Travels in the Mogul Empire (Bernier) 9.5
Travels in the Mogul Empire (Constable) 9.5
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- English
9.5.1
Let me just add a word on the subject of the opium given to the ass. One of the principal huntsmen assures me that it is a tale of the vulgar, and that the lion is sufficiently disposed to sleep without it when he has eaten to satiety. I observed that the great rivers are commonly without bridges. The army crossed them by means of two bridges of boats, constructed with tolerable skill, and placed between two or three hundred paces apart. Earth and straw mingled together are thrown upon the planking forming the footway, to prevent the cattle from slipping. The greatest confusion and danger occur at the extremities; for not only does the crowd and pressure occur most there, but when the approaches to the bridge are composed of soft moving earth, they become so broken up and so full of pits, that horses and laden oxen tumble upon one another into them, and the people pass over the struggling animals in the utmost disorder. The evil would be much increased if the army were under the necessity of crossing in one day; but the King generally fixes his camp about half a league from the bridges of boats, and suffers a day or two to elapse ere he passes to the opposite side of the river; when, pitching his tents within half a league from the bank, he again delays his departure so as to allow the army three days and nights at least to effect the passage. As to the number of people, whether soldiers or others, which the camp contains, it is not easy to determine this accurately;
9.5.2
so various are the opinions on this point. I may venture, however, to state generally that in this march there are at least one hundred thousand horsemen, and more than one hundred and fifty thousand animals, comprising horses, mules, and elephants; that besides these, there cannot be much less than fifty thousand camels, and nearly as many oxen or horses employed to carry the wives and children, the grain and other provisions belonging to the poor people connected with the bazars, who when they travel take with them, like our gipsies, the whole of their families, goods, and chattels. The servants in the army must be indeed numerous, since nothing is done without their assistance. I rank only with a two-horse cavalier, and yet I cannot possibly contrive with less than three men. Many are of opinion that the camp contains between three and four hundred thousand persons; some believe this estimate to be too small, while others consider it rather exaggerated. Accurately to determine the question, the people should be numbered. All I can confidently assert is that the multitude is prodigious and almost incredible. The whole population of Dehli, the capital city, is in fact collected in the camp, because deriving its employment and maintenance from the court and army, it has no alternative but to follow them in their march or to perish from want during their absence.
9.5.3
You are no doubt at a loss to conceive how so vast a number both of men and animals can be maintained in the field. The best solution of the difficulty will be found in the temperance of the Indians and simple nature of their diet. Of the five-score thousand troopers not a tenth, no not a twentieth part, eat animal food; they are satisfied with their kichery, a mess of rice and other vegetables, over which, when cooked, they pour boiled butter. It should be considered too that camels endure fatigue, hunger, and thirst in a surprising degree, live upon little, and eat any kind of food. At the end of every march, they are left to browse in the fields, where everything serves for fodder. It is important likewise to observe that the same tradesmen who supply the bazars in Dehli are compelled to furnish them in the camp; the shops of which they are composed being kept by the same persons whether in the capital or in the field. These poor people are at great pains to procure forage: they rove about from village to village, and what they succeed in purchasing, they endeavour to sell in the army at an advanced price. It is a common practice with them to clear, with a sort of trowel, whole fields of a peculiar kind of grass, which having beaten and washed, they dispose of in the camp at a price sometimes very high and sometimes inadequately low.
9.5.4
There is a curious fact respecting the King which I had almost forgotten to relate. He enters the camp sometimes on one side, sometimes on another; that is, he will to-day pass near the tents of certain Omrahs and to-morrow near the tents of others. This variation of route is not, as you might suppose, accidental: the Omrahs, whom the Monarch honours by his vicinity, must leave their quarters to meet him, and must present His Majesty with a purse of more or less value; from twenty to fifty golden roupies, twenty being equal to about thirty pistoles, according to their liberality and the amount of their pay. I shall say nothing of the towns and villages between Dehli and Lahor: I have in fact scarcely seen any of them. My Agah's station not being in the centre of the army, which often kept to the highroad, but in the front of the right wing, it was our custom to traverse fields and bye-paths during the night, guided by the stars; frequently mistaking our way, and marching five or six leagues, instead of three or four, the usual distance between two encampments, till daylight again set us right.