It was not a very distinguished campaign but it was his first. Perhaps it was as well it was uneventful for he was busy working his small army into something like discipline. Therein, he saw clearly, boy as he was, lay success; without it, there was nothing but one long succession of isolated raids, incoherent, useless, leaving the people ready, as they had been in the beginning, for a new, and yet another new conqueror.
It was something, therefore, when in the next spring, he found himself able to restrain his troops and to punish severely many straggling Moghuls who had been guilty of great excesses in the different villages through which they had passed. It was an unheard-of idea, but it had a marked effect; for shortly afterwards when his camp was close to a place called Yâm, a number of persons, both traders and others, came in from the town to buy and sell, and somehow, about afternoon prayer-time a general hubbub arose during which every shop and every stranger was plundered. Yet an order that no person should presume to detain any part of the effects or property thus seized, but that the whole should be restored without reserve before the first watch of the next day was over, resulted in not one bit of thread or a broken needle being kept by the army!
It was a glorious victory for pure ethics and quite repaid Babar for having to remain for six weeks outside Samarkand. Besides, the peach gardens were in full bloom. It was curious going out into the pleasure ground of the city, to slash, and hack, and hew, and kill! But there was no other way for it, and many were the sharp skirmishes that took place with the townspeople where folk as a rule had been wont to disport themselves on holidays. But in war-time things got upside down; witness the dastardly deceit of the Lover's Cave where five of Babar's most active men were killed. Seduced by a treacherous promise to deliver up the fort if a party came thither by night, a picked troop was chosen for the service, with this result.
It rankled bitterly in the young commander's heart; he felt himself at fault for his greatest weakness--an inveterate habit of believing what he heard.
Yet he had his consolations. Day by day, as he waited, doing his best with the small force at his command to cut off the supplies from the city, the number of townspeople and traders who came out to traffic in the camp bazaar increased, until it became like a city and you could find there whatever is procurable in towns. And day by day, the inhabitants of the country around came in and surrendered themselves, their castles, their lands, high and low. Only the city of Samarkand held out. It was in the end of September and the sun was entering the Balance, when Babar, weary of waiting, made a feint march to the rear and the garrison of Samarkand, jumping to the conclusion that he was in retreat, rushed out in great number, both soldiers and citizens. Then orders were given to the cavalry in reserve to charge on both flanks; whereupon God prospering the proceeding, the enemy were decisively defeated; nor from that time forward did they ever again venture on a rally. No! though Babar's soldiers advanced through the now leafless peach gardens to the very ditch and carried off numbers of prisoners close under the walls.
And still fair Samarkand stood secure. Seven whole months had the blockade lasted, and now the winter's cold was coming on to aid the garrison. In addition, the great Turkhestân raider Shaibâni Khân was said to be on his way with a large force to intervene in the quarrel. Both dangers had to be faced. Babar felt, in view of the first, that he must cantoon his men, and set to work marking out the ground for the huts and trenches; so, leaving labourers and overseers to go on with the work, he returned to his camp. None too soon, for the very next morning a hostile army showed to the north. It must be Shaibâni, prince of Free-lances!
Nothing dismayed, by the fact that fully half his soldiers were away seeking winter quarters, Babar put the forces he had with him in array, and marched out to meet the enemy. Boldness met with its reward. Shaibâni withdrew, and after giving the young King some nights of sleepless anxiety went back whence he came, and Baisanghâr, disappointed in relief, resigned himself to despair and fled accompanied by two or three hundred naked and starving followers.
"In the whole habitable world are few cities so pleasantly situated as Samarkand." So wrote Babar when at the age of fifteen he found himself met as King by the chief men of the city, by the nobles, by the young cavaliers, and escorted to the Garden-Palace where Baisanghâr had lived. It was a great relief to him that his cousin had escaped, indeed he had taken no precautions to prevent his doing so. Babar's quarrel was not with him, but with his claim, and as the lad--for he was but a lad still--sat that night under the roof which had sheltered the deposed prince, he told himself he had been right when he had said to Dearest-One that Baisanghâr would never make a king. There were no signs of kingship in that Garden-Palace. No plans or sketches, no dry-as-dust schedules. Not one of the papers and models such as he, Babar, already carried with him. Only a lute, a dulcimer, some dice-boxes. Not even luxury! Poor Baisanghâr! Rightly had he called himself an unsubstantial shadow. His poetry was the best part of him; and his painting.
Babar sitting alone in the alcoved room which Baisanghâr had evidently left in a hurry, lay back among the cushions of the divan and thrust his hand beneath them to adjust them to his head. There was something hard beneath their softness. He drew it out and found a small square frame. Of gold--no! it was green enamel and on it were set, like flowers, turquoises, rubies, amethysts, topazes.
Why did it remind him of the spring meadows about Andijân? The spring meadows set with forget-me-nots and tulips? It was a bit too dark where he was to see the pale painting it held, so he rose and took it to the light.