Babur at Panipat 1526: Wagon Forts, Cannon and Lodi's Panicked Elephants

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Babur, a Timurid prince born in the Fergana Valley and descended from Timur and Genghis Khan, repeatedly won and lost Samarkand before the Uzbek ruler Muhammad Shaybani drove him from his homeland by 1504. From Kabul he turned southeast into the Punjab. The Delhi Sultanate under Ibrahim Lodi was fracturing, and Daulat Khan Lodi, governor of the Punjab, invited Babur to invade, expecting him to plunder and leave as Timur had in 1398. Babur instead took Sialkot and Dipalpur, installed Ibrahim's uncle Alam Khan as a proxy, regrouped in Kabul, and crossed the Indus again at the end of 1525 to march on Delhi.

At Panipat in April 1526, Babur had about 12,000 men, matchlock muskets and 15 to 20 cannon against a Lodi army of 50,000 to 70,000 with around 1,000 war elephants. He anchored his right on the town, dug a trench filled with trees on his left, and lashed 700 carts with rawhide ropes across his front, using the Ottoman araba system with breastworks for musketeers and gaps for cavalry sorties. On April 21 Lodi attacked into the funnel. The artillery, under the Ottoman master Ustad Ali Quli, panicked the elephants into trampling their own infantry while Babur's horse archers enveloped the army. Ibrahim Lodi died with at least 20,000 of his men, and Babur went on to win at Khanwa in 1527 and the Ghaghara in 1529, founding the Mughal Empire.

• By 1519 Babur's expeditions had reached as far as the Chenab River.
• Before Babur arrived in 1524, Ibrahim Lodi had already driven Daulat Khan out of the Punjab, voiding the alliance.
• The gaps in Babur's wagon line were measured to let 150 riders pass at a time.
• Babur waited behind his fortifications for more than a week before Lodi committed to attack.
• The encircling cavalry move was the Central Asian tactic known as the tulughma.