The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c12.s1.6

c12.s1.6

When the Jāt rajah of Bhartpur besieged his relation in Wer, about 30 to 40 miles south of Bhartpur, his biggest cannon, a 48 pounder, was sent from his capital. It was a piece that Sūraj Mall had taken from the Mah-rattas, and they had carried away from Dihlī. Although dragged by 500 pair of oxen, with four elephants to push behind, it occupied them a month to convey the gun about half way, some eighteen or nineteen miles altogether, and there it stuck. It should be noted, however, that this was in the rainy season, which added immensely to the difficulty. The writer from whom I obtain these facts adds "This may look strange, but you do not know the weight of these guns or the kind of gun-carriage used. At the very time I write this (c. 1767), it is ten days since they brought out two 24-pounders from the fortress of Āgrah, each drawn by fifty pair of bullocks and helped by an elephant. Yet at this moment they are not outside the town of Āgrah, though they are moving each day from dawn to night-fall (Orme Mss. p. 4341). In 1826 there were still large guns at Wer. Colonel Seaton in his "From Cadet to Colonel", i, 177, says "we found some enormous iron guns built up something in the style of our present Armstrongs, with this difference that over the inner core of longitudinal bars forming the bore, iron hoops and not coils, were shrunk on; over which came a layer of longitudinal bars, and outside these another layer of hoops shrunk on. The diameter of these guns at the muzzle was enormous, something like three feet, but the bore was small. I should suppose they were about 40-pounders. I don't think any amount of powder would have burst them".