Abraham Eraly - The Age of Wrath - A History of the Delhi Sultanate

In the summer of 1564 four of the five Deccan sultanates — Bijapur, Golconda, Ahmadnagar and Bidar — buried their rivalries and mutual grudges and formed a confederacy against Vijayanagar. Berar stood sullenly aloof from this league, as it was still smarting from the wounds it had received in its conflicts with its neighbouring Muslim kingdoms. The four confederates then sealed their union with marriage alliances. And in the last week of December that year the armies of the four kingdoms assembled together on the plains near Talikota, a small town in Bijapur, and then advanced to the Krishna, the river that at this time marked the northern frontier of Vijayanagar.

Ramaraya was well aware of these developments, and he too organised his forces. His army, according to one estimate of Ferishta — he gives different figures in different places in his account of the battle — consisted of 900,000 infantry, 45,000 cavalry, 2,000 elephants, and 15,000 auxiliaries. These are incredible figures, and are hard to believe, but Ramaraya certainly would have had an army that was much larger than the combined armies of the sultans. From this vast force Ramaraya detached a strong contingent and sent it to the Krishna riverbank, to prevent the enemy from crossing the river.

Confronted with this blocking deployment of the Vijayanagar army, the sultans used a ruse to cross the river. Seemingly disheartened by the impossibility of crossing the river at their chosen ford, they began to march upstream, pretending to look for another ford. Seeing this, the Vijayanagar contingent kept pace with them on the opposite bank, and this went on for three days. Then suddenly the allied army, as planned, reversed its course and quickly, within just a day, doubled back to its selected ford, and immediately sent an advance contingent across the river. This met with no resistance, as the Vijayanagar soldiers were nowhere nearby. That night the rest of the allied army also crossed the river.

The details of the ensuing battle given in various reports are partisan and contradictory. The battle, fought on 23 January 1565, a Tuesday, is usually called the battle of Talikota, though it was actually fought on a plain between two villages, Rakshasi and Tangadi, some 50 kilometres south of Talikota, and is therefore also known as the battle of Rakshasi-Tangadi. The allied forces, as Sewell describes the scene, were drawn up ‘in a long line, … each division with the standards of the twelve Imams waving in the van …’ The Ahmadnagar contingent was stationed at the centre of this deployment, and it had at its front 600 pieces of ordnance disposed in three lines, one behind the other, with the heavy artillery in front, behind it the lighter artillery, and the swivel guns in the rear. And in front of this artillery deployment were stationed 2,000 foreign archers, to conceal the guns from the enemy.

The particulars of the deployment of the Vijayanagar army is not known, but it was commanded by Ramaraya himself, though he was now a very old man—‘he was ninety-six years old, but was as brave as a man of thirty,’ according to Diogo do Couto, a sixteenth century Portuguese chronicler. The battle began with the Vijayanagar army shooting rockets at the allied army, and peppering it with fire from matchlocks and light guns. Then their cavalry charged. At that point the archers masking the Deccani artillery fell back, and the guns opened up, causing great havoc in the Vijayanagar army.

This was the decisive movement in the battle. As the Vijayanagar army staggered under the impact of the artillery salvoes, the Deccani cavalry charged into them ferociously and scattered them in a short, swift action. Ramaraya himself was captured during the melee, and was immediately beheaded on the orders of Nizam Shah. His severed head was then mounted on a long spear and displayed to the enemy, and the sight of this is said to have so demoralised the Vijayanagar soldiers that they immediately broke up and fled.

The battle lasted only just a few hours, as in the case of most medieval Indian battles, in which the worsted army usually took to flight without attempting to regroup. Though Hindu accounts speak of a more than six-months-long war, and even of single battles lasting as long as twenty-seven days, these are evidently just self-consoling myths.

The sultans won the battle mainly because of their superior artillery (under the command of Rumi Khan, a Turk) and cavalry. The desertion of two Muslim commanders and their contingents from the Vijayanagar army during the battle was also a crucial factor in the rout of the Vijayanagar army. ‘When the armies were joined, the battle lasted but a [short] while, not the pace of four hours, because two traitorous captains [in the Vijayanagar army] … with their companies turned their faces against their king, and made such disorder in his army, that … [the soldiers in bewilderment] set themselves to flight,’ reports Caesar Frederick, an Italian traveller who was in Vijayanagar in 1567.

THE VICTORY OF the Deccani army was decisive. According to Ferishta, so great was the slaughter in the battle — some 100,000 soldiers are said to have perished in the Vijayanagar army alone — that the waters of a stream flowing alongside the battlefield turned red with blood. The flight of the Vijayanagar army was so pell-mell that they left behind in their camp large quantities of equipments and a good amount of treasure, for the victors to pillage. ‘The plunder,’ notes Ferishta, ‘was so great that every private man in the allied army became rich in gold, jewels, effects, tents, arms, horses, and slaves.’ The sultans reserved for themselves only the captured elephants.

After the battle the allied army took a break for a few days, to rest and to reorganise themselves. Then they set out for Vijayanagar city. The people of the city had initially no sense of the peril they faced, as no Muslim army had ever entered the strongly fortified city, even when, victorious in battle, it had ravaged the environs of the city. But the gravity of the situation dawned on the people when the princes and nobles scurrying back from the battlefield gathered their treasures, loaded those on elephants, and fled from the city for safe refuges far away. They also carried with them Sadashiva, the phantom king.

‘Then a panic seized the city,’ writes Sewell. ‘The truth became at last apparent. This was not merely a military defeat; it was a cataclysm. All hope was gone … Nothing could be done but to bury all treasures, to arm the younger men, and to wait. Next day the place became a prey to the robber tribes and jungle people of the neighbourhood. Hordes of … [them] pounced down on the hapless city and looted the stores and shops, carrying off great quantities of riches.’ According to Couto, this went on day after day, for six days.

Then the allied forces entered the city. ‘The enemy had come to destroy, and they carried out their object relentlessly,’ continues Sewell. ‘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 so 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, amid scenes of savage massacre and horrors beggaring description.’ Caesar Frederick, who visited the city two years after the battle, noted: ‘The houses still stand, but [are] empty, and there is dwelling in them nothing but tigers and other wild beasts.’

THE DESPOLIATION AND devastation of the city went on for five months without respite. Meanwhile, with Ramaraya dead, his brother Tirumala took charge of the titular raja and set up his government at Penugonda, about 190 kilometres south-east of Vijayanagar, in a defensible, rugged hilly region in the Anantapur district of the modern state of Andhra Pradesh. But Tirumala was immediately challenged by Ramaraya’s son Timma, who had no hesitation even to seek the help of the sultan of Bijapur against his uncle. This move was countered by Tirumala by seeking the help of the sultan of Ahmadnagar. Soon the Vijayanagar chieftains and the Deccan sultans got once again embroiled in several shifting alliances and counter-alliances.