Battle of Kannauj (Bilgram)

01A camp in the mud

After Chausa Humayun gathered a new army at Agra, though his brother Kamran held back his own troops in Lahore. In spring 1540 the Mughals crossed the Ganga and faced Sher Shah near Kannauj. Mirza Haidar Dughlat, Humayun’s cousin, was in the camp and later wrote of it in his Tarikh-i-Rashidi. He describes an army full of men who had never fought, nobles who would not obey, and a camp flooded by rain on low ground.

02The rout

On 17 May the Mughals moved to higher ground and Sher Shah attacked as they were shifting. His divisions struck the Mughal wings, the camp followers stampeded into the ranks, and the guns were never brought into action. The army broke and fled to the river. Humayun escaped to Agra, then Lahore, and from there to Sindh and Persia. He did not return until 1555. Sher Shah went on to build the Grand Trunk Road and the Rohtas fort before he died at Kalinjar in 1545.