East-1644: Panipat
“Let terror be my right hand, and panic my left, and I shall destroy any army on this earth.”-the Shatterer of Armies
As the rains clear, Chandragupta faces three threats, the Romano-Persians, the Sikhs, and the Vijayanagari. In terms of weight, the latter far outweighs the first two, while the Sikhs by themselves can defend themselves but otherwise don’t have the numbers to be more than a nuisance. Joined up with the Romano-Persians though they can be much more of a problem. A key advantage is that the Vijayanagari are much further away from Chandragupta’s power base than the Romano-Persian-Sikhs, and while their fist is heavy, there is a question over whether their arm can reach this far. So Chandragupta reasons that he can throw his whole strength west to deal with those enemies, pivoting to meet the Vijayanagari as needed afterwards.
Aside from the formidable and massive human material of his realm, marching west in his army are 13,500 soldiers from Triune Bengal, eleven thousand Bengalis and the remainder Europeans. The Viceroy, Lord Thomas Howard, is a new appointee, product of the shift to English administration. He is not enthusiastic about the provision of troops. At this stage he sees no indication that Odysseus and Iskandar are a threat to Bengal, just Awadh.
However he expects that Chandragupta will win out over the duo, and then the following battle between Awadh and Vijayanagar will go either way, but with Awadh holding the home-field advantage. A victorious Venkata Raya is a menace to Bengal; a victorious and betrayed Chandragupta is an existential threat. So he sends the soldiers as asked.
Chandragupta’s first task is to ensure that the Romano-Persians and Sikhs don’t link up. Used to skirmishing with the Sikhs, flying columns stationed on the frontier at positions well placed to go into action quickly set to work. With more resources devoted to the task than usual, they are able to harry the Sikhs and drive them back into their strongholds. They don’t have the strength to seize them, but they effectively mask the fortresses. Ranjit Singh leads a Sikh force that does meet up with Odysseus and Iskandar, but it’s only three thousand strong as opposed to the ten thousand originally promised.
Meanwhile Chandragupta veers to the north of the Sikh domains with his main army, planning to deal with the westerners before the Sikhs. The numbers that Chandragupta commands here are unknown and fiercely debated, some estimates going as high as the insane 900,000. Yet even the most conservative elements, putting his combatants at 120000 to 150000, means the Romano-Persians are outnumbered 2.5-3 to 1.
Lord Howard believes that Odysseus and Iskandar are both capable men, but also young ones who’ve had a string of successes which have gone to their heads and have no idea of what they’re really facing. However the two are aware of the numerical odds against them, with frequent and accurate reports from their scouts, although the tale that Iskandar responded to the tally with a quote from Alaric that “the thicker the hay, the easier the mowing” may be apocryphal.
The two hosts meet at the city of Panipat, so often the scene of armed clashes between invaders and defenders of the land of India. The Romano-Persians arrive first, anchoring their right wing on the city itself and protecting their center with a series of wagons and ditches, heavily bolstered by artillery. The left is covered by some ditches, although not to the extent of the center. The area is relatively open, although it lacks the volume to allow Chandragupta’s army to fully deploy.
It is rather obvious that Odysseus and Iskandar want Chandragupta to attack and have picked ground that favors them. Chandragupta would prefer to not oblige them, but his options are limited. He could try to maneuver around them to force the Romano-Persians out of their position, but his great host is necessarily ungainly, and repositioning in close proximity to an alert and skilled enemy without exposing some vulnerability is not easy. On October 2, a strike force led by Ranjit Singh of 1000 Sikhs and 1000 Romano-Persians surprises an outlying detachment and wrecks it. The six hundred casualties are a pinprick compared to the size of his armament, but they are a warning of the dangers.
If he maneuvered around them, he would have to give them a wide berth. The best way to get the Romano-Persians to move would be to get behind them and threaten their supply lines to the Punjab, but to do so would uncover his own supply lines. Given its comparatively small size and the fertility of the country, the Romano-Persian army can live off the land for at least a short time even if it remains stationary. Chandragupta’s is far too large to do the same.
He could split his army, but Chandragupta respects the capabilities of the commanders and men he is facing. He wants numerical superiority when he goes into battle, and the bigger the margin the better. Splitting his army would create two smaller forces, both of which would still have numerical superiority, but a smaller margin than he would like, and clearly open him up to being defeated in detail.
There is also the issue of time. He cannot afford to be stationed in the northwest forever. While his belief that the Vijayanagari host will take time to muster and march north is accurate, Venkata Raya has a rapid response force of 12,000 Rajput cavalry backed up by 6,000 Gurkha mounted infantry. That is already in action in Awadh’s southern territory, wreaking havoc in the area.
After a council of war with his generals, Chandragupta decides to attack here. Given the smaller size and superior maneuverability of the Romano-Persians, it is most likely they would get to choose the battlefield anyway. Chandragupta’s army is here in full strength, fresh with little of the sapping that campaigns do. Delay is unlikely to improve the situation, and likely to make it worse.
The battle begins on the morning of October 5. After an artillery duel where Chandragupta’s quantity and the Romano-Persians’ quality largely cancel each other out, the Awadh army moves forward. On the Romano-Persian right wing, the action is restricted to skirmishing. In the center a powerful attack is mounted, but its primary goal is not to break through the enemy lines but to keep the defenders pinned in place. The main event is on the Romano-Persian left wing where Chandragupta uses his much superior numbers to try and outflank Odysseus and Iskandar.
The Romano-Persian left is refused to make it harder to flank, and both armies gradually stretch to the side as the Awadh try to outflank and the Romano-Persians work to block them. The fighting here is primarily with cavalry, with action ebbing and flowing as units charge, retire, reform, and charge again. The Awadh have superior numbers but skilled cooperation between the Romano-Persian cavalry and mounted infantry hold them at bay, but they are hard pressed. Thinking that just one more big push will break them, and tired of this scuttling-sideways-like-a-crab maneuver, the Awadh commander commits his reserve.
The attack forces back the Romano-Persian line but does not break it, and now all Awadh forces in the area are committed while the Romano-Persians still have their reserve. The Awadh advance has opened up a small gap in their formations and the Romano-Persians ram their elite reserve squadrons, husbanded for such a moment, through the gap, Michael Pirokolos leading the charge. These are 1600 heavy cavalry, Roman kataphraktoi and Persian lancers, the best heavy shock cavalry in Rhomania and Persia, heavily armored, mounted on big horses, in perfect formation and completely fresh. They maul their disorganized, tired, less armored and smaller-mounted opponents. Behind the lancers come 2000 lighter cavalry, including the Sikh horse under Ranjit Singh, to exploit the breach.
The Awadh numbers suddenly count against them as their struck formations reel back in shock and horror, piling into their neighbors, who are confused and alarmed by the sudden shift. They thought they were winning, and suddenly their comrades are flying in panic out of the dusty gloom and crashing into their own flanks. And then their pursuers come storming out as well, roaring triumphant battle cries.
It seems like these towering monsters, a half-ton of flesh and steel gleaming in the sun, are coming straight at them, their lances dripping blood from previous victims. Lancers, when running down smaller opponents like foot soldiers, spit them like fish on their lances. With a deft wrist maneuver, they can typically slide the body off the lance and swing the point back up, ready to impale the next victim. It goes against literally every survival instinct burned into human psychology over eons of evolution to stand and face such horrors.
The Romano-Persian cavalry at this point are facing a foe that outnumbers them somewhere on the order of ten-to-one, but the Awadh soldiers don’t know that. They are shocked and confused, demoralized by the panic of their fleeing comrades, and the Romano-Persian cavalry know how to exploit panic. They keep up the attack, giving their enemies no rest, no respite, no moment to calm down and realize their huge numerical superiority. The sheer audacity of the attack convinces the victims that there must be more assailants than there really are, and so they flee, crashing into their comrades further down the line, sparking the process all over again.
Odysseus, seeing the opportunity, thins the forces on the firing line to feed the attack, which continues toppling over the Awadh ranks, rolling up the line. Most of the bulk is provided by the Awadh themselves, with formations continuing to pile into each other. The Romano-Persian cavalry calls change from battle cries to hunting calls as they drive the enemy before them. The mass of Awadh troops piled together also presents excellent targets for the artillery, further sowing chaos and fear.
Chandragupta tries to stem the onslaught by feeding in his own reserves, but the traffic jam makes it take too long to get them into action. By then the panic has a momentum of its own and there is nothing stopping it. Despite no numerical advantage, the Romano-Persian right wing advances, driving away its now-skittish assailants and wheeling inward, pouring flanking fire into the Awadh center where Chandragupta’s army is getting packed.
It is almost another Cannae, except the Carthaginians here have cannons. The Romano-Persians don’t completely surround the Awadh army; they won’t risk thinning their lines that much. But they pour in fire from three sides, the bodies piling up in heaps. In some areas the dead are not slain by bullets, but by asphyxiation from being packed so tightly. Chandragupta escapes with much of his reserves and the army units stationed in the rear ranks, but his host has been wrecked.
‘Bloody’ is an understatement for the battle of Panipat. The Romano-Persians take eight thousand casualties, about 15% of their total forces. Two of the casualties are notably both Odysseus and Iskandar, each of whom are struck by spent bullets and suffer substantial bruising, although nothing more serious. However Awadh losses are literally close to an order of magnitude larger, with about sixty thousand casualties, the bulk in the slaughterhouse on the concentrated center. Hannibal would be impressed.
After a day of rest, the Romano-Persians move out in pursuit. Like during the battle, Odysseus and Iskandar know the need to keep up the momentum when it’s on their side. Plus staying too long near such a pile of corpses is not good for the health; they can’t afford a post-Baghdad situation here. As they harry Chandragupta in retreat, his host continues to bleed. The direct losses are minor, but his troops are dispirited and they soon start deserting. As more desert, even more are encouraged to desert. Nobody wants to fight those demons again, especially if it’s at or near numerical par. And so Odysseus and Iskandar press on, heading ever further east.
). It's a major point on checklist in all my EU4 Byzantine games.
