What is a “Military Despatch”?
Before the article can proceed, this is a question that needs to be resolved. Unlike the terms “war diaries”, “regiment diaries”, “war letters” or “divisional records”, the term “military despatch” is not so self-explanatory. To understand what a despatch is, it must first be understood that they are one of the most valuable sources available to historians for the study of a battle, campaign or the like. This is because a despatch is, usually, a very matter of fact and true to detail account of how a battle, campaign or war played out.
It is perhaps best to think of a despatch as a report. After the end of a battle or campaign, the senior-most officer in charge writes a report to the officer above him and provides the details on how the battle was conducted, how the battle was won or lost, how many men were killed or injured on both sides, what unit did what and what officer did what. Unlike something like war diaries, which often fall prey to subjective analysis of the recorder, a despatch remains true to facts. While there are certainly despatches that exaggerate victory or understate the number of friendly casualties, the majority remain a good objective source for the historian.
This is due to a number of reasons, the chief of which being the fact that despatches are rarely – if ever – meant to be seen by anyone outside the armed forces. This was doubly true in Early Modern Europe and India, when military despatches were almost exclusively read by officers and the ruling monarch. As such, they cannot serve as pieces of propaganda in an ongoing campaign and there is little reason for the officers compiling them to lie, exaggerate or bend the truth. While this is not a rule of thumb and there are certainly examples which run opposed to this practice, the majority of despatches subscribe to this principle.1
One of these is the collection of military despatches of Tale Yar Khan, a Mughal general.2 Tale Yar Khan, better known as Uday Raj, was a Rajput general who fought for the Mughal Army and was the Mughal officer in charge of overseeing Jai Singh’s armies, taking part in and commanding forces in the various campaigns against Shivaji and in the Deccan in general. Over this article and the next, we will explore the Mughal Empire’s wars in the Deccan through the analysis of Uday Raj’s various, lengthy and detailed despatches.
The Capture of Purandar:
The Mughal siege of and capture of Purandar, an important Maratha fort, in 1665 was a momentous occasion in the Maratha War of Independence. Along with capturing Purandar, the armies of Jai Singh also took prisoner the rebel king, Shivaji. The resultant Treaty of Purandar saw Shivaji turn over all 23 of his fortresses to the Mughal Empire and, to prevent his execution, Shivaji agreed to lead his Maratha Army into the Kingdom of Bijapur, beside Jai Singh’s Rajput Army, to neutralise the rebellious state for the Mughal Empire. Now follows a couple excerpts from Uday Raj’s despatch about the siege. The account is not only of the siege of Purandar, but of the whole campaign against Shivaji in 1665, as such Uday Raj makes reference to multiple events which predate the siege.
An Exchange of Letters:
“When he [Shivaji] sent a long Hindi letter with a trusted officer named Karmaji, and the latter repeatedly entreated me saying ‘To please listen only once to the contents of this letter and condescend to grant an answer’. I listened to what Shivaji had written. Its purport was ‘I am a useful servant of Imperial Household, and many services can he secured from my humble self. If the Mughal army turns to the invasion of Bijapur, such a course would be better than undergoing the many hard-ships (of campaigning) in this hilly region (i-e. Konkan) of difficult paths and stony sod”. I wrote in answer to Shivaji ‘The imperial army, countless like the stars, has been appointed in the South against you. Do not put your faith in your hills and stony country. God willing, it will be trodden flat with the dust by the hoofs of the wind-paced chargers of the imperial army.”3
“After getting this sort of reply, he repeatedly sent me (further) letters. … he proposed to pay tribute and cede one or two places, which I did not deem valuable. My reply was the same as the one he had received (before). Eventually our troops captured the fort of Rudramal [Purandar], and I divided my army, sending Daud Khan and Rajah Rai Singh to plunder Shivaji’s country and appointing one party to guard the camp and to patrol it, and another party’ to forge and patrol [outside the camp] – who were to remain constantly in the saddle – so that the soldiers in the siege-trenches in peace of mind worked their hardest to accomplish their task, and I as far as possible looked after every place.”
The Capture of Purandar:
“As the result (of the patrols and trenches) at this time Shivaji declared publicly; ‘While Daud Khan and Rai Singh were out riding, often as I planned to go and destroy the trenches by an attack, I found the [Mughal] soldiers so ready and prepared that if I had made my way into [their lines] my return to Raigarh would have been very difficult’.’”
“In short, as the siege of the fort was effectively conducted, five towers and one battlement were captured by us, his country was plundered by our cavalry, his troops collected in such a long time were seduced by us— because I had at this time by giving passports and promises of safety summoned to myself many of his cavalry and induced them to enter the imperial service with proper mansubs (military rank) and stipends of 10 or 15 (rupees), and (by giving them) 10 or 20 rupees above the promised rate in cash from the treasury.”4
Conclusions:
This section is indicative of the Mughal Army’s siege tactics. Seen also during the 1689 siege of Bombay, this further confirms that the Mughal Army – when conducting a siege – did not storm their objective until they were absolutely sure of victory. Furthermore, it also gives us a clearer picture on how the Mughal Army conducted a siege. As also seen in Bombay, the Mughals would entrench themselves at the outskirts of the fort or city they had an interest in. Then, they would dig a vast network of trenches in which infantrymen and artillery guns would sit, with cavalry acting as a sort of rapid reaction force to discourage any attempt by the enemy to disrupt the trench network.5
Further in the despatches, especially when detailing the campaign against Bijapur, Uday Raj gives use the minute details on the siege tactics used by the Mughal Army at the time. But more on that in the next article.
- The most prominent of these “false” military despatches can probably be found in the Second World War. Late in the war, the General Staff of Nazi Germany began falsifying the despatches and reports that would be read by Hitler and his cabinet. A good example of this is the false reports sent by even junior General officers to the German General Staff in preparation for Operation Wacht Am Rhein – Germany’s 1944 offensive into Belgium. The Soviets too, for entirely different reasons, were guilty of such practices. It must be said, despite the boastful propaganda put out by Pakistan in its various disastrous wars with India, the military despatches remained true to fact – though they never saw the light of day, outside of publications such as Brigadier Saliq’s Witness to Surrender (1975). ↩︎
- See Jagdish Narayan Sarkar, Haft Anjuman or The Military Despatches of a Seventeenth Century Indian General (SBA; 1969). ↩︎
- A Note on the Translation: The original translation by Sarkar falls prey to two issues. The first is that the text pre-translation itself uses many colloquialisms and Persian names for places known by other names today. To make matters worse, Sarkar uses language of the time of his writing to make clear the issues brought up by the primary sources. Both these put together mean that the modern reader may be rendered fairly confused when reading through this account. ↩︎
- Some clarification: The muddled and antiquated language used here may be confusing to the modern reader. Here, Uday Raj boasts of drawing away Shivaji’s reinforcements through the promise of providing them with a better rank and pay than Shivaji could manage. This is not uncommon and remains an important tactic of the era, not just of the Mughal Empire but across the world. This also very famously was the reason almost 200 European soldiers deserted the Armies of the East India Company during the 1689 Siege of Bombay. ↩︎
- The Marathas, at this time, had no profinciency in artillery. They would, later, develop a large force of artillery that would become a fearsome threat on the battlefield. But, in the early years, they had no answer to the Mughal artillery and could only rely on quick cavalry charges to run down the gunners. ↩︎
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