The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c25.18

c25.18

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”.