prisoner by the soldiers of the prince of Condé, and hanged, according to Brantome, on a gibbet of extraordinary height.—G. M.
BABENO, St. Huber, Louis, a German philosopher, born at Leinengen in Bavaria in 1660, died in 1726. He entered the order of the Benedictines in 1682. He was afterwards professor of scholastic theology, and chancellor and vice-rector of the university of Salzburg. He published "Problemata et t heoremata philosophica," Salzburg, 1689; "Quæstiones philosophicæ," Salzburg, 1692; "Fundatrix ettalensis, id est, thaumaturga," Munich, 1694, in 4to; "Regula morum, seu dictamen conscientiæ," Salzburg, 1697; "Tractatus de jure et justitia," 1699; "Deus absconditus in sacramento altaris," Salzburg, 1700; "De statu parvulorum sine baptismo morientium," Salzburg, 1700; "Philosophia Thomistica Salisburgensis," Augsburg, 1716, 1724, in fol.; "Principia bonitatis et malitiæ actuum humanorum," Salzburg, in 4to; "Vindiciarum prædeterminationes physicæ," Salzburg, 1707, in 4to; "Dissertationes theologicæ contra Onesnelii propositiones," in 8vo; "Prolusiones academicæ," 1724.—G. M.
BABER, or the Tiger, is the surname by which history knows Zehîr-ed-dîn Mohammed, the conqueror of India, and founder of the so-called Mogul dynasty. Descended from Timur on the father's side, and from Genghis Khan on the mother's, Baber was of mixed Turkish and Mongol origin. But in feeling, as in personal characteristics, he was a Tartar (Turk), and often in his memoirs speaks most contemptuously of the Mongols or Moguls. Yet Hindoo ignorance has designated as that of the Great Mogul (Mongol), the throne which Baber established in Hindostan.
On the death of Timur, his dominions in Central Asia were divided among his sons and other princes of his family, and for several generations the descendants of the great conqueror waged perpetual war with each other for the inheritance of their common ancestor. One of the most powerful and successful of Timur's descendants was his great-grandson, Abu Syed, the grandfather of Baber, who reconquered a great portion of Timur's ancient empire, and left the most important provinces of Central Asia to his sons. The third of these, Omar Sheikh Mirza, father of Baber, was sovereign of Ferghana, a fruitful but inconsiderable region of Turkistan, lying in the valley of the Sir (the ancient Jaxartes), and now included in the khanate of Kokan. Baber was born on the 14th of February, 1483, the birth-year of Luther. When he was a boy of twelve his father died, bequeathing to him the insecure throne of Ferghana, and wars on all sides with his paternal and maternal uncles, the other princes of Turkistan. Besides these complications, the Uzbecks, under Sheibani-Khan, were mustering in the desert, planning the conquests which they afterwards effected in Turkistan.
Baber had inherited from his father a restless, profuse, and good-natured disposition. He had, moreover, an innate love of letters, and this was fostered by the general culture, strange to say, diffused among the courts of the descendants of Timur, in spite of their perpetual wars. In the interesting "Memoirs" which he wrote in his later years, he naively avows that he was "always ambitious," and the wars of self-defence into which he was forced by the attacks of his uncles, when he ascended the throne of Ferghana, soon became wars of aggression on his part. The youth of fifteen seized on Samarcand, the capital of Timur; but while engaged in this enterprise, a revolt broke out in Ferghana which lost him for the time his hereditary dominions. For the next eight years Baber's career was one of romantic vicissitude. At one time he was in triumphant possession of Transoxiana; at another time he was a fugitive among the mountains, destitute and lonely, meditating flight to China. At last, when fortune pronounced against him in Turkistan, and the Uzbecks were masters of Ferghana, he determined to give up the game, and push his fortunes south of the Hindoo Koosh, where one of his cousins, the ruler of Cabul, had been dispossessed by a minister, and where any descendant of Timur had some sort of claim to sovereignty. Considerable obscurity rests on this portion of his adventurous career. But it is certain that his incursion into Cabul was tolerably successful, and in a few years we find the despairing fugitive master of the key of India. Baber had now two different objects, which drew him different ways. One was to recover his paternal dominions; the other, to repeat his ancestor Timur's invasion of India. In the former of these designs, in spite of many attempts and some considerable successes, he ultimately failed. The Uzbecks were too strong for him. But in the other, and seemingly more difficult enterprise, he succeeded. After several expeditions, which are to be considered forays rather than invasions, he became padisha of Hindostan, and where Timur had failed to perpetuate his sway, Baber founded a dynasty.
At the date of Baber's last two and successful expeditions (1524-5), Sultan Ibrahim, the nominal sovereign of India, was the representative of the Mahomedan and Afghan dynasty of Lodi, founded in the middle of the preceding century by a successful adventurer. But in the hands of the cruel and incompetent Ibrahim, the sceptre of Hindostan was wielded so as to produce universal discontent and general rebellion; the hour which in his "Memoirs" he tells us that he had long looked for, had come at last for Baber. Ibrahim had in a younger brother a pretender to the throne; and in the governor of the Punjaub, who feared that his turn as a victim was coming next, he had a subject disaffected and powerful. Doulut Khan, the viceroy of the Punjaub, invited the aid and presence of Baber, who marched his forces to Lahore, and there defeated an army of Afghan chiefs, who objected to the intervention of the monarch of Cabul. But from this expedition Baber, personally, was recalled by an attack of his old enemies, the Uzbecks, upon Balkh. While Baber was repulsing the Uzbecks, his army of India was making way under the command of Allah-ad-din, the prince-pretender, whose claims Baber nominally supported, but abandoned as soon as supremacy in India was within his own grasp. Returning from Balkh to Lahore, Baber reassumed the command, and marching forward, was met by Ibrahim with a large army, some seventy miles to the north of Delhi. The battle of Paniput, which decided the fate of India, was fought on the 21st of April, 1526. According to Baber's own account, he had only 12,000 men to oppose Ibrahim's army of 100,000. But Baber was completely victorious, and Ibrahim was slain. Delhi surrendered to the Tartar conqueror, and Baber established himself at Agra. With characteristic generosity, the victor, in his joy, sent a coin by way of present to every man, woman, and child, whether slave or free, in the kingdom of Cabul.
The victory of Paniput, and its immediate results, still left much to be done. Baber occupied only the country to the north-west of Delhi, with a narrow tract along the Jumna to Agra. Ibrahim was defeated and dead, but his rebellions Mohammedan vassals were as little disposed to submit to Baber as to Ibrahim, and were preparing to make common cause with the Hindoo princes against the daring invader. Worst of all, Baber's own chiefs and troops began to murmur. The natives were openly and passively hostile, refusing allegiance and supplies; the task of conquering India, seemed, they said, interminable. To hunger and thirst was added the heat of the Indian summer, and they clamoured for leave to return to the friendly shelter of the mountains of Cabul. It was in emergencies like these that the spirit of Baber showed itself, in a way which explains to us how he could achieve so much with scanty means. He harangued his chiefs and officers, not imploringly, but defiantly; granting them permission to return, but declaring that, if left solitary, he at least would remain. The declaration was successful; but, before long, Baber's influence over his followers was still more severely tried. The powerful and warlike Rajpoot princes had laid aside their differences, and united their forces under Rana Sanka. With a large army they were at Sikri, only twenty miles from Agra. Baber's advanced guard suffered a check. An astrologer publicly predicted a defeat. A panic seized on the Tartar army. Baber's oratory was tasked to the uttermost. Finally, by appealing less to religious fanaticism or to their love of plunder, than to their sense of honour, he succeeded once more; and the victory of Sikri, gained in Feb., 1527, was to the Hindoo princes what the battle of Paniput had been to their Mohammedan and Afghan suzerains. The worst was now over. By degrees, Baber's soldiers grew to like the country, and were reconciled to the climate. With the victory of Sikri, Baber himself assumed the title of padishah, or emperor, and of ghazee, or, "victorious over the infidels." The ensuing four years were spent in the easy subjugation of Hindoo rajahs and Mohammedan viceroys. When after having ruled in India little more than four years, Baber died near Agra, on the 26th of December, 1530; and only in the forty-eighth year of his age, he left an Indian empire to his successors to consolidate
