Empire of the Moghul: Ruler of the World (15 page)

‘What do you think they’ll try next?’

‘I don’t know, Majesty.’

The two men stood in silence for a while until Akbar suddenly noticed spurts of orange flame and dark smoke beginning to spiral into the sky from several places at once within the fort. He had seen such fires previously but only coming from single points. Raja Ravi had told him that these were funeral pyres for important leaders killed in battle. The one that had followed the return of Jai Mal’s body had been particularly fierce. However, these new fires springing up would clearly dwarf even that.

‘What is it, Ravi?’

‘The defenders must have recognised that there is no prospect of a relieving force and that defeat is inevitable. They want to choose their own moment to die. They are making
jauhar
. Those fires you see are funeral pyres. The Rajput women and girls are throwing themselves into them from specially constructed platforms to burn
alive. Mothers will be clamping their babies to them as they jump. The sudden spurts of orange and yellow flame you see are when the men throw buckets of oil and
ghee
– clarified butter – on to the pyres to increase the intensity of the heat and end their families’ suffering more quickly. Given courage by the knowledge that their wives and children are dead and can suffer no further pain or indignity at the hands of their enemies, in the morning the men and boys will dress themselves in their saffron battle robes. They will drink opium water from each other’s palms to celebrate their brotherhood and to deaden the pain of wounds, and then they will sally forth in one last heroic charge to kill as many of us, their enemies, as they can before meeting their own deaths.’

Raja Ravi’s voice was hushed and his tone admiring. After all, Ravi was a Rajput, thought Akbar. Even though such sacrifices were entirely alien and essentially abhorrent to him, Akbar too could not help but feel a degree of admiration for the heroism these women were displaying, dying inside the fortress as he watched. ‘Let the fires glow white to lessen their pain,’ he prayed. Then, once more the commander, he said to Ravi, ‘If you are right, we must prepare for their death charge. Give orders for more cannon to be hauled through the
sabats
tonight and positioned behind what shelter we can throw up where they have a clear field of fire along the ramp. Have musketeers and archers deploy from the exit of the tunnels at dawn. Have squadrons of horsemen and war elephants standing ready to enter them as soon as we detect movement behind the fortress’s gate. Horses and elephants will not wait in the dark of the
sabats
without becoming restive. It is better that they only go into them when action is close at hand.’

Early the next morning Akbar stood just outside the exit from the
sabat
which reached the nearest to the winding ramp leading to Chittorgarh’s main gate. His commanders were around him and he was wearing full battle garb, his gilded breastplate strapped tightly around him, his helmet squarely on his head and his grandfather’s sword Alamgir – newly sharpened and honed – at his side. During the night the defenders of Chittorgarh had fired sporadically on Akbar’s men as they feverishly constructed extra barricades around
and about the
sabat
exits and as near to the ramp as they dared go. The Rajputs had however succeeded in killing three of a team of a dozen oxen dragging a small bronze cannon into position and the others had stampeded in panic, overturning the cannon and injuring some archers standing nearby in their rush.

But the defenders had been content to watch the cannon righted, seemingly reserving their strength and powder for their last attack the next day. Long before dawn, drums had begun to sound out from Chittorgarh’s crenellated watchtowers more loudly than Akbar had ever heard. Several hours had now passed, but their rhythm remained hypnotic, the beat incessant and accompanied by the blare and screech of long trumpets. Occasionally a great roar of voices could be heard, overtopping all other sounds, which Ravi explained was the defenders’ prayers to their Hindu gods in the fortress-city’s temples.

‘When will they attack, Ravi?’

‘It cannot be long now. They will have worked themselves into such a pitch of frenzied ecstasy that they will not be able to hold themselves back.’

A quarter of an hour later, the metal grille in front of the great iron-studded gates of Chittorgarh began slowly to wind up and behind it the wooden gates themselves started to open. As soon as there was space, a warrior on a white horse squeezed through and then, waving a curved sword above his head and with his saffron robes streaming behind him, charged down the long winding ramp. He was immediately followed by others and then by more and more riders. Soon, mixed in with them, came men and youths on foot. All were in saffron. All had weapons in their hands. All were screaming a war cry which was incomprehensible to Akbar but which Ravi hastily translated as, ‘Life is cheap, honour is not.’

‘Fire when you will.’ Akbar gave the order to his gunners, archers and musketmen. Almost immediately the first cannon ball brought down a rider on a black horse. As he fell, another horse stumbled over him and plunged with its rider over the low wall of the ramp, falling a hundred feet on to the stony ground. Others too were hit by arrows and musket balls but the rest came on relentlessly, pushing aside the wounded, uncaring whether they tumbled from the ramp
or were simply trampled by the oncoming saffron tide. The leading warrior on his white horse reached the first of Akbar’s cannon just as the gunners were about to set the taper to the firing hole. Before they could do so, he cut down two of the gunners with sword slashes. Then he charged a second cannon head on. This time Akbar’s artillerymen were quicker, discharging the cannon moments before he reached it. The ball hit the rider in his abdomen with its full initial force so that his upper torso was severed from his lower. Miraculously uninjured, the horse galloped on through Akbar’s lines, its white coat now drenched in scarlet blood and its rider’s feet still in the stirrups.

Other Rajputs had now reached the bottom of the ramp and were spreading out to attack the Moghul troops. So strong was their urge to fight and die that they kept no formation but ran at any positions that caught their eye. It took several arrows or musket balls to stop a man in his tracks. However badly wounded they were, if they reached Akbar’s lines they would instantly fling themselves on to his soldiers, wrestling them to the ground and slashing at them with their heavy double-edged swords and the serrated-bladed daggers that nearly all of them grasped in their hands. Seeing that a company of his musketeers were close to being overwhelmed, Akbar ordered them to fall back to the protection of some archers while they reloaded. The ramp down from the gate was now bloodstained and clogged with the dead and dying.

Despite the many casualties they were suffering, Akbar saw to his relief and delight that his men were slowly gaining the advantage in the hand-to-hand fighting and were surrounding small groups of Rajputs. Very few were still emerging from Chittorgarh’s gateway. Nearly all who did so were shot down long before they reached the foot of the ramp as they clambered over the bodies of their fallen comrades. Any who succeeded in reaching the bottom met almost immediate death by the swords of Akbar’s horsemen who, having come through the
sabats
, were now riding down all Rajput stragglers. Akbar watched as his men systematically eliminated each of the small pockets of resistance. He now knew beyond all doubt that the longed-for victory, his first without the guiding hand of
Bairam Khan, was his. It would be the first of many. Yet elated as he was, he could not but be impressed by the Rajputs’ raw courage, and was particularly touched by the conduct of three youths, the eldest of whom looked no more than fourteen, who embraced before rushing, swords raised above their heads, towards a group of Moghul archers, only to be shot down by a shower of hissing arrows long before they reached them. Such warriors would make better allies than foes.

Soon the battlefield was still. Akbar called Ravi Singh to him. ‘Have these brave warriors cremated according to their religion. Since the senior officers refused my offer of surrender after Jai Mal’s death, have any who survived executed. Death should be no hardship to them since by remaining alive they violate their own warrior code. Then raze the fortress, both to stop it being used against us again and as a warning to any other Rajput ruler who resists rather than accepts the offers of alliance I intend to make them.’

‘M
ajesty, Rai Surjan wishes to surrender. He offers to become your vassal and in return asks nothing but the lives of those within the walls of Ranthambhor.’ The elderly Rajput’s eyes were on the ground but the carriage of his tall, wiry body was proud. The words he had just spoken had not come easily to him.

Akbar suppressed a smile of triumph. Sometimes he thought of the officers executed after the fall of Chittorgarh but he had no regrets. Neither did he regret ordering the destruction of Chittorgarh itself – the orange and red flames and then the curling grey smoke had been visible across the Rajasthani deserts for days. His display of ruthlessness had had the intended effect. His siege of Ranthambhor – a fortified Rajput town known throughout Hindustan for the strength of its solid brick walls and high towers – had lasted less than a week. If Rai Surjan was ready to submit to him it meant that all the leading Rajput princes had now accepted his authority. Except, of course, Rana Udai Singh of Mewar, still skulking but defiant in the Aravalli hills after the loss of Chittorgarh and the territory around it. And it was still less than a year since the fall of Chittorgarh. With the Rajasthani princes – the most powerful rulers of northern India – and their saffron-robed warriors by his side, what couldn’t he achieve?

‘Tell your master I accept his offer and will spare the lives of all
within Ranthambhor. Tonight he may remain with honour within its walls and tomorrow, when the sun is a spear’s height above the horizon, I will receive him and his senior commanders here in my camp and we will celebrate our new alliance.’

That night Akbar summoned a scribe to his tent. Sometimes such momentous images, such potent emotions filled his mind that he truly regretted he still could not write himself. When he returned to Agra he would appoint a court chronicler – perhaps several – to record the achievements of his reign and those of his father and grandfather, but for the moment the scribe would do. He waited while the young man unstoppered the green jade ink bottle dangling from a chain round his neck and sharpened his quill, and then began to dictate.

‘In this year of my reign, the flames of battle rose high in Rajasthan but seeing the might and resolution of my armies the courage of the enemy became like water and trickled away as raindrops into the sand. My victory here is complete and a fitting foundation for future glories . . .’

Long after the scribe had left and the camp had fallen silent around him, Akbar found it hard to sleep. His euphoric words had come from the heart. He had a glorious destiny – he was sure of it – and he wanted the world to know of his exploits through the court chronicles he would have compiled. But no man could live for ever. A single arrow or musket ball in battle, or an assassin’s blade between his ribs, might suddenly cut off his life, and then what would happen to the Moghul dynasty? With no obvious heir the empire could soon fall apart as the Moghuls disintegrated again into a collection of petty warlords more concerned with feuding with one another than banding together to keep what they had won in Hindustan. If so, he would have failed just as surely as if, through carelessness and complacency, he allowed his armies to be defeated.

That mustn’t happen. He was in his twenties now and it was his duty to secure the future of the empire and the dynasty, and to do that he should marry and produce sons. It would certainly please his mother and his aunt. They had been hinting about it for a while, even suggesting possible brides. But preoccupied with planning the
conquest of Rajasthan Akbar hadn’t paid much attention and, in truth, he still felt no great desire to marry. He enjoyed sex but his
haram
provided him with infinite pleasures and possibilities for that. He felt no immediate craving for the kind of close and intimate relationship Hamida had shared with Humayun. He had not fully recovered his ability to trust himself mentally to others since his betrayal by Adham Khan and Maham Anga. But sitting here restless and alone with his thoughts in the semi-darkness, he had to accept that the time for marriage had come – if not for himself, then for his empire and above all for the future of the dynasty. What mattered most, of course, was having strong, healthy sons, but marriage could also help him build alliances. He remembered some words from Babur’s diary that his
qorchi
had read to him: ‘I chose my wives to bind my chiefs to me.’

Outside, a sudden high-pitched squeaking announced that some small creature had been carried off by an owl or another predator. Pleased to have come to a decision, Akbar stood up and stretched. He would think as carefully about the choice of his first bride as about any military campaign. The women Hamida and Gulbadan had suggested to him belonged to the old Moghul aristocracy – one was a distant cousin of his and another was the daughter of the governor of Kabul – but were such women really the best choice for the ruler of Hindustan? Were their relations the chiefs he most wanted to bind to him?