2 Of this march there is a detailed and most interesting account given by Bábar in his Memoirs, page 290, and the pages following.
3 Sirsáwá lies on the south bank of the Jumna, ten miles west-north-west of Saháranpur.
Nine days later Ibráhím Lodí, at the head of an army computed by Bábar to have been a hundred thousand strong, attacked the invader in his intrenched camp. 'The sun had mounted spear-high,' writes Bábar, 'when the onset of the battle began, and the combat lasted till midday, when the enemy were completely broken and routed.' The victory was in all respects decisive. Ibráhím Lodí was killed, bravely fighting, and Hindustán lay at the feet of the victor. That very day Bábar despatched troops to occupy Delhi and Agra. These results were accomplished on the 24th of April and 4th of May respectively.4
4 In his Memoirs, Bábar, after recounting how, from comparatively small beginnings, he had become conqueror 'of the noble country of Hindustán,' adds: 'This success I do not ascribe to my own strength, nor did this good fortune flow from my own efforts, but from the fountain of the favour and mercy of God.'
CHAPTER V
THE POSITION OF BÁBAR IN HINDUSTÁN
Master of the two great centres of power in the north-west, Bábar, with the foresight of a statesman, 'took stock' of the actual situation of Hindustán. He realised at once that he was master of Northern India, and that was all. The important provinces of Oudh, Jaunpur, and Western Behar, had revolted against Ibráhím, and though that prince had sent an army against the revolters, it seemed but too certain that the two parties would make common cause against the new invader. Then, Bengal, under its King, Nasrat Sháh; Gujarát, under Sikandar Sháh; and Málwá, under Sultán Mahmúd, were three powerful and independent kingdoms. A portion of Málwá, indeed, that represented by the fortresses, Ranthambor, at the angle formed by the confluence of the Chambal and the Banás; Sarangpur, on the Kálí Sind; Bhilsa, on the Betwá; Chanderi; and Chitor, very famous in those days, had been re-conquered by the renowned Hindu prince, Ráná Sanga. In the south of India, too, the Báhmanís had established a kingdom, and the Rájá of Vijayanagar exercised independent authority. There were, moreover, he found, a considerable number of Ráis and Rájás who had never submitted to Muhammadan kings.
But the independence of these several princes did not, he soon recognised, constitute his greatest difficulty. That difficulty arose from the fact that the Hindu population, never conciliated by the families which had preceded his own, were hostile to the invader. 'The north of India,' writes Erskine, 'still retained much of its Hindu organisation; its system of village and district administration and government; its division into numerous little chieftainships, or petty local governments; and, in political revolutions, the people looked much more to their own immediate rulers than to the prince who governed in the capital.' In a word, never having realised the working of a well-ordered system, emanating from one all-powerful centre, they regarded the latest conqueror as an intruder whom it might be their interest to oppose.