Leading from the front is considered the mark of a great commander – he instils confidence in the troops. But leading from the front is not always advisable. It can invite danger to oneself; and if the commander falls, the troops would get demoralised. ‘Heaven-born generals’ have made the mistake. In this edition of ‘Tactics & Tacticians’, we meet two such persons—an Indian and a European.
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The first tale is of the second Battle of Panipat. When Mughal emperor Humayun died in 1556, his 12-year-old son Akbar was in Gurdaspur, Punjab. His uncle, Bairam Khan, crowned him then and there as emperor. Seizing the moment, Samrat Hemchandra Vikramaditya, also known as Hemu, who had been in the services of the Suris and the Adil Shahs of the Deccan, captured Delhi and declared himself emperor. The armies of both sides clashed at Panipat in Haryana.
Hemu had the upper hand in terms of the size of the force—he had 30,000 cavalrymen and 50 armoured elephants against the Mughals' 10,000 horsemen.
Hemu, who had won 22 battles, was insistent on leading from the front and having a direct view of everything happening in every corner of the battlefield. Much like King Bhagadatta of Pragjyotishpur (Assam) in the Mahabharata battle, he led the charge sitting atop his largest elephant, Hawaai. Hemu broke through the centre of the Mughal army and advanced towards Akbar and Bairam.
Then came a sudden blow. An arrow fired by a Mughal soldier struck him in the eye. Hemu fell unconscious in his howdah. As their leader fell, Hemu's army thought he was dead, and they scattered. The Mughal army surrounded Hemu's elephant, captured him, and executed him.
A battle that should have been won was lost due to a small mistake.
The brilliant English naval commander, Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, committed an identical blunder. Nelson was a hero who had won around a dozen naval battles, including the Battle of Copenhagen and the Battle of the Nile. Most of these victories had been scored against the French navy of Napoleon, who had made all of continental Europe tremble before him.
In 1805, Napoleon sent a fleet of 33 ships to invade England. On October 21, Nelson intercepted them with 27 ships off the coast of Cape Trafalgar in the Atlantic. The enemy was lined up parallel to the coast. Conventional wisdom would have advised him to approach and attack the enemy fleet in a single line of battle, and the enemy would have been expecting that. But Nelson approached the enemy in two smaller parallel columns, one striking at the centre of the enemy line and the other one towards his trailing end.
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The tactic totally unsettled the enemy. In no time, the English fleet destroyed 27 of the enemy's ships without losing a single one of its own!
Then it happened suddenly. A sailor on a sinking French vessel spotted Nelson, clad in his bright red uniform and in full regalia, standing on the deck of his famous flagship HMS Victory, and watching the battle through a telescope. The sailor took aim at him and pulled the trigger. The shot accurately pierced Nelson's shoulder and shattered his spine. Although the battle was won, Nelson breathed his last shortly thereafter.
The lesson? Lead from the front, but don’t expose yourself to too much risk.
