]

Meanwhile Hemu remained at Delhi, amusing himself with the new title
of Raja which he had assumed, and engaged in collecting troops. When,
however, he heard that Akbar had reached Sirhind, he despatched his
artillery to Panipat, fifty-three miles to the north of Delhi,
intending to follow himself with the infantry and cavalry. But, on
his side, Akbar was moving from Sirhind towards the same place. More
than that, he had taken the precaution to despatch in advance a force
of ten thousand horsemen, under the command of Ali Kuli
Khan-i-Shaibani, the general who had fought with Tardi Beg against
Hemu at Delhi, and who had condemned his too hasty retirement.[2] Ali
Kuli rode as far as Panipat, and noting there the guns of Hemu's
army, unsupported, he dashed upon them and captured them all. {69}
For this brilliant feat of arms he was created a Khan Zaman, by which
he is henceforth known in history. This misfortune greatly depressed
Hemu, for, it is recorded, the guns had been obtained from Turkey,
and were regarded with great reverence. However, without further
delay, he pressed on to Panipat.

[Footnote 2: Blochmann's _Ain-i-Akbari_, p. 319.]

Akbar and Bairam were marching on to the plains of Panipat on the
morning of the 5th of November, 1556, when they sighted the army of
Hemu moving towards them. The thought must, I should think, have been
present in the mind of the young prince that just thirty years before
his grandfather, Babar, had, on the same plain, struck down the house
of Lodi, and won the empire of Hindustan. He was confronted now by
the army of the usurper, connected by marriage with that House of Sur
which had expelled his own father. The battle, he knew, would be the
decisive battle of the century. But, prescient as he was, he could
not foresee that it would prove the starting-point for the
establishment in India of a dynasty which would last for more than
two hundred years, and would then require another invasion from the
north, and another battle of Panipat to strike it down; the advent of
another race of foreigners from an island in the Atlantic to efface
it.

Hemu had divided his army into three divisions. In front marched the
five hundred elephants, each bestridden by an officer of rank, and
led by Hemu, on his own favourite animal, in person. He dashed first
against the advancing left wing of the Mughals and {70} threw it into
disorder, but as his lieutenants failed to support the attack with
i