Akbar Defeats Hemu at Panipat

In November 1556, at the Second Battle of Panipat, the forces of the young Mughal emperor Akbar defeated the Hindu general and ruler Hemu, who had briefly seized Delhi. The victory saved a Mughal state that had been close to collapse and set the stage for Akbar's long reign, during which the empire grew into one of the largest and wealthiest states in the world.

The background was a crisis of succession. Akbar's grandfather Babur had founded Mughal rule in northern India after winning the First Battle of Panipat in 1526. Babur's son Humayun, however, lost his throne to the Afghan commander Sher Shah Suri and spent about fifteen years in exile, mostly in Persia. He regained Delhi in 1555 but died in early 1556 after a fall from his library stairs. Akbar, then about thirteen, was proclaimed emperor in the Punjab, and real authority rested largely with his guardian and regent, Bairam Khan.

Hemu, whose full name was Hem Chandra Vikramaditya, was a minister and military commander serving the Sur dynasty, the successors of Sher Shah. Seizing the moment of Mughal weakness, he marched from the east, defeated the Mughal governor at Tughlaqabad, and took Delhi in October 1556. He assumed the title Vikramaditya, a claim to sovereign rule. The Mughals' position looked precarious, and some of Akbar's advisers reportedly urged retreat to Kabul, though Bairam Khan insisted on confronting him.

The two armies met on the plain at Panipat, north of Delhi, where the fate of northern India had been decided before. Hemu's army was reportedly larger and included many war elephants, and he led from the front on an elephant. Accounts describe his being struck in the eye by an arrow, which threw his troops into confusion as he disappeared from view. His army broke and fled. Hemu was captured and killed; later Mughal chronicles say Akbar was asked to strike the fatal blow, though historians disagree on how far Akbar, a boy at the time, personally took part, and the chronicles were written to glorify him.

The victory restored Mughal control of Delhi and Agra. Over the next few years Akbar dismissed Bairam Khan and took power himself, then expanded his realm across much of northern and central India. He is remembered for administrative reforms, a system of land revenue assessment, the recruitment of Rajput and other non-Muslim nobles, and a policy of religious tolerance in his court. The empire he consolidated lasted, in diminishing form, until the mid-nineteenth century.