The Military System of the Marathas, with a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities c8.53

c8.53

A rocket was most effective in frightening away the war elephant largely employed in the Mughal army in India. In 1687 during the expedition against Golkonda, ‘Ecruch Khan’s elephant, frightened at the noise of a rocket, ran away. The driver used every endeavour to turn him, but in vain; so that the Khan was taken prisoner.’² The greatest injury was effected by a rocket when it chanced to light on the enemy’s magazine, but generally an Indian soldier was much more afraid of a rocket than of a musket ball, as Muhammad Ja’far Shamlu says of Abdali’s followers fighting at Panipat: ‘As for a musket bullet, the heroes cared not what it might do, and in that scene of carnage and slaughter the only dread entertained by the renowned and gallant combatants was for a cannon-ball, or the flight of a rocket’.¹