Titans of History

In October Magellan found a channel leading westward between the South American mainland and the archipelago to the south, which enabled his fleet to avoid the stormy open seas south of Cape Horn. He called this passage All Saints’ Channel, but it is now known as the Strait of Magellan after the great navigator. As the ships passed through, the sailors were overawed by the snowy mountains on either side. To the north was the southern tip of Patagonia, and to the south the islands they called the Land of Fire—Tierra del Fuego—because of the fires lit by the native people that burned on the shore. Once they had passed through the strait, they found themselves facing a vast expanse of open water. In honor of the steady, gentle wind that blew them across it, Magellan named the ocean the Pacific.

For ninety-eight days Magellan’s crew sailed northwestwards across the open ocean, spotting only an occasional rocky, barren island. They had little water, and what they did have was bad. They ran out of supplies and were reduced to eating moldy biscuit, rats and sawdust. But still Magellan pushed onwards, saying that he would rather eat the ships’ leather than give up. And that was exactly what the crew did, chewing leather from the yardarms.

In March 1521 they reached the Philippines, which Magellan originally named after St. Lazarus (they would later be renamed after King Phillip II of Spain). They took on supplies and reached the island of Cebu, where Magellan befriended the native king. By purporting to convert to Catholicism, the king managed to convince Magellan to become involved in his violent feuds with neighboring islands, and it was in an attack on one of these on April 27 that Magellan was killed. The treacherous king then murdered two of Magellan’s men before the crew could regroup and head home for Spain.

Only eighteen crewmen, four South American natives and one ship, the Victoria, made it around the Cape of Good Hope and back to Spain, plagued by contrary winds, harassment from the Portuguese, malnourishment and scurvy. Although Magellan was not among them, by the time of his death he had traveled well past the longitude of his original voyages to the east, when he had visited the Moluccas. He had also discovered the holy grail of navigators and traders: a passage to the eastern Spice Islands via the western ocean. This in turn helped to pave the way for Spanish and Portuguese dominance across the globe during the 16th century.

Great explorers like Columbus and Marco Polo may have discovered the hitherto unknown parts of the world, but it was Magellan who joined them all together.

BABUR

1483–1530

Wine makes a man act like an ass in a rich pasture.

Saying attributed to Babur

Babur was the nomad prince who emerged from a tiny Mongol kingdom to found India’s Mughal empire. Babur’s reign was brief, but he was a talented conqueror and intellectual, and his power over, and respect for, the myriad peoples whom he ruled created a vast empire of an incomparable cultural magnificence.

Claiming descent from Genghis Khan, the young Zahir-ud-din Muhammad was directly descended from the Turkic-Mongol conqueror Tamurlane (Timur). The family had lost much of Tamurlane’s empire, so he was for much of his youth a king without a kingdom. Called Babur by tribesmen unable to pronounce his real name, he inherited the tiny central Asian state of Fergana at the age of twelve. Having fended off his uncles’ attempts to unseat him, Babur set out to conquer neighboring Samarkand. The fifteen-year-old prince miscalculated. In his absence rebellion at home robbed him of Fergana, and when he marched back to reclaim it, his troops deserted Samarkand, depriving him of that too. “It came very hard on me,” Babur later recalled of his nomad years. “I could not help crying a good deal.”

Defeat strengthened Babur’s resolve. By 1504 the hardened warrior had secured himself the kingdom of Kabul in today’s Afghanistan. From there he looked east into Hindustan’s vast lands. After several attempts, Babur finally triumphed in 1526 at the Battle of Panipat, where his 12,000 men routed the sultan of Delhi’s 100,000-strong army. Over the next three years he defeated the Rajputs, the Afghans and the sultan of Bengal, to become the unchallenged ruler of Hindustan—today’s India. Thus did this descendant of Tamurlane carve out what was to become known as the Mughal empire, after the Persian word for Mongol.

Babur ascribed his astounding victories to “the fountain of the favor and mercy of God.” Weaponry helped. Babur introduced to India the matchlock musket and the cannon, although initially they only earned him ridicule. As Babur’s tally of victories attests, it soon became clear that with effective firepower his almost absurdly small armies could make huge inroads against opponents with a vast numerical superiority.