“By early March, 1.5 million men, arguably the largest army in Indian history, have massed around Delhi and have entrenched themselves in Delhi in the Mughal encampments specially built to fight Nader Shah in Karnal. Nader Shah has only 150,000 men, but they are battle-hardened veterans. They fought and defeated both the Russians and the Ottomans. Nader Shah isn’t interested to conquer India; he wants – as he says – to “pluck a few golden feathers from the Mughal peacock’s tail”. And that he does. So he brings his 150,000 veterans and he has this secret weapon the Mughals don’t know about, which is the latest military gizmo, which is called the “swivel gun” and it’s basically a large geissele, like a mini canon which sends an enormous slug and his great innovation, a very simple thing, he’s built a tripod which you attach to your horse’s bridle and you can move this great geissele around the battlefield. So it’s like an ancestor of the tank.
And the Mughals, he lures out of their encampment and they line up over five miles of the plains in Karnal, and they are in battle dress, they’ve got heavy armour on, and their lances are shining in the sun. It’s March, it’s perfect weather, and this long line of cavalry go into a trot, and then a gallop, and then do a full scale charge against this tiny block that was retreating in front of them, and at the last minute, the light Persion cavalry part in the middle, like a curtain as they were trained to do, revealing this line of stationary swivel guns into which the Mughals are charging. And it’s over in five minutes. The swivel gun can penetrate any armour that the Mughals have, and the whole of the Mughal chivalry are wiped out in five minutes flat.”
You might be forgiven for mistaking this as a scene out of Game of Thrones, but it was merely celebrated novelist William Dalrymple holding his audience in thrall as he took them time travelling on a hunt for the famed Kohinoor diamond. On the closing day of the DLF, Dalrymple took the main stage, after an introduction by poet and DLF director Sadaf Saaz, and proceeded to turn the audience into history buffs with his presentation. Dalrymple’s latest nonfiction book Kohinoor: The Story of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond, jointly written with Anita Anand, was released this year, and provides a fascinating look into the rise and fall of empires, influenced by this one important gemstone.
Thursday, April 25, 2024
