Later Mughals v2.c18.s8: Sec. 114.—Causes of the Indian Defeat at Karnal.

Later Mughals v2.c18.s8

Language: English

Sec. 114.—Causes of the Indian Defeat at Karnal.

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The defeat of the Indians at Karnal was due as much to their being outclassed in their weapons of war and method of fighting, as to their bad generalship.

Nadir was not really a Persian, but a Turk of a tribe settled on the Persian soil for centuries past. His soldiers were Turks and other nomads (like the Kurds), and not Persians proper. He conversed with Muhammad Shah in Turkish. [Harcharan.] Indeed, the Persians themselves designated his army accurately by calling them Qizil-bashes or Red Caps,* from the scarlet broad-cloth caps worn by them,—the very caps which we see to-day on the heads of the Turks and their imitators in Egypt and India. The true Persians are an Aryan people, with a strong Semitic strain infused into them after the Muslim conquest, but they have little Turanian or Turkish racial admixture. Their language is not akin to Turkish, their manners are different from those of the Turks, and their

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its climate and people, says that the Persians lost only 3 killed and 20 wounded! Siyar and Ghulam Ali blindly copy these figures.

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∗ "The battle-field became a bed of poppies from the crowd of Qizilbash troops, all of whom wore Turk-like [?] caps of red sqarlat." [Anandram, 29.]

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religion is the opposite of that Sunnism of which Turkey and the Turks are the orthodox champions. The Persians proper (the same race as the Parsis now settled in India) are very intelligent, refined, proud, and possessed of a delicate sense of humour, but no soldiers. Nadir's troops, the Qizilbashes, were men of the same race and same method of warfare as the so-called Pathan and Mughal conquerors of India, namely Turks and Turkomans from Central Asia, capable of making long and rapid rides and bearing every privation on the way.

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In addition to this, Nadir's army contained a large proportion of men equipped with fire-arms, several thousands of jazair-chis or swivel-gunners. Their discipline was strict and their fire control was of the European type. They used to reserve their fire till the word of command and then deliver a volley. The effect on their enemy was as disconcerting as it was deadly. At Karnal, the Persian swivel-guns were planted in rows on the ground and kept ready for the Indians, who were lured there by the skirmishers, and then their rapid fire completely overthrew the enemy without giving them a chance to retaliate.

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The Indian cavalry prided itself on its swordsmanship and cultivated sword-play and fancy riding, as if war were a theatrical show. They fought with the sword only and felt a contempt for missile weapons and those who used them. In describing the battles with the Persians for the possession of Qandahar in the middle of the 17th century, the Dihli Court historian sneers at the Persian troopers for declining sword-combats with the cavaliers of Hindustan. He taunts the Persians with cowardice pretty nearly in the same tone as the English writers employed during the last war in speaking of the German soldiers, who did not stand up to receive the bayonet charges of the British infantry.

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The Indian Musalman and Rajput soldiers were very inefficient in the use of fire-arms. The only musketeers of any value in the Mughal army in the 17th century were the Hindus of Buxar, the Bundelas, the Karnatakis (of whom there were many in the service of the Bijapur Sultans, but none under the Later Mughals), and a small class of hunters called Bahelias usually recruited in the Allahabad province. The immense majority of the Indian soldiers did not fight with muskets, nor did they, as a rule, carry into the field portable light artillery of the *jazair* class in large numbers. The Indian ordnances were heavy cumbrous and of a more antiquated type than those of Persia and Turkey, and therefore the fire delivered by them was usually slow and inaccurate enough to be neglected. The Indian soldiers were trained to stake everything on the shock charge of heavy cavalry and hand to hand grapple. They had little mobility. Not so the Qizilbashes in the Persian service. Like their fellow-Turanians in Trans-oxiana or in the armies of the Usmanli Sultans of Constantinople, they formed the best cavalry in Asia,—hardy and fast horsemen, mounted on the fleetest and strongest breed of horses, and trained to the saddle from their childhood, as became a nomad race. They were also capital archers, accustomed to shoot from the saddle and fight while fleeing. They had a decisive advantage over the Indians, as men fighting with missiles have over those who can employ side-arms only.

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The superior mobility of Nadir's soldiers enabled them to assume the offensive from the very beginning. They out-manœuvred the Indians and drove them to the place most advantageous to the attacking party; they fought or deferred engagement as it suited them.

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The Indians' crowning folly was the employment of elephants in this modern age of muskets and comparatively long-range artillery carried on camels. Elephants had failed against mobile cavalry using missiles in the almost pre-historic times of Alexander the Great when fire-arms were unknown, and more recently against Babar's horsemen with their few slow and primitive guns. They were a sure engine of self-destruction when ranged against Nadir Shah in the year 1739.