21 April in military history: Battle of San Jacinto, 1836

Sam Houston's Texian army attacked Santa Anna's camp by the San Jacinto River in the afternoon, shouting "Remember the Alamo!", and routed the Mexican army; Houston reported about 18 minutes of close fighting. Santa Anna was captured the next day, and on 14 May he signed the Treaties of Velasco, which required the Mexican troops to withdraw beyond the Rio Grande.

Babur dates it to Friday, 8 Rajab. Annette Beveridge's translation of his memoirs prints 20 April beside that date, while the 1826 translation by Leyden and Erskine, Stanley Lane-Poole and L. F. Rushbrook Williams give 21 April 1526. A note in Elliot and Dowson's History of India says 20 or 21 April.

He fought behind a line of about 700 carts tied together with rawhide ropes, with mantelets between them for his matchlockmen. Parties of horsemen on both wings rode round to the rear of the sultan's army and shot arrows into it, while his gunners fired from the center. By Babur's account the sultan's men were packed so tightly that they could neither advance nor flee.

Babur put the total with his army at 12,000, including traders and servants; Rushbrook Williams judges that he cannot have had more than 8,000 effectives. For Ibrahim, Babur reports that people estimated 100,000 men and about 1,000 elephants; Firishta gives 100 elephants, and Rushbrook Williams finds it hard to believe that Ibrahim had fewer than 40,000 fighting men.

Babur writes that five or six thousand were killed in one place close to Ibrahim and that his men estimated the other dead at 15,000 to 16,000, but that he later heard in Agra that 40,000 or 50,000 may have died. Firishta gives 16,000 Afghans slain, noting that some authors say 50,000.

Ibrahim Lodi died in the battle, and Rushbrook Williams calls it politically decisive because the Lodi dynasty was broken. On Friday 27 April, by Beveridge's dates, the khutba was read in Babur's name in Delhi, and Stanley Lane-Poole calls him the first of the Great Moghuls.