Second Battle of Panipat

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 5th of November 1556, at a plain north of Delhi that had already witnessed one world-changing battle thirty years before, a man who had risen from a market trader's son to king of Delhi led his war elephants into the largest fight of his life. His name was Hemchandra, and he had won 22 battles in a sweep from Bengal to Punjab. He rode that morning atop an elephant named Hawai, commanding a force of 30,000 cavalry and 500 armoured war elephants. Facing him was a 13-year-old Mughal emperor named Akbar, kept eight miles back from the fighting. How an arrow changed everything in a single moment, and how its aftermath shaped the Mughal Empire for generations, is the story of the Second Battle of Panipat.

• 2. A Kingdom Won and Lost

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  Babur founded the Mughal Empire, but it was his son Humayun who inherited the nearly impossible task of keeping it. Sher Shah Suri drove Humayun out of India in 1540 and established the Sur Empire, seizing Delhi and Agra from Mughal hands. Sher Shah died in 1545 at Kalinjar, and his capable younger son Islam Shah Suri took the throne. When Islam Shah died in 1554, the Sur Empire fractured. A succession struggle broke it apart, provinces seceded, and rebellions flared across the realm. Humayun exploited the chaos and on the 23rd of July 1555 his forces defeated Sikandar Shah Suri, reclaiming Delhi and Agra after fifteen years. The recovery seemed complete. Then, on the 27th of January 1556, Humayun died, leaving behind a 13-year-old heir and a guardian named Bairam Khan to hold everything together.

• 3. Hemu's Rise

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  Islam Shah's rightful heir was his 12-year-old son Firoz Khan, who was murdered by his own maternal uncle, a man who seized the throne under the name Adil Shah Suri. Adil Shah cared far more for pleasure than for governance, and the real work of running the Sur state fell to Hemchandra, a Hindu associate of Sher Shah Suri who had grown up in Rewari in modest circumstances. Hemchandra climbed to become Adil Shah's Chief Minister and the commander of the Sur army. He was in Bengal when Humayun died. Sensing an opening, he launched a rapid march westward, driving Mughal forces out of Bayana, Etawah, Bharthana, Bidhuna, Lakhna, Sambhal, Kalpi, and Narnaul one after another. The Mughal governor of Agra evacuated without a fight on hearing he was coming. Hemchandra then ran into the Mughal governor of Delhi, Tardi Beg Khan, at Tughlaqabad, a village just outside the city, and defeated him there too. On the 7th of October 1556, after a single day's battle, Hemchandra took Delhi and crowned himself Vikramaditya at Purana Quila.

• 4. The Armies at Panipat

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  Ali Quli Khan Shaibani gave the Mughals an early advantage before the main battle even began. Sent ahead with a 10,000-strong cavalry force, he stumbled upon Hemchandra's artillery being transported under a weak guard, and captured the entire train of guns with barely a fight. The loss of that artillery would cost Hemu dearly. When both armies arrayed at Panipat on the 5th of November, Hemu's force was the larger one. His 30,000 cavalry included experienced Afghan horse riders, and his 500 war elephants were each encased in plate armour and mounted by musketeers and crossbowmen. His left wing was commanded by his sister's son, Ramya; his right by Shadi Khan Kakar. The Mughals deployed Ali Quli Khan Shaibani at the centre, Sikandar Khan Uzbak on the right, Abdulla Khan Uzbak on the left, and a vanguard led by Husain Quli Beg and Shah Quli Mahram. Akbar and Bairam Khan watched from eight miles back.

• 5. A Battle Almost Won

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  Hemchandra opened the assault himself, sending his elephants crashing into the Mughal left and right wings. Mughal soldiers who survived the initial charge peeled away to the flanks rather than retreating, and their archery began to tell against Hemu's cavalry from the sides. The Mughal centre pulled back to a deep ravine, which Hemu's elephants and horsemen could not cross; they sat exposed to projectile fire from the other bank. Mughal cavalry on swift horses worked around the Afghan flanks and rear, targeting the elephants directly, slashing at their legs or picking off their riders. Hemu pulled his elephants back, and the pressure on the Mughals briefly eased. Ali Quli Khan then led his cavalry out in a wide arc, striking the Afghan centre from behind. Hemchandra rode to meet the threat personally, and even after watching both Shadi Khan Kakar and his lieutenant Bhagwan Das fall, he kept driving counterattacks. Both Mughal wings had been pushed back. Hemu's elephants and cavalry were moving forward to crush the Mughal centre. Victory appeared close when a single Mughal arrow found the gap in his armour and struck him in the eye. He collapsed unconscious on the howdah of Hawai. His army, seeing him go down, broke and fled. Five thousand dead were left on the field, and many more were cut down in the retreat.

• 6. Aftermath and Memory

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  Hemchandra's elephant was captured hours after the fighting ended and brought into the Mughal camp. What happened next became contested history almost immediately. Bairam Khan ordered Akbar to behead the unconscious man. Akbar's later courtier Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak wrote that Akbar refused, saying he would not raise a sword against a man already as good as dead. The contemporary account in Muhammad Arif Qandhari's Tarikh e Akbari contradicts this entirely, recording that Akbar did behead Hemchandra and took the title of Ghazi for it. The version in which Akbar refused was probably shaped by later courtiers. Hemchandra's head was dispatched to Kabul to be hung outside Delhi Darwaja. His body was gibbeted on a gate at Purana Quila, the same place where he had been crowned just a month before, on the 6th of October. A number of his supporters and relatives were also beheaded, and a minaret was later raised to mark the event. That minaret became the subject of one of 56 paintings depicting moments from Akbar's life in a copy of the Akbarnama. A memorial at the spot in Panipat where Hemchandra was beheaded still stands today; it is called Hemu's Samadhi Sthal. The 120 war elephants captured from Hemu's force impressed the Mughals so deeply that the animals became a lasting feature of Mughal military strategy. Adil Shah Suri, robbed of his commander, was defeated and killed by Khizr Khan, son of Muhammad Khan Sur of Bengal, in April 1557.