Napoleon of Iran - Battle of Khyber Pass, 1738 - Invasion of India

It is the early morning of the 24th of March, 1738, and from the highest point of the Kandahar citadel, the commander of the city's defenders, Hussain Sultan of the Gilzai tribe, gazes down on the army that rests like a teeming hornet's nest at the edge of his walls. The forces of Nader Shah, ruler of Persia, have surrounded Kandahar for almost an entire year, building a completely new town, replete with streets, markets, barbers and coffeehouses at its edge. A living notice to Hussain and the city's inhabitants that they have no intention of moving, no matter how determined their resistance. Naderabad, as the boomtown is known, is now home to a depressingly large multinational force. The Persian ranks numbered 80,000 at the siege's outset, but it seems to Hussain and the Afghans that they have been joined by unending numbers of reinforcements, who arrive every morning to the bustling and growing Naderabad streets. The effect this has on the hungry inhabitants of Kandahar is crushingly predictable. Now reduced to eating horses, but not yet starving, a victory for Nader Shah is an inevitability, but they will make him work for it. Hussain and his people have no intention of surrendering quietly. In truth, Nader has been running a deception on a mass level. Every night after dark he has large contingents in the rear of his army march out of sight, make camp, and then march once more into Naderabad with much fanfare the next morning, making it seem from the city walls that his supply of troops is inexhaustible. On this morning, however, Hussain knows that the Persian preparations are at an end, and it is the time for battle. Looking out at the vast numbers of Tofangchi musketeers in their metal helmets and elite Jazayachi cavalry with their Shamshir sabres glinting where they hold them at their shoulders, Hussain Sultan tries to mask a sense of dread when he considers the damage that Nader Shah's Persian army will do once they crash inside Kandahar's resilient mud walls. His eyes rove to the place where Nader Shah has placed his Tupchi artillerymen, a developing force that makes use of Zanburak, light cannon mounted on the backs of camels. It is a diabolical sight to the remaining defenders on Kandahar's Borj-e-Dedi, the system of fortifications made up of towers and walls that acts as the town's shield. Since January, Nader Shah's contingents have been more offensive in their approach, their leader wishing to be moving once more, the sedentary nature of the siege, going against his instincts as a Turkmen rider who consciously styles himself on Tamerlane. Slowly, tower by tower and wall by wall, Nader's mixed force of Bakhtiyari, Kurd and Abdali have fought the Afghans back, every square inch of ground a matter of conflict. Each night the defenders work desperately to repair the damage done during the day, to keep the marauders at bay for just a few more hours. Finally, with the war months on the threshold, the final assault begins, and the Bakhtiyari lead the way once more, their combatants wishing to atone for a recent uprising against the Shah's power. All of the elements of the army that Nader Shah has constructed over the decades since he came to prominence combine, rushing from concealed trenches, caves, even strategically placed boulders where they have been camouflaging their convergence from the centuries on the battlements. The streets and buildings of Kandahar become a charnel house. Slaughter and bloodshed are everywhere. As reinforcements rush through the streets to fight, they are shot down by Nader's musketeers who have hacked their way onto the elevated walls and towers. Hussain shelters with his family and close retainers in the citadel, but when the remainder of the city has fallen, Nader brings up his artillery to fire point blank at the fortress and blast his way to mastery. Hussain is not slow in asking for terms. Kandahar has fallen, and Nader Shah, a most imposing figure on horseback, for he is taller than almost all other men, rides through it in triumph. It is a great and hard-won victory, but the Persian Empire's campaign is just beginning, for beyond Kandahar lies the road to Delhi, and Nader Shah has every intention of going further than any previous ruler managed, to surpass the limits even of Cyrus and Alexander, two millennia earlier. He is going to conquer India itself. In the aftermath of his great conquest of Kandahar, avenging himself on the Afghans who, in the previous decade, had wrought devastation through Persia and even toppled a previous Shah, Nader had the citadel and the town itself razed, and the surviving inhabitants sent to live in Naderabad. Allowing himself the chance to savour the fact he had restored the old borders of Persia, he moved with his army only in May, arriving at Ghazni toward the middle of June, and then marching for Kabul. This brought him out of the traditional realms of the Persian Empire, and over the border of the Mughal Empire. His ostensible pretext for marching into the Mughals' territory was to destroy or capture the Afghans who had been afforded shelter there. In truth, most are aware that Nader is ambitious, and the state of the Mughal Empire makes it an easy target for treasure with which to pursue further wars with his western nemesis, the Ottoman Turks. Where at the beginning of the 18th century the Mughal Empire had controlled the vast swathe of the Indian subcontinent, the intervening 40 years has seen a succession of weak or incompetent rulers, along with internal strife and challenges from usurpers, not to mention the challenge of the Punjabi Sikhs and Hindu Marathas. Large tracts of central India had recently fallen to them, and the Emperor Muhammad Shah seemed powerless and incapable of resisting their seizures. His disadvantageous position was exacerbated by the de facto autonomy of Mughal Viceroys and Governors. Men like Nezam-ul-Mulk, ruler of the Deccan, Khan Dauran, head of the army as well as the Hindu bloc within the Empire, and finally the Governor of Awadh, Saadat Khan, who was known to be sympathetic to the Persian cause, paid only lip service and little more to the throne. There was also the growing European presence in the subcontinent, which had first been established by the Portuguese in the last years of the 15th century, but which now included the Dutch, Danish, Swedish, and most prominently British and French. The influence of these semi-autonomous European corporations, dotted around the coast, was growing every year, and they continually drifted in and out of conflict with the local and imperial authorities, even recruiting their own native forces and naval contingents. The profits they made both for the local authorities and their backers in Europe, meant that their presence was now an immovable reality, and they were observing the outcome of the conflict between the Mughals and Nader Shah, with a keen interest. In truth therefore, when Nader and his huge army rolled down from Kandahar in 1738, supposedly hunting Afghan rebels, the territory actually under the control of Muhammad Shah, was just a fraction of the empire over which he was purported to be absolute monarch. This weakness, coupled with Muhammad Shah's own lackadaisical nature, hobbled the Mughal war effort against such a zealous and proficient adversary. When Nasir Khan, the governor of Kabul, had begged him for just one year of the half-decade of back pay owed to their troops, while they awaited the arrival of Nader Shah, the emperor had fobbed him off with promises that payment in the rainy season would be sufficient. Nader subsequently arrived at Kabul to discover that Nasir had taken most of his men to Peshawar, rather than risk a battle with such a potentially compromised force. The majority of the city surrendered to Nader, but a select number of fanatics had fortified themselves in the Kabul citadel, and Nader once more blasted them with his own light artillery, as well as some heavier grade weapons captured from the Mughals. Kabul was reduced, but Nader treated its inhabitants mercifully after their general lack of resistance, even going so far as to execute any of his own men who mistreated the locals. From Kabul, he dispatched a messenger with a conciliatory note for Muhammad Shah, again avowing that his only interest in entering Mughal territory was to capture Gilzai tribal members who were fleeing his justice. The diplomatic courier was intercepted however, and put to death somewhere around Jalalabad. After resting at Charikar, Nader's army moved in September to Gandamak, and from there to Jalalabad. News of the execution of his messenger reached Nader while he was still en route to the city, and he immediately dispatched his elite jazayarchi to storm ahead and bring retribution onto the governor and the inhabitants. The jazayarchi arrived like a lightning bolt from a grey metal sky, shrieking down on the startled and dismayed sentries with such fury, that they breached the walls and immediately put the entire town to the sack. The code of war broken by the killing of the Persian messenger, the jazayarchi and then Nader's entire force were set loose to unleash a general slaughter, and any of the female locals fortunate enough to live through the initial carnage, were put in chains and taken to the uncertain and foreboding future of slavery. Nader received word that the governor of Jalalabad had fled to the hills, and a detachment of the army was sent to reduce his position. Once there they found that the Afghans had dug trenches in the hillside, and artillery and hard fighting was required to complete the task. The same practice as had happened in the city followed, with the men being executed and the women taken into captivity. Nader next made camp southwest of the ruined and smoking city, where his son Reza Kholli joined him. Reza had been campaigning to the north in Ant Qui and Balkh, eradicating the rebel elements there, but had exceeded Nader's orders and crossed the Oxus river. This could have resulted in a state of war with the Uzbeks and Khwarezm, but Reza had extricated himself, and Nader wrote assurances to the khans of the area that he had no designs on their territories. Such insubordination would ordinarily have resulted in execution, but Nader forgave his son and even appointed him viceroy of Persia in his stead. The reunion with his son over, Nader learned from scouts the following day that the former governor of Kabul, Nasir Khan, had rallied and raised a force of 20,000 Afghans working independently of Muhammad Shah's government. They were now holding the Khyber Pass, blocking the Persian advance to the south, and determined to break the invader. Characteristically rushing to meet a threat, Nader completed the 80km journey from Jalalabad to the natural fortress in the following days. By now it was early November and winter had settled on the land and inside men's bones like a dull weight. Once at the pass, Nader saw that Nasir had indeed created a fearsome strongpoint. No fewer than 20,000 Afghan tribesmen were entrenched at the gateway to India, meaning that even though they would be outnumbered many times over, when the main Persian army arrived, the defenders would kill multiples of their own force before Nader could clear the pass. The artillery would be of aid in dislodging the defenders, but the battle would prove to be ruinous for the Persian army, shattering it and likely leaving Nader without a sufficient host to press forward toward the centre of the subcontinent. Undeterred, Nader made his camp at Barikab, and once the men present had been provisioned and rested, he immediately set about a massive engineering works in front of the Afghan positions. From the dawn he was visible to Nasir Khan and the other enemy commanders. Astride his horse and with his royal turban flying, exhorting and encouraging his men to dig the earth, clear rock, and widen the road leading up to the Afghan trenches and elevated firing points. The defenders of the pass, the arid hills around it reaching up to a thousand meters and framed by two streams that had scraped out the acute and restricted bottleneck across which a commander could barely deploy a single company, beheld Nader Shah's legendary work ethic in person. From the early morning until the dusk, the Shah and his army worked in sight of the defenders, making it clear beyond all conceivable doubt that he intended to mount a frontal attack, pulverizing the Afghans with numbers and cannon, and sacrificing tens of thousands of his men in the unquenchable pursuit of victory. Nasir and his tribesmen remained tense while they watched the carts carry away mountains of dirt and stones. By evening, the terrain in front of them was as clear and flat as a racetrack, but mercifully the sun dipped and logic dictated that there would be no offensive that day. Nasir ordered his companies to stand down, rest in their trenches and foxholes, and sleep if they were able. A guard was posted to watch the Persian lines. On the opposite side, with one last look at the enemy, Nader Shah disappeared into the gloom and Nasir breathed easily for the first time in hours. He waited some time and then retired, his attendants offering him a second cloak for the growing November freeze. But… unbeknownst to the Afghans in the pass, Nader Shah had rode back in the direction of his own camp. He summoned his lieutenant, Aji Khan Bek, and ordered him to move at once with a 10,000 strong forward cavalry detachment. Nader himself would ride with them. He gave command of the main army to his other son, Mortaza Mirza. He was to keep it at Barakab until further notice. Meanwhile, units under the Nasrullah Qoli numbering about 12,000 would remain in sight of the pass. The Shah advanced south, riding toward a break in the mountains a guide has informed him lay at Satsobi. Soon, Nader and his 10,000 riders are shrouded in the dark of a winter night. They ride over open roadless country, the ground strewn with rocks and boulders where it is not a steep slope. The temperature plummets past freezing, bitter winds lacerating their uncovered eyes, but there is no let up in the pace from the Persians. Moving without maps, the Jazayirchi and their warrior monarch ascend peaks and then guardedly walk their mounts down the other side, navigating their way through some of the most inhospitable terrain on earth at the worst time of year and in the worst conditions. Yet they continue the relentless move southeast, the tribes who hold the area prudently staying back, aided in a large part by significant bribes sent ahead by Nader Shah. Even still, the threat of ambush is ever present, and no man can know for sure what kind of threat, man or beast, is lying next to them in the dark. Nader Shah and his 10,000 men propelled through the Satobi pass and into the Bazar valley that night, in November 1738. Crossing craggy broken spurs, hundreds of feet above certain death, in numbing and glacial cold. After a final harrowing claustrophobic gorge, light began to grow to the east, and a hollow-eyed cavalry and their freezing horses emerged onto the Peshawar road. Nader had the opportunity to make straight for the town, but instead he turned his men directly at the enemy who were still waiting for the frontal attack they had seen Nader preparing on the other side of the pass, just the evening before. When they appeared at the Afghan rear while the morning was still breaking, Nader and his men must've seemed like nightmarish phantoms, emerging from the gloom. With no artillery support, the Persians relied on musket, bow, lance and sabre, careering into the dismayed and unprepared Afghans and cutting a sway through their lines until Nasir and his chiefs managed to organize any kind of resistance. While this was happening on the southern side of the pass, Nader's forces under Nasrullah Khali arrived from the north and engaged the Afghans still there, limiting Nasir's ability to send reinforcements to the unprotected southern section. The outcome an inevitability, the Afghans put up a valorous resistance, the fighting for a time being keen and ferocious, the muskets on Nasir's side cutting down cavalrymen before their positions were overwhelmed by sabre-wielding troopers. The struggle then quickly devolved into a melee where the same muskets were turned to clubs. Eventually, after much bloodshed to his host, Nasir called for a truce, and he and his remaining forces were taken prisoner. As a result of the victory in the Khyber Pass, Peshawar surrendered to the Shah without a fight in the aftermath, and the road to India was now open. If he could hold his momentum, Nader would become the most powerful ruler of Persia in centuries. But while the Mughal Empire was deeply divided and rent with enemies within and without, it remained a formidable force, and Nader's battles for the wealth of the subcontinent were not yet over. His operation at the Khyber though had lifted him from the status of great warrior-leader, to perhaps the world's greatest living general, and one who would go on to live in the ages. Covering 80km in 18 hours in complete darkness over impassable terrain, without navigation equipment, even today, almost three centuries later, is a feat that could only be bettered by making use of helicopters. Russian observers were astounded and they still remembered the accomplishment a century later, while making their own plans in the event of a war with British India. Nader Shah, the shepherd boy who became the King of Kings, had created a military engine built on tenacity, faith, strength and vision. And as the year 1738 came to a close, there were men in throne rooms the length of Asia, who speculated what force of nature or the Almighty would be required… to bring this war machine to a halt. We'll see you in the next one.