Page:Akbar and the Rise of the Mughal Empire.djvu/51

44 occupied Benares with his division. Máhmud Lodí was besieging Chanar, twenty-six miles from the sacred city.

Bábar immediately advanced, compelled Máhmud Lodí to raise the siege of Chanar, forced Sher Khán to evacuate Benares and re-cross the Ganges, and, crossing the Karamnása, encamped beyond Chausá, at the confluence of that river and the Ganges, and Baksar. Marching thence, he drove his enemy before him until he reached Arrah. There he assumed the sovereignty of Behar, and there he learned that Máhmud Lodí, attended by but a few followers, had taken refuge with the King of Bengal.

Nasrat Sháh, King of Bengal, had married a niece of Mahmud Lodí. He had entered into a kind of convention with Bábar that neither prince was to invade the territories of the other, but, despite this convention, he had occupied the province of Sáran or Chaprá, and had taken up with his army a position near the junction of the Gogra with the Ganges, very strong for defensive purposes. Bábar resolved to compel the Bengal army to abandon that position. There was, he soon found, but one way to accomplish that end, and that was by the use of force. Ranging then his army in six divisions, ho directed that four, under his son Askarí, then on the left bank of the Ganges, should cross the Gogra, march upon the enemy, and attempt to draw them from their camp, and follow them up the Gogra; whilst the two others, under his own personal direction, should cross the Ganges, then