There now followed that amazing battle at Kanauj, in which 40,000 men in armour fled, without a gun fired, before 10,000. Here again, as at Chausa, the deaths in the river were appalling, and here again the Emperor was saved by a lowly man. Again the remnant made its way to Āgra; but, says Ḥaidar, ‘we made no tarry; broken and dispirited, in a state heart-rending to tell, we went on to Lāhōr.’ Their road took them to Sīkrī, of which the memories and witness to Bābar's genius for living must have rubbed salt into the wounds of their spirit. Many ladies had remained in Āgra, and Humāyūn spoke to Hindāl of the difficulty of getting them safe to Lāhōr, and confessed that he had often regretted not killing 'Aqīqa with his own hand. Hindāl combated the suggestion, born of defeat, that a mother and sisters should be killed, and himself fought his way through country folk and Afghāns, and convoyed them safe to Lāhōr.
Here was a mighty gathering of Tīmūrids and their following, and five months slipped by in uncertain counsels and fruitless talk. The four brothers met often to discuss plans, and it seems that the emptiness of this in practical result lay in what was in the mind of Kāmrān and made him object to every course proposed. He wished to make terms for himself with the daily approaching victor, and to keep Lāhōr and the Panjāb; but if this could not be, he meant to hold fast to Kābul and keep Humāyūn out of it. The fief of Kābul had been granted to him by Humāyūn; Humāyūn therefore could resume it. That he would now do so was Kāmrān's expectation; so, when Humāyūn proposed to go to Badakhshān, Kāmrān would not hear of it, because the road thither lay through Käbul, and once in that beloved city, it was highly improbable that Humāyūn would move further.
On October 30th, 1540, something decisive had to be done, for Shīr Shāh had crossed the Biah and might appear at any hour. ‘It was like the Day of Resurrection,’ says our princess; the confusion was extreme, and, like the simile, impossible for us to realize. It has been said that 200,000 souls left Lāhōr in flight on that day; an overtax of all resources of transport.
Happily for the fugitives, the Rāvī was fordable, but the Chanāb required boats and the Jehlam was in flood. Many episodes unfolded themselves in the duāb of the Rāvī and Chanāb. Ḥaidar Mīrzā took his departure for Kashmīr, hoping to secure in it a royal retreat; Hindāl and Yādgārnāṣir deserted and went south for Multān; Humāyūn was urged to put further mischief out of Kāmrān's power by his death; he refused,—a refusal which would be upheld in the ḥaram, ever faithful to the injunctions of Bābar, and knowing these better than the real risks caused by Kāmrān's disloyalty. Penetrating everything was the irritation aroused by Kāmrān's opposition to the royal march for Kābul,—irritation which diffused itself and barely missed a sequel of bloodshed.
The depression and gloom of the men who were the responsible leaders of the fugitive mob must have been deep and painful; but what was in the minds of their dependents,—the ordinary troopers, the helpless women, the comfortless children, and the camp-followers?
There were many striking scenes in the lives of Bābar and Humāyūn, but none more dramatic than that in which the latter's flight through the Panjāb ended. A little west of the Jhelam, at Khushāb, the road runs through a ravine of an outlying spur of the Salt Range. Beyond this it forks, north-west for Kābul and south-west for Sind. Kāmrān asserted his intention to enter the defile first, perhaps with the object of closing the Kābul road. Humāyūn insisted on his right to take precedence, and blows threatened between their followers. Mediation was made by Abū'l-baqā, the man who had led Bābar to offer himself for his son in 1530. He directed Humāyūn's attention to the superior force of Kāmrān, and he told Kāmrān that it was the right of Humāyūn to take precedence. In the end Humāyūn marched first and took the southern road. At the fork of the ways each commander and many a man must have made or confirmed his choice between the brothers. And so the mighty caravan split itself, and followed Kāmrān and 'Askarī or Humāyūn.
With the Kābul section many women went to the safer
asylum. They had no choice to make where the roads
parted, but those of them who saw their litters turn southwards
and themselves carried by a strange road, of which
they knew that it took them from the old home in Kābul,
must have had some bitter feelings about their destiny. I
believe Gul-badan went with Kāmrān. She does not say
so, but it comes out with tolerable clearness incidentally.
Her mother, Dil-dār, had gone with Hindāl to Multān, and
with her was Ḥamīda-bānū, Akbar's mother to be. Khān-
Khiẓr is not mentioned as with Humāyūn in the desert wanderings, but he was in Qandahār with 'Askari in 1545. On the occasion of her reunion with Humāyūn in Kābul, in 1545, Gul-badan says that there had been a ‘toil and moil of separation’ lasting five years. The lustrum points to a farewell said at the Jhelam. One thing makes for her having gone with the royal party, and this is her lively account of what befell it; but she is equally lively about Persia; where she certainly did not go. She had excellent opportunity of hearing what went on in Sind because she met her mother again in 1543, after she had come to Kābul from Qandahār. She also met Ḥamida in 1545, and could hear from her not only about her wedding, concerning which she has such an excellent passage, but also about her visit to Persia. There was ample and easy opportunity for the two old companions to talk over the past and to refresh their memories when the book was being written in and after 1587 and when they were comfortably installed as the beloved and respected ‘Beneficent Ladies’ of Akbar. Moreover, Gul-badan has a note of acknowledgment to Khwāja Kīsīk for help derived from his writings, as to the early part of the royal wanderings. There is therefore nothing to contradict the probability that she continued under Kāmrān's protection from 1540, the date of her unwilling departure from Āgra, till 1545, when Humāyūn took Kābul.
During the lustrum in which she did not see Humāyūn, his adventures were too many and too remarkable for abbreviation in these pages. Mr. Erskine has told them with evident enjoyment, and Gul-badan supplements his narrative with some material he did not use; it may be interjected here that he had no knowledge of her book. For most of the period of the exile in Sind and Persia, Ḥamīda was a good authority, and more than once Gul-badan has prefaced a statement with ‘Ḥamīda-bānū Begam says.’ She was one in the cruel desert march to Umarkot; it will have been from her that the princess heard that Akbar's birthplace was a beautiful spot where food was very cheap; she was one of the little band which fled from Quetta; she shared the qualified hospitality of the Persian king, and, it should be said, reproduced only a sense of good treatment by him; and she came back to Qandahār with his auxiliary army.
In Kābul Gul-badan did not want for old friends and kinswomen. She had her own home occupations and her children to look after; of these, though she names one only, Sa'ādat-yār, she may have had several; but there is no definite statement as to which of Khiẓr's children were also hers. She was not unkindly treated by Kāmrān, as were the other royal ladies whom he turned out of their usual homes and exploited in purse. Indeed, he wished to regard her as one of his own family and to distinguish between her and her mother; but of this she would not hear.
In 1543 she had again the society of Hindāl who, after losing Qandahār to Kāmrān, came as a prisoner upon parole to Kābul and his mother's house. The movements of Humāyūn were made known from Sind to Kābul with speed and completeness, and the news was acted on to Humāyūn's great detriment. There were domestic reasons why Shāh Ḥusain Arghūn should not be well disposed to Humāyūn, besides the substantial one of the latter's entry and long occupation of his country. Of the more intimate causes of ill-will one was inherited; Bābar had dispossessed the Arghūns from both Kābul and Qandahār, and not only so, but had given in marriage to his foster-brother Qāsim an Arghūn girl, Māh-chūchak, daughter of Muqīm Mīrzā. This was a great offence, because it was a misalliance in Arghūn eyes and because it was enforced and the bride was spoil of battle. The story of her anger and of her rebellion at her fate is delightfully told by Mr. Erskine, and to his pages readers may be safely referred for the sequel of my brief allusion to it.