The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c15.5

c15.5

*Infantry*. As already stated, this arm of the service held a very inferior position and was of little or no consideration (Bernier, 219). Writing about 1760, and referring more particularly to the south, De la Flotte, 258, says that the less numerous body gave way at the first meeting, especially infantry before cavalry; "nay, seldom would 50,000 infantry stand before 20,000 cavalry". Another observer, Orme, "Hist. Frag.", 417, says the infantry consisted in a multitude of people assembled together without regard to rank or file: some with swords and targets, who could never stand the shock of a body of horse; some bearing matchlocks, which in the best of order can produce but a very uncertain fire: some armed with lances, too long or too weak to be of any service, even if ranged with the utmost regularity of discipline. Little reliance was placed on them. To keep night watches and to plunder defenceless people was their greatest service, except their being a perquisite to their commanders, who received a fixed sum for every man, and hired every man at a different and less price. In short, the infantry were more a rabble of half-armed men than anything else, being chiefly levies brought into the field by petty zamindars, or men belonging to the jungle tribes. Any Mahomedan or Rajput, who respected himself, managed somehow or other to provide himself with a mount and obtained enrolment as a cavalry soldier, who was in popular estimation a gentleman. The high figures for Infantry in each district and province, shown in volume ii of the *Āīn-i-Akbarī*, can only be accepted under considerable reservation. These numbers can only represent the men called on to render strictly local duty, and they must have consisted almost entirely of villagers armed with long pikes, or swords and shields, perhaps even with only an iron-bound bambu staff (*lāthī*).