Akbar

Recorded sideMughal forces of Akbar, commanded by Bairam Khan

Recorded resultdecisive victory

Mughal victory. Hemu was struck in the eye by an arrow, captured unconscious, and executed.

Hemu was winning. His wings had driven the Mughal flanks back and his elephants were through. A single arrow through the eye removed him from his own centre, and an army built entirely around one man's direction stopped being an army - the elephants had no orders, the wings had no anchor, and a victory in progress became a rout within an hour.

What followed

Secured the Mughal Empire for Akbar at the age of thirteen and ended the last serious attempt to restore indigenous rule at Delhi before the 18th century. ⚠ Hemu had himself crowned at Delhi weeks earlier, taking the title Vikramaditya - he was, briefly, a reigning Hindu emperor of North India, and he is largely absent from the popular narrative of the period.

Tactically indecisive. The Mughals held the ground; Mewar was not subdued and Pratap escaped to fight on for two decades.

Neither side got what it wanted, which is why the battle is coded inconclusive here rather than as a Mughal victory. Pratap chose ground where numbers could not tell and Bhil archers on the slopes could. He failed to break the Mughal line and had to withdraw, but the Mughals could not convert the field into the submission of Mewar, and Pratap's subsequent campaign recovered most of it.

What followed

⚠ The clearest case in the atlas of a battle whose MEANING is actively contested in the present. It is celebrated in Rajasthan as a victory of resistance and recorded in Mughal sources as a Mughal success; a 2017 state textbook revision in Rajasthan reclassified it. The atlas records the outcome as inconclusive and records the dispute rather than adjudicating it. Note also that the Mughal commander was himself a Rajput - this was not a war of Hindu against Muslim, whatever it is now made to mean.