The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c12.9

c12.9

European observers in the 18th century do not, as a rule, speak favourably of the Moghul artillery. For instance, with reference to the Nawab of the Karnātak’s army in 1746, Orme, “Mil. Trans.” i, 74, says “Having never experienced the effect of field pieces, they had no conception that it was possible to fire with execution the same piece of cannon five or six times in a minute; for in the awkward management of their own clumsy artillery, they think they do well if they fire once in a quarter of an hour”. Even seventy years later, in 1815, the Nizām’s artillery were still content to fire once every fifteen minutes; and on one occasion they were indebted for final success to the freak of some European soldiers, who came at night from their own camp, and fired the guns so fast as to frighten the besieged into evacuating the place before the morning (Lake, 15, note). Cambridge, who wrote about 1760, “War”, Introduction, ix, is more general in his condemnation. “Nothing is so ruinous to their military affairs as the false notion which is generally entertained by them, and chiefly by their commanders, in relation to artillery. They are terrified with that of the enemy, and foolishly put a confidence in their own; and what is the most fatal mistake, they place their chief dependence on the largest pieces, which they know neither how to manage or to more. They give them pompous and sounding names, as the Italians do their guns, and have some pieces which carry a ball of seventy pounds. When we march round them with our light field pieces, and make it necessary to move those enormous weights, their bullocks, which are at best very untractable, are quite ungovernable, and at the same time are so ill-harnessed, that it causes no small delay to free the rest from any one that shall happen to be unruly or slain”. Again, take what Mustapha says, *Seir*, i, 443, note 19, “Expressions about a well-served artillery are misleading, for it is certain that all their artillery was as cumbrous, ill-mounted and ill-served as was the artillery of Europe three hundred years ago. It is only since the year 1760 that some Indians have put themselves upon the footing of having an artillery mounted and served *nearly* in the European manner”. And writing at Āgrah in 1768 or 1769, an anonymous observer (Orme Mss. p. 4341) remarks on the Jāts taking two 24-pounders a mile or two in ten days, and scornfully adds “Telle est l’adresse de la plupart des Indiens dans le métier de la guerre après qu’ils ont reçu tant de leçons des Européens, dont ils auraient dû profiter. Mais on a beau leur apprendre!”