The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c26.3

c26.3

There was also a plan, to which recourse was sometimes had, of building high towers with the branches of trees, and when these were of a height to command the interior of the place, guns were mounted on them. These were called *sībā*. Scaling ladders (*nardubān*) were not unknown, and were occasionally brought into use. Elephants were frequently brought up to batter in the wooden gates of a fort. The *Seir* translator, iii, 182, note 45, says the gates, being always covered by some work, could not be broken in except by grenades (of which the natives knew nothing), or by pushing against them elephants, protected by iron, or by setting fire to them. It was as a protection against elephants that the gates were studded with iron spikes; to meet which it was the practice to furnish the elephant with an iron frontlet (Fitzclarence, 137). For instance, we read in the *Siyar-ul-mutākharīn* (translation, iii, 181), with reference to an assault by the Mahrattas in 1173 H. (1759), that the Khizrī gate of the Dihlī citadel “was covered with sheets of brass and set thick with iron nails jutting out twelve inches, and an inch square at the bottom”. Often the gateway was bricked up when a siege was imminent, and this device rendered it impossible to blow it in. At Cuttack in 1803, the gate was partially built up in this way, and we had considerable difficulty in entering (Lake, 211, note).