The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c25: Chapter XXIII
The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c25
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Chapter XXIII
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As early as Alexander's time the Indians possessed walled and fortified towns (Mc Crindle, *Invasion of India*, 119). The practice of building such strong places was never abandoned, and by the sixteenth century, when the Moghul rule began, petty forts held by chiefs of Hindu clans or by grantees from Mahomedan sovereigns, were scattered thickly over the country. Speaking of the Mahratta territory at the end of the 18th century, Colonel Blacker, 305, believed that no province of the same extent in India, or perhaps in any part of the world, possessed so many fortresses.
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In the plains of the Ganges and Indus, these forts were usually placed on an artificial mound, the earth for which was taken from the foot of the site, thus forming on one or more sides a large pond or marsh, which protected the fort from a sudden attack. As a rule these forts consisted of four high walls, enclosing a rectangular space; they were provided with a bastion or tower at each corner; and had a fortified gate on one side, the entrance lane turning several times at right angles before arriving at the interior of the place. This narrow tortuous entrance lane was generally enfiladed with guns and loop-holed on every side. These gates with their intricate passages are well described by R. Orme ("Mil. Trans." i, 320, Trichinoply), and in the south of India generally by Lake, "Sieges", 56, who considered the gateways the strongest part of the Indian forts. The outer walls were generally of clay and very thick: they were loop-holed for musketry, round earthen-ware pipes being inserted in the walls for this purpose (Fitzclarence, 245, Orme, “Mil. Trans.” ii, 203, 255). If the owner were lucky enough to have any wall-pieces, they would be mounted on the flat roofs of the houses built against the inside of the wall. These outer walls might be from twenty to thirty feet in height. Such a stronghold was safe against any small force, and with the means then in use, could hardly be reduced except by starvation. At the more important places they added one and sometimes two ditches, together with outworks, so as to render regular approaches necessary (E. Lake, “Sieges”, 11). In hilly country and in the Dakhin the fortresses were of much more elaborate construction. Of these I shall speak in a subsequent paragraph.
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Bound Hedge. As an additional protection, such places were often surrounded by a thick plantation of thorny trees or an impenetrable screen of bambus. Some of the latter were of great depth and in the operations in Rohilkhand during the suppression of the Mutiny of 1857, our troops came across bambu hedges which a cannon ball was unable to penetrate. This was no new thing. For instance, Khushḥāl Chand, fol. 177a, tells us that when Muḥammad Shāh came in 1158 H. (1745) to besiege ‘Alī Muḥammad Khān, Rohelah, in Bangarḥ, he found “a great wilderness of bambūs round the fort, through which the wind even found its way with difficulty; quick-handed diggers and axemen were collected to cut this down and uproot it”. Again, in 1805 we found Rāmpur in the same province surrounded by a bambu hedge thirty feet thick (Thorn, “War”, 435). In the same way, it was in Bundelkhand the usual custom to protect a fort by a wide belt of thorny jungle; and in 1140 H. (1728) Muḥammad Khān, Bangash, when reporting to Dihlī his campaign there, speaks of these jungles as retarding his operations considerably.
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Going to an entirely different part of India, we find that the town adjoining the fortress of Aḥmadnagar in the Dakhin had inside a low wall an immense prickly-pear hedge about twenty feet high. No human being could pass it without cutting it down, a work of the utmost difficulty, as it presented on every side the strongest and most pointed thorns imaginable. Being full of sap, fire would not act upon it, and an assailant while employed in clearing it, would be exposed to the enemy's matchlocks from behind it; thus it was stronger than any *abbatis* or other barrier (Fitzclarence 241). We find another good instance of the adoption of these protective belts of jungle in the case of Bobili, 140 miles N. E. of Vizagapatnam, which was attacked by Bussy in 1757: "An area of five hundred yards or more in every direction is preserved clear, of which the circumference joins the high wood, which is kept thick, three or four miles in breadth, around this centre. Few of these forts admit more than one path through the wood..... The path admits only three men abreast, winds continually, is everywhere commanded by breast-works in the thicket, and has in its course several redoubts, similar to that at the entrance, and like that flanked by breast-works on each hand" (R. Orme "Mil. Trans.", ii, 256). In early Anglo-Indian writers, for instance Wilks, iii, 217, such plantations are styled a "bound-hedge", of which definitions will be found in the glossaries of Major Dirom's and Lieut. Moor's works. "Bound-hedge" = *quasi* "Boundary hedge"?
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*Hill Forts.* In the parts of India where detached eminences, often of great extent, are found, these were commonly selected for the sites of fortresses. The most celebrated of these in Northern India were the two forts of Ruhtās, one in the Panjāb, the other in Bahār, Kālinjar in Bundelkhand, Chitor in Mewār. Further south there were Asīrgaṛh in Khāndesh, Daulatābād¹ near Aurangābād, and many others equally celebrated. Forts on the tops of hills were extremely numerous in the Dakhin. In that part of the country there was generally a walled town (or *pettah*) at the foot of the hill, and the fort itself was provided with two or more enceintes. In the Dakhin stone walls were common, that material being abundant. Lake, 205, is of opinion that many of these hill forts, if properly defended, were absolutely impregnable, unless by the tedious process of strict blockade. On the contrary, he thought the fortresses in the plains exceedingly weak (id. 208).
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¹ There is a good view of this fortress as the frontispiece to Fitzclarence's "Journal".
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*Places of Refuge.* Most of the petty semi-independent princes were careful to provide themselves with some fort or place of safety, generally situated in a country difficult of access and at some distance from their capital. Here their reserves of treasure and munitions of war were stored and carefully guarded. Ranthambhūr used to furnish such a store-house for the rajahs of Jaipur; and as will be recollected, the rajahs of Banāras provided such places at Latīfpur and Bijigaṛh, in the hills south-east of Mirzāpur.
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*Walled Towns.* In the western half of Northern India, walled towns were frequent; all the principal places being provided with a high brick wall. In that part of the country, even the smallest village was capable of some defence, the flat-roofed, clay-built huts being huddled very close together, and the only entry being through a few narrow, tortuous paths between the houses. Some of the largest towns had walls as well as fortresses, as for instance Lāhor and Dihlī. At these places the fortress was built in one corner of the town, a continuation of the town wall forming its outer side. Such strongholds were palace as well as fortress, and covered a considerable extent of ground. Other towns, such as Āgrah and Allāhābād, although they possessed first-class fortresses, had no wall round the town itself. In their case, the fortress stood apart from the rest of the town.
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*Technical words.* I insert here such technical terms connected with fortification as I have come across in my reading. The names for a fort were *ḥiṣār* (Steingass 421), ḥaṣīn (id. 422), qalʿah, qilʿah (id. 984), and H. garh. A small fort or redoubt was a qalʿahchah (Steingass, 985) or garhī. To be invested was maḥṣūr or maḥṣūn shudan: to invest was maḥāṣarah kardan. The walls were collectively bnrj o bārah, the former word meaning a bastion, a tower, (Steingass, 170) and the latter, the curtain, the walls, fortifications (id. 142). The Central Asian word for the curtain of a fort was badan, see Mujmil-ut-tārīkh baʿd Nādirīyah, p. 79, line 13. The battlements were kungur, kungurah, (St. 1056); the ditch was khandaq. Faṣīl in the dictionary (St. 931) is defined as breastwork inside a fortification, an entrenchment, wall, rampart; but I believe that strictly speaking it meant the platform running round the inside of the wall, on which the guns were mounted, or from which the defenders fired. (J. Shak. 1494). It is apparently what Europeans call the terre-plein (Lake, 113, Voyle, 428). Safīl (Shak. 1292) was a vulgar form of the same word. Ashob, fol. 284a, speaks of the Chhatah-i-qilaʿh at Shāhjahānābād. I cannot find any meaning for this. Is it only chhat, the Hindī for roof? The word khākrez in Mujmil-ut-tārīkh baʿd Nādirīyah, p. 78, line 12, meaning "foot of the wall", "the glacis", does not seem to have been in use in India.
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Goonga. I cannot restore the true form of this word, as I have not found it except in books by Europeans. Can it be intended for kungur, battlements? In the "Military Memoir of Col. Skinner", i, 230, we have at the taking of Hānsī in Dec. 1801, the passage: "we commenced mining, and advanced to within ten yards of the crown work, called in Hindustani goongas". On id., 266, the word is spelt goonju: "these brave fellows stood upon the goonjus for a full hour, under one of the heaviest fires of musketry and great guns I have seen", (this was at the siege of ʿAlīgarh by Lake in 1803).
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Kummurgah (Kamrgāh). I find this word used for the second line of defence at Asīrgarh in the Dakhin (Blacker, “War”, 420). This is a metaphorical use of *kamrgāh*, the place where the belt is placed, the waist (Steingass, 1049). As Lake explains, 156, “it has been aptly styled *kum-murgah* (or the belt)”.
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Raunee, Rainee, Renny. Fitzclarence, 110, saw at Nāgpur “a fine piece of masoury” in front of and covering the bottom of the wall “which I suppose to be what is in this country called a rainee, similar to a fausse-braye” ¹. And again, *id.* 245: “though they do not understand the construction or advantages of a glacis, they saw the necessity of covering the foot of the wall from an enemy’s fire, and formed a defence, similar to our fausse-braye, which they call rainee”. Thorn, 400, speaking of Hāthras fort (now in the ‘Alīgaṛh district, N. W. P.) says “a renny wall, with a deep, dry, broad ditch behind it, surrounds the fort”. James Skinner, “Mil. Mem.”, i, 172, spells it *rounee*, and Fraser erroneously translates “counterscarp”, being as Yule says “nonsense as well as incorrect”. Blacker, “War”, 299, writes “Sholapur had a fausse-braye of substantial masonry”. I suppose this was a *rauni* or *rainee*. Such a wall is shown in his plan and sections of Malligām (Plate 31). This was about twenty feet high, and about fifty feet from the main wall. The word *raunee* is used by him on plate 38 (Asīr-gaṛh); and here the secondary wall stood at the foot of a slope, about eighty feet from the main wall. The derivation of the word *rounee* is a puzzle: Yule, 583, says it is the Hindi word *raonī*, but suggests no etymology and admits that it is not in either Shakespear or Wilson. Can it have any connection with a word in J. Shakespear, 1189, *rūndhnā*, to surround or enclose as with a hedge? Fallon evidently did not know it, and in his “Eng. Hind. Dictionary”, 264 renders “fausse-braye” by *Dhus*, *Mattī kā pushtah*, equivalents which also show fairly well that he had no clear idea of what a fausse-braye was.
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¹ Moor, “Narrative”, (Glossary, 504) “Fausse-braye, a work between the ditch and curtain: not much adopted by modern engineers”. See also E. Lake, “Sieges”, 219, and note.
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*Sang-andāz*. Budāonī, ii, 146, uses this word when describing the fort of Sūrat. This is here evidently “embrasure”, and so translated by Lowe, 150. Steingass, 703, has *sang-afkan* and *sang-andāz*, a loophole in a fortress. But a passage in the *Maāsir-ul-umarā*, i, 76, referring to the siege of Dhārwar in the Dakhin in Shāhjahān’s reign, would lead one to infer that *sang-andāz* was a pathway or tunnel, down which stones were literally thrown.
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*Damāghah*. When Sindh was taken by us, we found “Karāchī surrounded by a tall wall, tipped with fancy crenelles and perpendicularly striped with what the Persians call *Damāgheh*, or nostril holes, down which the besieged could pour hot oil or boiling water” (“Life of Capt. Sir R. F. Burton”, i, 126). Possibly the derivation might be from *damāghah* (Steingass, 534), the crest of a falcon or similar bird. We have an instance of the use of boiling oil at Akbar’s siege of Asīrgarh (Von Noer, French trans., ii, 336, Horn, 128).
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*Descriptions of small Forts*. I find a good description of a petty Rajah’s fort in W. H. Russell’s “My Diary in India”, ii, 318. Although this was written in 1858, it is quite as applicable to an earlier time. “The low bank of earth was the outer parapet of the fort of Amethī (in south-east Audh), with a very deep ditch of irregular profile separating it from the level of the field. It was some time ere we made out the entry. The gateway was approached by a dam across a ditch full of water, which was dominated by a bastion with the embrasures directed upon the dam. A sort of causeway at the other bank led us to a high gateway in a mud curtain, which was also flanked by a musketry fire and by a few embrasures. The lines of all the works were exceedingly irregular. The gates were of wood, studded and clamped with iron”.
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Again, this time in Bundelkhand, we get the following description of the ordinary native fort (Fitzclarence, 59). “These forts are in general of mud, but from six to twelve feet at the bottom of the wall are often of masonry. They are surrounded by a deep ditch, and the defences consist of small round-towers connected by curtains. Some of them have two or three lines of these walls and towers within each other. On the glacis are generally large excavations for grain; but this, of course, is only in dry situations. The mud walls receive the shot without being shattered, and they are in consequence very difficult to breach”. A similar description applying to the southernmost part of India, is to be found in Wilks, ii, 95.
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Blacker, “War”, 229, gives a good general description of the small forts in the Dakhin. “Imagine a mound of earth of about one hundred and fifty yards diameter and about sixty or seventy feet high. Then the sides of this are scarped off by labour, and the prominent parts shaped into flanking towers. Let the whole be revêted and surmounted by a parapet, and then only an entrance will be wanted. A gateway pierced in the revétement of a re-entering angle, something lower than the interior of the fort, will form the inner communication, and on each side will be projected a tower to flank it and to plunge a fire into the next (gateway?). This will be found in a lower wall, the extremities of which will terminate in the revétement of the place, inclosing a small space; and it will be likewise flanked by projecting towers, independent of the defences being loop-holed. These works, it is evident, may be frequently repeated; and the form of the traverses as well as the relative position of the gates continually varied; but the general practice avoids placing two successive gates exactly opposite, and the outer aperture is invariably on lower ground than that next within, to favour the ascent. On some occasions so much earth may be scarped off as to form a high glacis, which makes the space left between it and the wall actually a ditch; but in very few cases is a ditch actually excavated round a garhi”.
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Particular Forts. I have collected from European writers the descriptions of a good many Indian fortresses; and I have no doubt that many more such notices are in existence. I append a list of those I have seen, arranged in alphabetical order with references.
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*Ahmadnagar*. Fitzclarence, 241, a detailed account.
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*Ajaigarh*. Fitzclarence, “Journal”, 62; Pogson, “Boondelas”, 136, in whose book a plan, a general view of the east face, and of the breach at the N. W. gateway may be seen.
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*Aligarh*. Taken by the English on the 4th Sept., 1803: it was of European design. Thorn, “War”, description on p. 102, view on plate 3.
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*Asirgarh*. Blacker, “War”, a description on p. 414, two views, one from the north and one from the east, and on Plate 38 plan and sections.
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*Bhartpur*. This town and its fortifications are described in Lord Combermere’s “Memoirs”. Vol. ii, p. 236.
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*Chinglapat*. Description by John Call, chief Engineer, Madras, in Cambridge, “War”, appendix.
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*Daulatābād*. A detailed account in Fitzclarence, 216, and also in Anquetil Duperron, “Zend Avesta”, 1, ccli. Anquetil visited the place on the 18th April 1758, when it was held by a French officer on behalf of M. Bussy.
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*Dhārwar*. A view and description in Moor, “Narrative”, 39.
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*Hāthras*. Fitzclarence, “Journal”, has a plate of it opposite p. 18.
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*Kālinjar*. This place is fully described in Pogson, “Boondelas”, 148—157; he tells the story of the siege of 1812 on pp. 139—147.
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*Nāgpur*. Described in Fitzclarence, “Journal”, 110, Lake, “Sieges”, 35.
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*Trichinopoly*. There is a description of this fortress by Col. Stringer Lawrence in R. O. Cambridge, “War”, 15.
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*Imperial Fortresses*. In the official manuals we have several lists of these places. The greater number of these forts were in the Dakhin, and in the better days of the Moghul period, the charge of them was committed to imperial officers called *qila‘hdārs*, who were appointed direct from the capital, and were quite independent of the governor of the province. This arragement was rendered necessary from the importance of these strongholds, both as a means of retaining hold of the country, and owing to their employment as great store-houses and arsenals. Moreover, if left under the control of a governor, he might be tempted to make a try for independence, when the possession of one of these fortresses would contribute largely to his chances of success.
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I find from a list referring to the reign of ‘Ālamgīr (B. M. Or. 1641 fol. 52*b*), that there were forty-two imperial forts. I cannot read all the names but I have made out the following. 1) Shāhjahānābād, 2) Akbarābād, 3) Lāhor, 4) Kābul, 5) Kashmīr, 6) Aṭak, 7) Allahābād, 8) Ajmer, 9) Jhānsī, 10) Gwāliyar, 11) Kālinjar, 12) Sitāpur, 13) Tārāgaṛh, 14) Bargaṛh, 15) Chāndū, 16) Ujjain, 17) Rāesen, 18) Rānīgaṛh, 19) Dohad, 20) Kākrūn, 21) Ranthambhor, 22) Ruhtās Khūrd, 23) Sūrat, 24) Kāngrah, 25) Munger, 26) Jodhpur, 27) Mairtah, 28) Sāmbhar, 29) Ghaznain, 30) Pishāwar, 31) Zafarābād, 32) Shergaṛh, 33) Lankarkot. The identity of Nos 12, 13, 14, 18, 32, 33, is doubtful; the others are well-enough known places. However, this list, although containing as many as forty-two places, must be looked on as very incomplete. In it are included none of the strongest places in the Dakhin, where to say the least, fortresses were as numerous as in Hindūstān.