Ibrahim Lodi was killed and his army destroyed in half a day; Babur took Delhi and Agra and founded Mughal rule.
01Carts, guns and the flanking ride
Babur came in with, by his own count, about 12,000 fighting men. He put Panipat town on his right, dug ditches and laid trees on his left, and in the centre lashed some 700 carts together with ropes of rawhide, leaving gaps for cavalry. Behind them stood his matchlockmen and the cannon of Ustad Ali Quli and Mustafa. Ibrahim’s army, which Babur put at 1,00,000 men and 1,000 elephants, charged into this narrow front. The tulughma, flanking parties of horse archers, wheeled round both wings and shot into the press from behind. By noon it was over.
02The Tomar of Gwalior
Among the dead on Ibrahim’s side was Raja Vikramaditya Tomar of Gwalior, whose family had been forced into Lodi service after Gwalior fell. His household was at Agra when Babur’s son Humayun arrived and, the Baburnama says, gave him jewels to secure its safety. Babur took Delhi and Agra within days. The real contest for Hindustan came the next year, when Rana Sanga of Mewar led the Rajput confederacy against him at Khanwa.
First Panipat ended three centuries of the Delhi Sultanate and brought field artillery to the plains of north India.