218 THE EMPEROR BABAR army of the Afghans, numbering, it was said, a hundred thousand men, melted away: the Lodi pretender fled from before Chunar, to which he was laying siege; Sher Khan escaped from Benares; and as Babar pressed on to Baxar, several of the Afghan leaders came in to offer their submission, and their prince, finding himself almost deserted, sought protection with the Bengal army. The kingdom of Bengal, as we have seen, had long been independent of Delhi, and Babar had no imme- diate intention of subduing it, so long as it did not interfere with him. But the protection it was affording to the rebels was not the act of a friendly power, and the massing of the Bengal troops on the frontier was ominous. Reinforced by twenty thousand men from Jaunpur, Babar resolved to force the passage of the Gogra in face of the Bengalis. He made unusually elab- orate preparations, for he knew the enemy were skilful gunners and were in great force. Ustad ALL was to plant his cannon, European pieces, and swivels on a ris- ing ground at the. point between the two rivers, and was also to keep up a hot fire from his matchlockmen upon the Bengali camp on the east bank of the Gogra. A little below the junction of the rivers, Mustafa was to direct a cannonade from his artillery, supported by matchlocks, on the enemy's flank, and on the Bengal flotilla which lay off an island. The main army was formed in six divisions, four of which, under the em- peror's son Askari, were already north of the Ganges. These were to cross the Gogra by boats or fords and
