Empire of the Moghul: The Tainted Throne

by Alex Rutherford

  He kicked his mount out in front of the rest of his men and then signalled them to wheel to make the frontal attack up the ridge. As they did so, twisting in the saddle Jahangir saw one rider and his chestnut horse crash to the ground, clearly having tried to turn too tightly. Another horse stumbled over the fallen chestnut, whose legs were thrashing the air as it tried to rise. Within moments both fallen mounts and their riders were submerged beneath the charge as it continued to gather pace despite the rising slope of the ridge.

  Crouched low over his white horse’s neck, with his sword Alamgir extended before him, Jahangir concentrated on avoiding the many rocks littering the slope. Then he heard a crackle and a hiss as a musket ball passed his ear. He was almost upon the first of the earth barricades. Slackening the reins, he urged his horse to jump the obstacle, which was barely three feet high. The horse stretched willingly and leapt. As he rose over the barricade, Jahangir slashed at a tall musketeer sheltering behind it who was desperately trying to reload, ramming a fresh ball down into the long barrel of his musket. He never completed his task. Jahangir’s heavy stroke caught him on the nape of his neck, crunching through bone and removing his head from his shoulders.

  Breathing hard, Jahangir was galloping on towards the crest of the ridge and what he assumed was Khusrau’s command tent, still about half a mile away, when suddenly his horse’s pace slackened. Glancing down, he saw two arrows protruding from its left flank. Crimson blood was already welling from the wounds to stain its white coat. Jahangir scarcely had time to think how lucky he had been – one of the arrows was embedded only an inch or two from his left knee – before the horse began to crumple and he had to throw himself from the saddle to avoid being crushed beneath it as it collapsed. Losing his helmet and his sword as he fell, he hit the stony ground with a thump which knocked most of the wind out of him.

  Rolling over and over, Jahangir attempted to curl himself into a ball and to protect his head with his gauntleted hands as he tried to avoid the hooves of the men who had followed him into the attack. Nevertheless, a flying hoof caught him a blow on his steel backplate before he came painfully to rest some distance down the slope against one of a group of jumbled rocks away from the charge of the horses and the main action. Dazed and with his ears ringing and his vision blurred, he was scrambling to his feet when he saw a man rise from the shelter of another group of dark rocks nearby and rush towards him brandishing a sword, clearly having recognised him and intent on the profit and glory his killing or capture would bring.

  Jahangir reached instinctively to his belt where his dagger had been in its jewelled scabbard. It was still there and he drew it quickly just as the man – a burly, rough-looking fellow wearing a black turban above a bushy beard – was upon him. Jahangir dodged his first attack but as he did so slipped and collapsed back to the ground. Gripping his heavy double-edged sword in both hands his assailant tried to bring it down into Jahangir’s neck with all the force he was capable of, but he was too hasty and his clumsy stroke caught Jahangir’s breastplate and skidded off, throwing the man off balance himself. Jahangir lashed out hard with his booted foot and felt a satisfying yielding of soft tissue as he caught his opponent full in the groin. The man dropped his weapon and doubled up, clutching at his battered, burning testicles.

  Seizing his advantage, Jahangir stuck his dagger twice into the hard muscle of his attacker’s bare calf, causing him to stagger sideways and fall. Scrambling across the dusty ground, Jahangir flung himself on him and buried the long dagger deep in his exposed throat just by his Adam’s apple. Blood spurted wildly for a moment and then the man lay motionless.

  Relieved but still on all fours and gasping for breath, Jahangir looked about him. Although it felt longer it was probably less than five minutes since he had fallen from his horse. Most of the fighting seemed to be going on further up the ridge. But then though his vision was still blurred he made out a mounted figure a little way off but fast approaching and, as far as he could discern, leading another horse. Jahangir rose unsteadily to his feet and tried to brace himself, ready for any new onslaught, but then he heard a familiar voice. ‘Jahangir, are you all right?’ It was Suleiman Beg.

  ‘Yes, I think so . . . Do you have any water?’

  Suleiman Beg held out a leather bottle towards him. Jahangir seized it in both hands, upended it and drank greedily.

  ‘You should not have been so reckless in the charge. You outdistanced me and your bodyguard. The emperor should not expose himself in such a way.’

  ‘It is my fight. My son has rebelled against my throne and it is my duty to crush him,’ Jahangir snapped, then added, ‘How is the battle going? Give me that spare horse. I must return to lead the attack once more.’

  ‘I brought it for you – and I retrieved your sword,’ said Suleiman Beg, extending both reins and weapon to Jahangir. ‘But are you really sure you’re all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jahangir said with more certainty than he felt. With Suleiman Beg’s help he clambered into the saddle of his new mount, a rangy chestnut. To his relief his head was clearing all the time, and followed by Suleiman Beg and several of his bodyguard who had regrouped around him he pushed forward again back up the ridge towards the fighting around the tents. Khusrau’s men were putting up stiff resistance. He could see horses rearing as their riders clashed with each other. Some of Khusrau’s horsemen, seemingly recognising Jahangir and Suleiman Beg, broke away from the fighting and galloped downhill to attack them, yelling ‘Khusrau zinderbad’, Long live Khusrau! One made directly for Jahangir. As he approached, riding wildly, arms and legs flailing, Jahangir saw it was a younger brother of Aziz Koka. As the youth came closer he aimed a great swinging stroke at Jahangir with his curved sword but the emperor ducked and the blade cut through empty air two inches above his head.

  As the impetus of his downhill charge carried the rider onwards, Jahangir twisted in the saddle and caught him with a hard backhand sword slash deep into the flesh and bone of his upper arm, almost severing the limb. Losing control of his mount, the youth careered downhill towards Jahangir’s camp until he was knocked from his saddle by a well-aimed shot from one of Jahangir’s musketeers, stationed by Ismail Amal behind the shelter of an overturned baggage wagon to protect the camp.

  Looking about him with eyes now as sharply focused as usual, Jahangir saw that the other attackers had either been despatched or had retreated back up the ridge. Several bodies were strewn on the ground. Nearby, spreadeagled on his back, was a tall, saffron-robed man with a grizzled beard. A lance protruded bloodily from his belly. Jahangir recognised Tuhin Singh, one of his most loyal bodyguards – a Rajput from his mother’s homeland of Amber. The man had guarded him for nearly a quarter of a century and now had given his life in battle for him. Only a few yards away, a slighter figure was twisting and writhing convulsively in the red dust, kicking his heels and clutching at his abdomen from which a skein of blue-red intestines was escaping. He was screaming in his agony for his mother. With a sharp intake of breath, Jahangir recognised the contorted beardless face as that of Imran, an even younger brother of Aziz Koka. He could be no more than thirteen years old and would surely never see another dawn.

  Fury at Khusrau, Aziz Koka and their fellow conspirators for causing so many deaths in their reckless hunger for power before their due time overwhelmed Jahangir. With a shout to Suleiman Beg and his bodyguard to follow, Jahangir kicked the chestnut up the slope. Soon he was smashing into the fray, hacking and cutting around him. A spray of warm blood from the neck of a rider he had struck with the full impact of his sword Alamgir caught him in the face and temporarily blinded him again. Quickly wiping away the blood with the sleeve of his tunic, he charged further into the heaving melee, surrounded by shouts and screams and the clash of weapon on weapon.

  The acrid smell of sweat and gunpowder smoke filled his nostrils and red dust in the air stung his eyes so that he could scarcely distinguish friend from foe. But he pushed onward with his bodyguard and Sul
eiman Beg in close attendance. With a final stroke of Alamgir, which caught one of Khusrau’s men full on the kneecap, cutting deep into cartilage and sinew and almost jolting the sword from his hand once more, Jahangir was through the first line of battle. Looking up he saw that Khusrau’s tents were now only four hundred yards away on the crest. However, as he watched, a large body of riders left them and disappeared down the other side of the ridge. As they went he saw – or thought he saw – Khusrau at their centre.

  ‘After them. The cowards are fleeing,’ he shouted to Suleiman Beg and his bodyguard, kicking the flanks of his chestnut mount as he did so. However, the animal was already blowing hard, nostrils flaring from its exertions in the previous fight, and unlike the fine white horse it had replaced it was not of the highest quality and stamina. By the time he reached the crest, Jahangir found that the fleeing group were already crashing into a line of his men stationed at the base of the ridge. After only a few moments, they burst through, losing only a single rider whose mount galloped on, reins dangling, after the rest who, still in close formation, were heading north across the plain.

  Kicking the chestnut on again, Jahangir set off in what in his heart he now thought would be a futile pursuit. His son was going to escape. Why hadn’t he allocated more of his reserve to forestall any break-out? Then to his intense relief he saw another band of horsemen with green Moghul banners – not the purple Khusrau claimed as his emblem – appear from the west on an interception course. Abdul Rahman too must have spotted the move and despatched them. They were closing fast on the escapees. Jahangir urged his tired horse on down the far slope of the ridge with Suleiman Beg and his bodyguards at his side. But even before he reached the bottom, Khusrau’s men had wheeled away from their pursuers and were galloping northeast, throwing up clouds of dust behind them. Then Jahangir saw four or five of Khusrau’s rearguard turn and waving their swords charge back towards Abdul Rahman’s force in a self-sacrificing attempt to buy more time for their comrades to escape.

  Before he had gone more than a few yards one of these brave men fell, arms outflung, from his black horse, hit by an arrow from one of the mounted archers Abdul Rahman had astutely included among the pursuers and Jahangir could just make out standing in their stirrups to loose off their weapons. The mount of another of Khusrau’s men crumpled to the ground moments later, pitching its rider over its head. The others continued their charge and crashed into Abdul Rahman’s leading horsemen who opened their ranks to receive and surround them, scarcely slackening their pace to do so. Less than a minute later Jahangir’s men were riding hard again, heads bent low over their horses’ necks, the bodies of several rebels and horses left sprawling in their wake. Khusrau’s followers had taken at least a couple of their enemies with them into the shadows of death, but their courage would not save Khusrau. Abdul Rahman’s men were now almost upon the fleeing group and two more of the rearguard, one carrying one of Khusrau’s purple banners, pitched from their horses, presumably the victims of the mounted archers. The foot of the banner-carrier caught in his stirrup and he was dragged through the red dust for a hundred yards, his purple standard fluttering behind him. Then the stirrup leather snapped and man and banner lay twisted and still.

  As Jahangir urged on his chestnut, which, thin flanks heaving, was blowing ever more deeply in pursuit of the action, he saw Khusrau’s men swerve aside once more but then come to a sudden stop near an isolated clump of scrubby trees. At first he thought they had decided to stand and fight but then through the dust billowing around them he caught the glint of discarded weapons lying on the ground. Having sacrificed so many others, like Aziz Koka’s young brothers and the brave men who had attacked Abdul Rahman’s vanguard, they were surrendering in an attempt to save their worthless lives. They would come to regret their decision not to die like men on the battlefield, Jahangir thought grimly as he dug his heels into the chestnut to squeeze from it its last ounce of strength.

  ‘Bring them before me.’

  With the sweat of the fight still warm on him and anger still hot in his heart, Jahangir watched from the shade of the clump of trees as his soldiers dragged Khusrau, his commander-in-chief Aziz Koka and his master of horse, Hassan Jamal, forward and pushed them to their knees in front of him. Though the other two did not dare raise their eyes to the emperor, Khusrau was looking imploringly at his father. Beyond them, hands already bound behind their backs with strips of cloth ripped from their garments or saddle blankets, were the thirty or so of Khusrau’s men who had surrendered with him. Jahangir’s soldiers were shoving them roughly to the ground. Among them Jahangir suddenly recognised a tall, muscular man, his beard dyed red with henna. He remembered glimpsing him during the battle, a smile on his face, thrusting tauntingly with his lance at a young soldier who, knocked from his horse, was lying helpless and terrified in front of him, before finally impaling the youth through the abdomen.

  Such a furious rage seized Jahangir that for a moment he could hardly think. When he could it was about how he could punish such callous rebels sufficiently harshly. Then it came to him. For generations the Moghuls had executed the worst of offenders – child murderers, rapists and the like – by impaling them on stakes. His great-grandfather Babur, the first Moghul emperor, had done it with rebels and robbers too – that was the punishment these men should suffer. Despite the chance to surrender they had continued in rebellion, impaling those who were little more than boys on their lance points. Let them understand what impalement felt like. Let them suffer terror and pain. It would be only just. Without reflecting further he yelled to his soldiers in a voice hoarse with anger, ‘Cut stakes from these trees with your swords or battleaxes. Drive them into the ground. Sharpen them as best as you can or tie lances to them and impale these traitors on them. Do it and do it now! Leave only my son and these, his two chief accomplices. Let them watch their men’s agonies before they learn their own fate. Anticipation of what is to come may instil into them a little understanding of the suffering they have inflicted on others.’

  As his soldiers rushed to obey, some hacking at the trees with battleaxes, others digging at the ground with whatever implements they could improvise, including helmets, to make holes for the stakes while yet others seized hold of the captives and started hauling them across the ground, Jahangir felt Suleiman Beg’s hand on his arm. Even before his milk-brother could speak Jahangir said, ‘No, Suleiman Beg, it must be. They have brought it on themselves. They showed no mercy. Neither will I. I must make an example.’

  Jahangir saw Khusrau, still on his knees, watching with an expression of abject terror. At the thought of his son’s treachery, of the needless sacrifice of so many good men, it was all he could do not to fall on Khusrau with his bare hands. After what seemed only about five minutes four of Jahangir’s men lifted the first of the wildly kicking and struggling prisoners – a thick-set, hairy man whom they had stripped of most of his clothing – high in the air. Then using all their strength they brought his body down on one of the hastily erected stakes and lances. As the hard point penetrated his soft flesh near his rectum, his screams – more animal than human – split the air. Spurting blood reddened the ground as, with Jahangir’s men pulling on the prisoner’s legs, the stake emerged near his breastbone. Then as more rebels were impaled the stink of ruptured guts and of the excrement of terrified men who, on the brink of death, had lost control of their bowels began to rise. But Jahangir, still burning with his own anger and intent on harsh justice, barely noticed.

  Now was the time for Khusrau to witness close up the horrors for which his ambition was responsible. He strode forward and seizing his kneeling son by his shoulders pulled him roughly to his feet. ‘See what you have done. These men are only suffering because of you. Walk through the stakes . . . go on,’ he shouted, thrusting his face into Khusrau’s. Then, releasing his son, he gave him a shove towards the stakes. But Khusrau, his arms wrapped tightly around himself and his eyes closed, attempted to turn away. Immediately Jahangir
shouted to some of his bodyguards. ‘Walk him past all the stakes and back again. Take your time. Make sure he looks at the bodies . . .’

  Straight away two guards seized Khusrau by his arms and propelled him towards the stakes. With each step Khusrau’s head drooped lower but every few paces his escort halted right in front of one of his dying supporters, writhing and kicking on a stake and in doing so impaling himself further, and one of the soldiers pulled back Khusrau’s head by his hair, forcing him to look. But Khusrau had clearly had enough. Jahangir saw his son sag in the soldiers’ arms and then collapse to the ground. He guessed he had fainted. ‘Enough! Bring my son back here, together with Aziz Koka and Hassan Jamal.’

  A few moments later, Jahangir surveyed the three men on their knees before him again. Khusrau’s long dark hair was wet from the contents of the water bottle one of the guards had thrown over him to revive him. He was deathly pale, trembling violently and looked about to vomit. Raising his voice to make himself heard over the shrieks of agony still rising from the surrounding stakes where the remaining rebels were still being impaled, Jahangir spoke. ‘You are all guilty of the worst crime a subject can commit against his emperor – armed rebellion. You—’

  ‘I am not just a subject . . . I am your son . . .’ Khusrau pleaded, his once handsome young face a mask of absolute terror.

  ‘Silence! Ask yourself whether you have behaved like a son before you claim the rights of a son. You deserve no better treatment than those creatures for whose torment you, not I, are responsible, or the two men beside you. Aziz Koka, Hassan Jamal, you once swore loyalty to me but you broke your bond.’ They stared up at him helplessly, their eyes rolling in fear as he went on, ‘Expect no mercy, for I have none to give. You have acted with the treachery and heedless ambition of men but also with the blind stupidity of beasts. To symbolise your base animal natures, you will be taken to Lahore where in the bazaar you will be stripped naked and sewn into the freshly flayed skins of an ass and an ox. Then, seated backwards on the backs of asses, you will be paraded through the city streets in the heat of the day so that my loyal subjects may witness your shame and understand how ridiculous were your pretensions to overthrow me.’