Vijayanagara: The Last Emperors of South India, Fall of Civ.

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Raichur Fort was a powerful fortress



perched on top of a rocky hilltop, and without effective siege equipment, the Hindus resorted to old old-fashioned



tactics, hacking away at the fort walls with pickaxes and hammers. The defenders meanwhile were well-stocked with cannons and rained down fire from the walls. These cannons did have one weakness; they were unable to fire directly



downwards at the men with their pickaxes hacking away at the masonry beneath. Still, they dealt a terrible toll on the



besieging soldiers as they approached. The siege looked like it would last



forever, but then one morning, Krishnadeva



got word that the sultan of Bijapur 



himself was marching south towards him at the head of an army.



This army was made up of his best crack troops, equipped with nearly a thousand



of the latest powerful cannons imported from Persia. Perhaps feeling just a tremble of





apprehension, Krishnadeva lifted the siege and went out to meet the sultan in battle. Fernao Nuniz, who witnessed these two armies come together, describes in visceral terms the noise they made as they prepared to fight. Seeing that dawn was now breaking, the



drums and trumpets and other music in



the king's camp began to sound and the men to shout so that it seemed as if the sky would fall to the earth, then the neighing and excitement of the



horses and the trumpeting of the elephants; it is impossible for anyone to describe how it was. It would hardly be believed the great fear and terror that struck those who heard it, so that even those very men that caused the noise were themselves frightened at it, and the enemy on their part made no less noise so that if you asked anything, you could not hear yourself speak, and you had to ask by signs, since in no manner could you make yourself understood. This encounter, which has come to be known as the Battle of Raichur,



is the perfect embodiment of the chaos and violence of a medieval battle. Although Vijayanagara had brought the larger army, the sultan of Bijapur was confident that his superior firepower



would scatter the Hindus and bring him victory. When the battle began, he ordered his cannoneers to fire all of their guns at once in a devastating volley. Fernao Nuniz recounts what happened next, as a thousand cannonballs tore through



the ranks of the Vijayanagara soldiers. He commanded the whole of the artillery at once to open fire, which discharged as it was very great, did much damage to the



enemy, killing many of the horse and foot and many elephants, and it compelled the King Krishnadeva’s troops to retire.





As soon as the Moors saw their enemies beginning to leave the field, they charged all amongst them,



slaughtering them for about half a league. It looked like all was lost for Vijayanagara, but King Krishnadeva refused to admit defeat. He rallied his generals and elite cavalry around him, and gave a stunning



and quite ruthless order. When the king saw the way in which his



troops fled, he began to cry that they were traitors



and that he would see who was his side, and that since they all had to die, they should meet their fate boldly.

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“Who ranges himself with me?” he cried. Immediately, there thronged about him all those lords and captains that were ready to side with him, then he took a ring from his finger and gave it to one of his pages so that he might show it to his queens in token of his death.



Then he mounted a horse and moved forward with all his remaining divisions, commanding to slay without mercy every man of those who had fled. According to this account, Krishnadeva and his generals began slaughtering their own fleeing men until they managed to make them turn and flee in the opposite direction.



The pure crushing weight of these bodies, backed by as many as 27,000 horses, seems to have turned the tide back on the Muslim soldiers. The sultan's cannons had all fired at



once, and they all had to stop to reload at the same time, meaning that they were unable to summon another volley. While pursuing the fleeing men of



Vijayanagara, the sultan's men had abandoned their ranks, and when the enemy turned and pushed back, they found themselves in disarray. The fleeing rabbit had once again turned around and bitten its pursuer. Nuniz breathlessly describes what happened next. The confusion was so great amongst the Moors and such havoc was wrought in their ranks that they did not even try to defend the camp they had made so strong and enclosed so well. But like lost men, they leapt into the river to save themselves. Then



after them came large numbers of the king's troops and elephants, which latter worked amongst the mischief without end, for they seized men with their trunks





and tore them into small pieces.



A final push by the elite troops of Vijayanagara drove the sultan's entire army into the waters of the Krishna River, where a massacre began. The army of Bijapur was defeated, but at terrible cost. Sixteen thousand of Krishnadeva's men had been killed in the battle, as Fernao Nuniz recounts.



Here, the king stayed till all the dead had been burned,



and the customary honours had been paid to them, and here he gave much arms for the souls of those who had been killed in battle on his side. Those numbered sixteen thousand and odd. Krishnadeva now returned to the siege of the fort, and it's here that he seems to have employed the help of a company of



Portuguese mercenaries led by a captain



named Christovao de Figueyredo.



While Krishnadeva seems to have employed a limited number of soldiers with matchlock muskets in his army, these European mercenaries had brought with them the latest arquebuses.



These long-barreled guns achieved an astonishing degree of accuracy for early firearms. Fernao Nuniz writes an account of this final siege and how this small group of Portuguese snipers tipped the balance in



the battle for Raichur Fort, with either a very skillful or a very lucky shot.



Christovao de Figueyredo went close to the trench before the walls, keeping himself



as much concealed as possible. Seeing how fearlessly the Moors exposed themselves on the wall, began with the musketeers, whom he had brought, to open fire on them in such a



way that he slew many, the Moors being careless and free from fear. The captain of the city, seeing the dismay that had spread amongst his people, began to turn them back with encouraging words, and he, wishing to see for himself where the Portuguese were, reached over with his body in front of one of the embrasures and was killed with a musket shot that struck him in the middle of his forehead.



As soon as the captain was thus killed, there was great lamentation in the city, and soon there was no one defending the wall.





Raichur Fort surrendered soon after. These rich lands now belonged to Vijayanagara,



an accomplishment that many kings before had tried and failed to achieve. Krishnadeva was clearly overjoyed, but his victory had caused a ripple of concern among all the Muslim kingdoms of the region. Fernao Nuniz recounts that the king



soon received a number of diplomats, all carrying similar messages from the



neighboring sultans. They all warned him that he should not attempt to overreach, he should be content with his victory, and not upset the natural balance of the region. With the hindsight that history gives us, we know that Krishnadeva should have



taken this warning seriously, but he did not. Krishnadeva sent out the same reply to every one of the sultans, which Fernao



Nuniz recorded. I have seen your letters and thank you much for what you have sent to say. As regards Adil Shah, what I have done to him and taken from him, he has richly deserved. As regards returning it to him, that does not seem to me reasonable, nor am I going to do it. As for your further statement that you will all turn against me if I do not do as you ask, I pray you do not take the trouble to come to me,



for I will come to find you myself if you dare to await me in your lands.

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This I send you for answer.



In fact, the young Krishnadeva was so emboldened that he decided to do what no king of Vijayanagara had dreamed of for more than a hundred years; that was to march north and seize the sultan's capital city of Bijapur itself.





Bijapur was one of the great cities of South India, and the largest and 



wealthiest in the lands that had once been part of the Bahmani Sultanate. It



was a great center of culture, trade, and commerce, and was home to a great variety of gardens and water pavilions.



One North Indian visitor to the city would later describe it in the following glowing terms. All around the gate of my residence were lofty buildings with houses very healthy and airy. Before each shop was a



beautiful green tree, and the whole



bizarre was extremely clean and pure. It was filled with rare goods such as



are not seen or heard of in any other town. Perhaps no place in the wide world could present a more wonderful spectacle to



the eye of the traveller. The Portuguese observer Fernao Nuniz traveled with Krishna Devaraya as he embarked on this campaign far into enemy territory. He recalls the site of the great city of Bijapur as Krishnadeva's armies approached it, and mentions that its houses reminded him of buildings back home in Europe.



The king journeyed so far that he even went as far as Bijapur, which is the best city in all the kingdom. It has numbers of beautiful houses built according to our own fashion, with many



gardens and bowers made of grape vines and pomegranates and oranges and lemons,



and all other kind of garden produce. Seeing Krishnadeva’s massive army approach, the sultan of Bijapur did the only thing he could; he fled the city and went into



hiding.



Krishnadeva marched into Bijapur without a fight and decided to stay there for as long as it took for the sultan to turn himself over.



But the sultan Adil Shah refused to come out of hiding, and so, Krishnadeva and his army settled down in the city and waited. During his lengthy stay in Bijapur,



Krishnadeva's army put an enormous strain on the city, and in fact, they would all but destroy it. To keep themselves warm at night, the soldiers demolished its beautiful



buildings and burned them as firewood, and drank so much water that its



reservoirs ran dry. The whole city of Bijapur was slowly



demolished as though eaten by termites, until only the palaces where Krishnadeva was staying were still standing, as Fernao Nuniz recalls. The city was left almost in ruins, not that the king had commanded it to be destroyed, but that his troops, in order to make fires for cooking, had torn down so many houses that it was a great grief to see. The sultan Adil Shah went to ask the king what wrong the houses had done that he had commanded to destroy them, for there remained no other houses standing save only the palaces where the king Krishnadeva was staying.



The king sent answer that it was not he who had done it, but that he could not control his people. Eventually, drinking water in the city ran out, and Krishnadeva was finally



forced to leave. He had not captured the sultan of Bijapur, but he had certainly made his point. Vijayanagara was now without doubt the strongest power in South India. The sultans who had once loomed over it now fled at the advance of its armies, and their cities could be plucked like ripe fruit. It was a point that King Krishnadeva clearly delighted in making, but it was one that the Deccan sultans would not forget. The destruction of Bijapur left a stinging reminder that if they continued fighting amongst themselves, a greater power to the south would swallow them up one by one. Krishnadeva's actions would remind these



sultans that they would soon need to stand together, and in that way, this resounding victory would lead in the



coming years to the dissolution and collapse of the entire empire of Vijayanagara. 

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If you had the choice to travel back in time and see just one week in the age of Vijayanagara, a good choice would be the week of the Mahanavami Festival,



a lavish ceremony that ran for 10 days, usually in October.



The Persian ambassador Abdur Razzak witnessed this event in the year 1443, and gave the following account of its chaotic and colourful scenes.





All the readers and storytellers, musicians and jugglers, were rewarded by the king with gold and garments. For



three continuous days, this royal fate continued with the most gorgeous display. One cannot without entering into great detail mention all the various kinds of pyrotechnic and fireworks and various other amusements which were exhibited. He recounts the splendor of the elephant procession that took place during this festival. They brought with them a thousand



elephants resembling the waves of a troubled sea or a stormy cloud which were covered with brilliant armor, and with castles magnificently adorned in



which were jugglers and artificers. On the trunks and ears of these animals 



had been drawn with cinnabar and other substances extraordinary pictures and figures of



wonderful beauty. The traveler Domingo Paes was lucky enough to see this event when he visited Vijayanagara nearly 80 years later, in



the year 1520. It's clear that by that time, the



opulence of the ceremony had only increased.



As soon as the king had finished his ceremonies, he again took horse and returned to the city in the same way he had come, the troops never weary of their shouting. As soon as he passed by them, they began to march. Then, to see those who were on the hills and slopes and the descent of them with their shouts and beating of shields and



shaking of arrows and bows, they were without count. Truly, I was so carried out with myself that it seemed as if what I saw was a vision and that I was in a dream. As Paes saw this procession pass by, he could have had no idea that the final



decades of this great society were now at hand, that in only a few decades, these streets



would be empty, with grasses and vines



pushing up through the stones.





The last great king of Vijayanagara,



Krishna Devaraya, died on the 17th of October in the year 1529,



apparently after falling ill while preparing for another campaign against his old enemy, the sultan of Bijapur. While successful at all other aspects of being king, he'd had little luck with siring a son. Krishnadeva did have two sons, one of whom



at six years old became a casualty of courtly intrigue.



He was named the crown prince, but this was also his death sentence.



Within a year, the boy was poisoned, with



Krishnadeva suspecting his own prime



minister, who he then had blinded. When the king died, his remaining son was too young to be considered, and so, the crown passed to his younger brother



Achyuta. This man seems to have had no talent for ruling, as Fernao Nuniz recalls. King Achyutaraya, after he ascended the throne, gave himself over to vice and tyranny.

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Here is a man of very little honesty, and on account of this, the people and the captains are much discontented with his evil life and inclinations. In the vacuum left by the death of the great king, a number of opportunists were beginning to fancy their chances. Chief among these was a divisive and ruthless



social climber in whose hands the empire of Vijayanagara would finally collapse into ash and flame.



His name was Ramaraya.





Ramaraya had led a remarkably colorful life. He began his career as a courtier in the



kingdom of Golcanda to the north, but he had a keen sense for situations in which he could better his position, and during the golden age of



Krishnadeva's reign, he made his way



south to the Vijayanagara court to serve



him.



Ramaraya's mother had been the daughter of a chieftain in the east, and these family credentials were apparently



enough for him to marry a princess. This ambitious young man was now the son-in-law to the king, and at every turn he would work to increase his power and influence in the court. When Krishnadeva's brother Achyuta died after ruling for 13 years, his young son



took the throne, and the plotting at court reached fever pitch.



Ramaraya joined a number of unsuccessful plots before finally raising a successful rebellion with the intention of putting a young boy named Sadasiva on the throne, who was a quite distant nephew of the dead king Krishnadeva.



But of course it was Ramaraya who was truly in charge.



This young boy Sadasiva was put on the throne in the year 1542, and Ramaraya, then around the age of 57, became his regent.



A regent was a person who runs the complicated affairs of state while a



young boy king grows up.



The idea was that at the age of 16, the



boy could take up these duties himself, and the regent, his duty done, would be quietly



excused. But of course, this is not quite



how things played out. When the young boy king Sadasiva reached adulthood, he demanded to take over the reins of the state.



Ramaraya had him imprisoned. The boy king would now appear only once a year to the crowds while Ramaraya acted as emperor in all but name.

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By the year 1562, even these annual appearances were stopped. One of the great historical composers of Carnatic music was a man named Kanaka Dasa.



He lived during the life of King Krishnadeva and saw his death, as well as the time of chaos that followed.



During this time, he wrote a surviving piece of poetry that describes how many of the citizens of Vijayanagara must have felt as the kingdom descended over the 23 years that the usurper Ramaraya remained on the throne.



Where did truth and duty go? The noble can't survive anymore.



Thieves and habitual adulterers strike it rich. The rest are poor. Family members turn hostile. Fools puffed



up with pride forget god, guru, and elders.



Decent holy people go unprotected. No one pays the soldiers. No helping rains shower the earth.



Those with food and clothes are



corrupted by bribery. Immature dogs full of trickery multiply like cruel snakes.



Traitors to god win houses, gain cows and wealth and grain. Earth groans under the weight, tottering, crying.



Worshipers of Shiva are clashing with the Vishnu devotees. Great offerings are made to the most



horrific violent gods. Who could list all the wrongs of the time? While operating the empire's foreign



policy, Ramaraya acted just as deviously. As the emperor of Vijayanagara, he plotted to turn the sultans of the



Deccan against one another. These sultans often asked for



Vijayanagara's help in their wars against one another, and so, he would ally



first with one, then another, with the



hope of thereby weakening them all and keeping them at each other's throats. He would often promise not to destroy mosques or unnecessarily hurt Muslim civilians, but according to some sources, these promises were not often kept. Eventually, one of these sultans, a man



named Hussain Nizam Shah I of the sultanate of Ahmadnagar, would soon have had enough. It's clear that the sultan Hussain hated Ramaraya



on a personal level. Ferishta recalls one meeting between these men when the king of Vijayanagara



openly insulted his guest. Hussain and Nizam Shah went to meet Ramaraya. At the time of the meeting,



Ramaraya showed great vanity and loftiness and remained seated, and had Hussain Nizam Shah kiss his hand in this manner.



Hussain Nizam Shah was furious at the improper behavior of Ramaraya, and in order to reproach the Raja,



he at once called for water and washed his hands. On seeing this, Ramaraya was enraged and said in the Kannada language, if this man were not my



guest, I would instantly cut him to bits with my sword. These insults clearly stung Hussain, but the final straw would come when Ramaraya apparently sent a long and insulting list of demands for tribute to



the Muslim sultan. According to one obscure poet, an Indian Muslim named Shauqi, this list of demands



included camels from Kabul, ambergris, aloes, musk, a large silver bell, a golden flute, gold and precious goods, weapons



such as maces and Bahmani daggers, jade pitchers, ruby cups, diamond cubes, and perhaps most insultingly of all, the foot bracelets of the sultan's wife.

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Finally, he demanded that Hussain stop eating beef,



turn away from Mecca, and convert to worshiping Shiva. If Hussain refused, the poet relates the following threat allegedly delivered by



Ramaraya. I'll spare neither Turk nor Turkish bow. I'll spare neither rich nor poor.



I will not spare the brides of India, nor will I spare the brides of Sind. I won't spare a single scholar or holy man, neither aged nor youth,



neither young man or old. Whether this episode is true or just one of the many poetic flourishes invented by the poet Shauqi, what is certain is that for this Sultan



Hussain, the king of Vijayanagara had



finally gone too far. He was determined to put aside his differences with the other sultans of



South India and together join in partnership against King Ramaraya. The Portuguese chronicler Diego de Couto recounts the decision they made next. After Ramaraya entered their kingdoms and destroyed and devastated them and carried great riches away from them, King Hussain was so afflicted that he invited the other Moorish kings of the Deccan



so that they could all set out together against Ramaraya and destroy him and divide his kingdoms amongst them.



By this time, after years of war, there was a deep bitterness between these sultans.



But faced with the growing insults from the south, they were prepared to set this aside. The sultans of the Deccan sealed their



tentative alliance with marriages, even exchanging forts as part of their daughter's dowries in order to settle



the territorial disputes that had divided them. Through King Ramaraya's arrogance,



Vijayanagara had united its enemies against it, and they were now all



marching south, hungry for revenge.  The year was 1565. By this time, the treacherous usurper Ramaraya was an old man



now well into his eighties, but when he heard of the combined forces of the sultans marching south, he was determined



to ride out with his great army and lead it to victory, and he had good reason to be confident. Despite banding together, the sultans of the Deccan were still no match for Vijayanagara in sheer numbers. According to records, Ramaraya marched



out with 70,000 cavalry and more than 700,000 foot soldiers. More conservative estimates put the number at around a hundred and fifty thousand.



This would have been the entirety of the army of Vijayanagara, with every soldier withdrawn from every far-flung post and distant border fort, and brought to bear for a final decisive battle for the future of South India.



The stakes for both sides couldn't have been higher.



After a number of skirmishes, the two vast armies finally met on the plains that stretch out on the banks of the river Krishna, between the villages of Rakkasa and Tangadi. But today, this confrontation is remembered by the name of a fortified town about 25 kilometers to the north,



a place called Talikota. For the sultans of the Deccan, the odds at the battle of Talikota didn't look good. The forces of Vijayanagara outnumbered



them significantly, and the advantage in firepower that the sultan's ancestors had enjoyed at the Battle of Raichur had also been wiped out. In the more than 40 years since the armies of Krishnadeva had scraped a victory on the banks of the river



Krishna, they had learned to respect the power of cannon fire, and Vijayanagara had truly joined the gunpowder age.



Sources claim that Ramaraya marched to meet the sultans with a thousand cannons. He clearly believed that with superior numbers and now with superior firepower too, the result of the battle would not be in question. The scholar Ferishta recalls the daunting sight that awaited the sultans.

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It was at length fully ascertained that the only safe passage for the army was directly in the enemy's front, which was in his possession and who had constructed field fortifications strengthened by cannon and fireworks on the opposite bank.



Two thousand war elephants and one thousand pieces of cannon were placed at different intervals of his line. But the armies of the sultans had also learned lessons from their defeat 40 years earlier,



and they now marched to battle with decades of experience in using cannon. This time, instead of arranging their cannons in a single line that fired all



at once, they were placed in three lines



which could stagger their fire. Now, one line could fire while the others 



reloaded, creating an almost continuous blanket of fire.



The effect was truly devastating. When the battle began, the forces of Vijayanagara unleashed one big 



terrifying barrage, as Ferishta recounts. Both armies being in motion soon came to battle, and the infidels began the attack by vast flights of rockets and rapid



discharges of artillery. Ramaraya, now an old man, declined to travel on horseback, and instead was carried around the battlefield in a



litter or palanquin. At one point, he's apparently said to



have surrounded himself with piles of jewels and coins, and handed these out to anyone who would charge into the heat of



the battle. The infidels, inspired by the generosity of their prince, charged the right and left of the allies with such vigor that they were thrown



into temporary disorder, and even to prepare for retreat. Hussain, however, remained firm in the center and pushed on so ardently, for the division of Ramraj was thrown into confusion. It seemed that the overwhelming numbers



of Vijayanagara would win the day, but then something happened that would turn the tide completely. That is, Ramaraya, the regent, the usurper of the throne, was killed. Accounts of exactly how this happened differ. One unlikely-sounding source describes



how the sultans packed their cannons with copper coins, blasting them into the



enemy ranks in what would be one of the first uses of a weapon that would come to be known as grapeshot. These superheated coins would have torn like bullets into the Vijayanagara soldiers, killing their horses and maiming hundreds. One source recounts that one of these coins flew through the sky of the battlefield, punched through the side of the palanquin that was carrying



the treacherous King Ramaraya, and killed him.



Other sources claim that a stampeding elephant caused Ramaraya's bodyguard to flee in terror, leaving him to be captured by an enemy vanguard.



These sources describe him being taken



back to the sultan Hussain, who immediately ordered him to be beheaded. Some sources describe Ramaraya's severed head being stuffed with straw and sent



north to be paraded around the subcontinent.



But however it happened, the result was clear; Ramaraya was killed, and his army fell into disarray.



Ferishta recounts what happened next. The Hindus, according to custom, when they 



saw their chief destroyed, fled in the utmost disorder from the field and were pursued by the allies with such success



that the river was dyed red with their blood. It is computed by the best authorities that above 100,000 infidels were slain during the action



and in the pursuit. Those who were able with horses and elephants fled the battlefield, while a huge number of foot soldiers were left behind to be massacred.



The historian Mirza Ibrahim al-Zubairi, in his work Basatin al-Salatin, recalls how the sultans now prepared to march on the defenseless capital city. During the course of 20 days that they remained at the seat of war, the sultans took their ease and nursed the wounded



and sick, then they turned toward Vijayanagar. We can imagine the scenes as the frightened people of Vijayanagara watched the dribs and drabs of their defeated grand army returning home, columns of the wounded and dirty winding down the road without leaders, telling stories of the battle and the death of the king. Some of Ramaraya's brothers did manage



to escape from the battle of Talikota and fled back to the capital.

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They were now the assumed rulers of the empire, and the frightened people of the city must have looked to them for hope, 



and they had good reason to be hopeful.



Capital cities were rarely sacked in medieval India, where ideas of honor were held in high regard.



It was common to demolish mosques and Hindu temples in conquered territories, but unrestrained violence against



civilian populations was relatively rare.



More often, the victorious side would simply demand an enormous payment to cover the costs of their campaign and then some, and then they would return to their lands triumphant and a good deal richer.



But when Ramaraya's brothers fled back to the city, it soon became clear that they had no intention of paying anything. In the next days, they gathered up all



the treasure they could, piled it onto ox carts, and fled, leaving the city to its fate. The city of Vijayanagara was now without an army,



without leaders, and crucially, without any money to pay off its enemies. From this point on, the consequences would have been clear.  The complete loss of the city's



leadership and the collapse of its military meant that law and order in the city broke down almost immediately. Sources recount that hordes of the empire's own citizens rioted in panic and anger.



Bands of its own soldiers who had fled the battle suddenly found themselves unemployed, and they turned to rampaging through the streets, stealing whatever



Ramaraya's brothers had left behind, stripping the city of its wealth before the sultan's armies had even come into sight.



We can imagine the pure panic on the streets during these final days. The Portuguese writer Diego de Couto writes that the armies of the sultans



took only three days to reach Vijayanagara, while the chronicler Ferishta says it took ten. During this time, the mood in the city



must have been one of abject terror. When the sultans reached the city, they found that Ramaraya's brothers had



fled and its treasuries had been emptied. With no tribute to be paid, they were determined to get their money's worth and began a campaign of looting. Over the next days and weeks, they would



strip Vijayanagara of any wealth it had left, and destroyed the symbols of its leaders, burning its temples and palaces to the ground.



The poet Shauqi described this event in triumphant terms.



The Shah ordered the plunder of the city. The order was given to both noble and commoner. They then rendered the city desolate. They harassed and killed. Both open and



hidden wealth were revealed. Treasure was brought up from beneath the ground. People came to acquire riches and wealth, 



full of merriment, happiness, and delight;



boxes of jewels in the thousands, gold and silver beyond count. The historian Mirza Ibrahim al-Zubairi gives a devastating account



of the destruction of the city. They razed the lofty building and temples to the ground. The work of destruction was carried out with a vengeance. Vijayanagara was an extensive city,



flourishing and well-populated. It had never experienced any foreign invasion for ages. The nobility, the wealthy, the soldiery, the peasants, and the artisans all drove



a roaring trade. During the confusion and disorder following the Muslim invasion, the citizens, out of fear,



lurked in their houses, cellars, wells, and reservoirs. Those that were well-to-do betook themselves to the neighboring mountains and caverns with their family and chattels. The Muslim army remained at Vijayanagar for about six months. To a 



distance of 20 leagues around the city,



everything was burnt and reduced to ashes. The historian Robert Sewell describes



the destruction in mournful terms.

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With fire and sword, with crowbars and axes, they carried on day after day their work of destruction. Never perhaps in the history of the world has such havoc been wrought, and wrought suddenly on so splendid a city, teeming with a wealthy and industrious population



in the full plenitude of prosperity one day, and on the next, seized, pillaged, and reduced to ruins. Finally, the armies of the sultans left with what loot they could find, and left the city in ruins. The Persian historian Ferishta recounts



the devastated condition of Vijayanagara and the fragmenting empire it had once been the heart of. The kingdom of Beejanuggur since this battle has never recovered its ancient splendor. The city itself was so destroyed that it is now totally in ruin



and uninhabited, while the country has been seized on by the tributary chiefs, each of whom hath assumed an independent power in his own district. But archaeological evidence of the destruction of the city is not as damning. In the royal center, there is a great



deal of fire damage to be found on the stones of the temples. Here, the superstructures of wood and other flammable material were set fire nd burned, collapsing in and causing the stones



that supported them to crack. Buildings such as the main royal complex and the audience hall, with a hundred stone columns supporting its roof, were all burned, as well as others that represented the royal authority of the state. But in the residential parts of the city, the houses and markets, the destruction



was much less, and there's no evidence of a wholesale burning of the city or of an enormous massacre.



The Italian Cesare Federici, writing two years after the empire's defeat, reports the following. When news came to the cities of the overthrow in the battle, the wives and children of the tyrant fled away, 



and the four kings of the Moors entered the city of Bezeneger with great triumph, and they remained there six months,

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searching under houses and in all places for money and other things that were hidden, and then they departed to their own kingdoms because they were not able to maintain such a kingdom as that was,



so far distant from their own country. The city of Bezeneger is not altogether



destroyed; the houses still stand, but empty, and there is dwelling in them nothing but tigers



and other wild beasts. When the armies of the sultans left, the population of Vijayanagara would emerge from the caves.



With its leaders gone, its administration collapsed, and the entire empire



fragmenting into smaller kingdoms, it seems that the people of the city could no longer maintain the large and complex metropolis they had once called home. They would soon be forced to loot what



remained of the city in order to survive.



Bit by bit, the stone buildings that had withstood the invading army would be dismantled or simply left to the vines and the wild dogs.



The great city of victory was now a



ghost town. The farmers who continued their lives in this area would sow rice in the once



lavish gardens of the kings. They would take stones from the palaces to build their houses, and women would wash their clothes in the once opulent bath houses,



hanging them to dry on the fallen pillars. Now, only troops of monkeys would make their homes among the rocks and the skeletal remains of ancient halls. With its status reduced, the city of Vijayanagara





no longer seemed to suit its grand name. Instead, it became known by the name of one of its smaller districts which remained inhabited among the ruins,



now a small village named Hampi. This was the ruined place that the



Scottish captain Colin Mackenzie would wander through nearly 150 years later. Birds would soon make their homes in the



temple roofs; Indian robins, large grey babblers, blue rock thrushes, quails, and the rare yellow-throated bulbul.