First Battle of Panipat
Babur's field guns and cavalry tactics destroyed a much larger Lodi army. Guru Nanak's hymns of the same years speak of the suffering of Babur's invasions.
Babur, the Timurid prince of Kabul, had raided the Punjab several times, and in 1525 Daulat Khan Lodi, governor of the Punjab, invited him to overthrow the Sultan of Delhi, Ibrahim Lodi. Babur came with some twelve thousand men and a train of field guns and matchlocks.
On 21 April 1526 at Panipat, north of Delhi, he met Ibrahim's army, said to number a hundred thousand with a thousand elephants. Babur tied his carts together with chains, placed his guns between them, and used his cavalry to sweep round the enemy's flanks. The elephants panicked at the guns, and by midday Ibrahim Lodi was dead with fifteen thousand of his men.
Babur took Delhi and Agra and founded the Mughal empire. Guru Nanak, who had seen Babur's army sack Saidpur, wrote of the invasion as a judgement on rulers who had forgotten justice.
Same era
Mughal Punjab, 1526 – 1705On the Sutlej at Machhiwara the returning Mughals beat the Afghans of the Sur dynasty, and a month later won again at Sirhind.
Hemu, a Hindu general who had taken Delhi, was winning until an arrow struck his eye; his army broke and the boy Akbar's throne was saved.
The first armed clash of Guru Hargobind's time, fought over the founding of Sri Hargobindpur on the Beas.
Began over a hawk of Shah Jahan's that the Guru's Sikhs would not give back. A Mughal detachment attacked during a wedding in the Guru's family and was beaten off.
Fought in the Malwa over horses the Sikh Bidhi Chand had recovered from imperial stables, which had originally been gifts for the Guru.
Painde Khan, once the Guru's own commander, led a Mughal army against him and was killed. The young Tyag Mal fought so well he was renamed Tegh Bahadur.
A skirmish as the Guru withdrew from Kartarpur towards Kiratpur.
The Guru's first battle, aged about twenty-two. Pir Budhu Shah of Sadhaura fought for him with his followers and lost two sons.