The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c18.1

c18.1

Having sprung from a Central Asian nomad horde, the early chiefs of Taimur’s race were perpetually on the move, accompanied by their army. This traditional habit was maintained in India by the earlier and more active emperors of that house ¹. From Bābar to Bahādur Shāh, they were seldom long in one place, and the greater part of their life was passed under canvas. For example, during the five years of his reign Bahādur Shāh never slept in any building, and did not enter one in the day time on more than one or two occasions. From this habit it resulted that the empire had never had a fixed capital, the only capital was the place at which the sovereign might happen to be ², and as a consequence, the whole apparatus of government was carried wherever the emperor went. All the great officers of state followed him, and all the imperial records moved with them. Thus a Moghul army, where the emperor was present, was weighted with the three-fold impedimenta of an army, a court, and a civil executive. It is thus easy to account for the immense size to which their camps gradually extended.