The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c23.13

c23.13

Cavalry charges. When the guns were supposed to have done their work and had sufficiently demoralized the opposing army, successive charges were delivered from first one wing, then the other. The horsemen began with matchlock fire and a discharge of arrows, finally coming to close quarters and hand to hand fighting with sword, mace, or spear. This latter was the *chapqalash*, evidently from چاپقولاش, P. de C. 271, a combat. Aḥmad Shāh, Abdālī, seems in 1165 H. (1752) to have brought in a mode of attack, resembling the *taulqamah*, (ante, p. 228) in which the matchlock played a conspicuous part. He divided his horse into several bodies of one thousand each, all with matches ready lighted. The first body (*dastah*) rode hard at the enemy, delivered its fire, then galloped off again. A second body followed and did the same, and so on in succession (Ghūlām ʿAlī Khān, *Muqaddamah*, fol. 79*b*). At the battle of Pānīpat, fought on the 7th Jamādī ii, 1174 H. (13th January 1761), he repeated this manœuvre at a critical moment with conspicuous success, thereby throwing the Mahrattah centre into confusion, (*Tārīkh-i-Ḥusain Shāhī*, fol. 44*b*, 45*a*). In the *Maʿāsir-ul-umarā*, ii, 671, we are told that in the south of India it was the practice to make the first attack against the rear of an army.