The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c20.542

v3.c20.542

Meerut refused to surrender to the invader but was taken by storm on January 9, the Hindu citizens being massacred; a detachment plundered and destroyed the towns and villages on the eastern bank of the Jumna, and Tīmūr himself marched to the Ganges. After a battle on that river on January 12, in which he captured and destroyed forty-eight great boat-loads of Hindus, he crossed the river near Tughluqpur on January 13, defeated an army of 10,000 horse and foot under Mubārak Khān, and on the same day attacked and plundered two Hindu forces in the neighbourhood of Hardwār. The course which he followed lay through the Siwālik, the outermost and lowest range of the Himālaya, and his progress was marked by the almost daily slaughter of large bodies of Hindus who, though they assembled in arms to oppose him, were never able to withstand the onslaught of the Mughul horse and, as they fled, were slaughtered like sheep. On January 16 he captured Kāngra, and between January 24 and February 23, when he reached the neighbourhood of Jammū he fought twenty pitched battles and took seven fortresses. Continuing his career of plunder and rapine towards Jammū he arrived before that city on February 26, and sacked it on the following day. Both Jammū and the neighbouring village of Bāo were deserted, and he was disappointed of human victims, but an ambuscade which he left behind him to surprise the Hindus when they should attempt to return to their homes intercepted and slew large numbers and captured the raja, who was carried before Tīmūr and saved his life by accepting Islām and swearing allegiance to the conqueror.