some hesitation, consented, and moved first to Delhi and then to Agra, with an army of 20,000 men, and in company with our author. Here dissensions took place among the brothers; Kámrán repented of his decision to support the Emperor, and putting forward bad health as a reason, determined to return to Lahore, while Shir Shah was yet on the far side of the Ganges. He endeavoured to persuade Mirza Haidar to return with him, but the Mirza declined on patriotic grounds, and from that time forward (1539) became an adherent of Humayun, who treated him with great honour and called him "brother, after the Moghul fashion."
The disastrous battle of Kanauj soon followed.[1] Humayun's force numbered some 40,000, but was less an army than a huge undisciplined mass, commanded by Amirs who had no intention of fighting the Afghans. Mirza Haidar appears to have acted as a kind of general adviser or chief of the Emperor's staff, but he mentions incidentally that he also led the centre division.[2] The confusion and corruption that prevailed on the side of the Chaghatais he describes with much candour, and clearly shows that the battle was lost before it had been fought. Whatever his position in the army may have been, he seems to have done his best to.advise and support his master, and finally joined him in his flight to Agra,[3] and thence to Lahore. His narrative gives, in a few words, a vivid picture of the crowd of refugees that were assembled at the Punjab capital, their state of panic, and the divided and interested counsels with which the Emperor was perplexed. Mirza Haidar advised that the Chaghatai Amirs should occupy separate positions along the lower hills, from Sirhind to the Salt Range, where the army might be re-organised in safety and, on a favourable opportunity presenting itself, might be used with effect to regain possession of India. He himself would undertake the reduction of Kashmir, a task he hoped to accomplish in so short a time that the Emperor
- ↑ 17th May, 1540, or 10 Muharam, 947 H.
- ↑ Abul Fazl (according to Price) implies that Humayun, in person, commanded the centre, while the right and left wings were led by a brother and a nephew, respectively. (Muhamd. Hist. iii., p. 781.)
- ↑ The historian Jauhar mentions that during a brief halt made at Fattehpur Sikri, Humayun, while sitting in a garden, was shot at by some unseen person, and that "two attendants" having been sent in pursuit of the would-be assassin, both returned wounded. Mr. Erskine (following apparently the Akbar-Náma of Abul Fazl) mentions that one of the wounded "attendants" was Mirza Haidar. (See Jauhar's Tazkirát ul Wakiát, trans. by Stewart, p. 24; and Erskine's Hist. of India, ii., p. 194.)
