, from a combination of iron and steel; the stock was carved from seasoned hardwood, often shisham or walnut; and the lock, the most technically demanding component, was the work of specialist lock-makers. The finished piece was tested at the imperial ranges, and the muster rolls of the imperial armourers list hundreds of matchlocks produced each year.
The Comparison with Bow and Arrow
The relative merits of the matchlock and the bow and arrow were debated by Mughal military writers throughout the imperial period. The matchlock had several obvious advantages: it required less physical strength to operate, it could be used effectively by men of any build, and it was devastating against massed infantry or cavalry at close range. The bow, on the other hand, had a much higher rate of fire, was effective at considerably longer range, and could be used in the rain or in other conditions in which the matchlock was unreliable. The Mughal solution to the dilemma was to use both weapons in combination: the bow and the matchlock were standard equipment of the Mughal cavalryman, and the combination permitted the soldier to deliver a sustained missile attack at varying ranges and in varying conditions.
The comparison is examined in more detail on the Mughal cavalry and Mughal artillery and firearms pages, and the question of the relative effectiveness of the two weapons was a constant preoccupation of the imperial military theorists. By the close of the seventeenth century, the matchlock had largely displaced the bow from the formal ranks of the imperial army, but the bow remained in use among the auxiliary cavalry and the provincial levies well into the eighteenth century.
The Legacy of the Matchlock
The matchlock was the personal firearm of the Mughal soldier throughout the imperial period, and it was the weapon with which the dynasty both won and lost its empire. The matchlocks of the Mughal karkhanas were exported across the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, and the design influenced firearms development in Southeast Asia and in the wider Indian Ocean world. The transition from matchlock to flintlock and, eventually, to percussion weapons occurred in the nineteenth century, in the context of the broader European military revolution, and the older weapon survived in the ceremonial equipment of the princely states well into the colonial period. For a broader treatment, see the Mughal military overview.
Sources
- Iqtidar Alam Khan, Gunpowder and Firearms (2004), ch. 3.