First Battle of Panipat
The First Battle of Panipat was fought between the invading forces of Babur and the Lodi Empire. Which took place on 21 April 1526 in North India. It marked the beginning of the Mughal Empire. This was one of the earliest battles involving gunpowderfirearms and field artillery.
Details
In 1526, the Mughal forces of Babur, the Timurid ruler of Kabulistan, defeated the much larger ruling army of Ibrahim Lodi,Sultan of Delhi. The battle was fought on 21 April near the small village of Panipat, in the present day Indian state of Haryana. an area that has been the site of a number of decisive battles for the control of Northern India since the twelfth century.
Babur estimated Lodi had around 100,000 men, though that number included camp followers, while the fighting force was around 30,000 to 40,000 men in total, along with at least 1000 war elephants.
Advantage of Cannons in the Battle
However a reading of the contemporary sources show that more than the gun. It was the tactics which helped in winning the day. The new war tactics introduced by Babur were the tulughma and the araba. Tulughma meant dividing the whole army into various units, viz. the Left, the Right and the Centre.
Ibrahim Lodi died on the field of battle, abandoned by his feudatories and generals (many of whom were mercenaries). Most of them changed their allegiance to the new master of Delhi. However had Sultan Ibrahim survived another hour of fighting he would have won. Babur had no reserves and his troops were rapidly tiring.
