The fort fell to Bahadur Shah’s artillery; Rani Karnavati led the jauhar and the defenders died in the saka.
01Guns against the walls
Bahadur Shah had an artillery park served by Ottoman and Portuguese gunners under Rumi Khan. The guns opened breaches in Chittor’s walls that the old style of defence could not close. Karnavati, widow of Rana Sanga, sent her younger son Udai Singh away to Bundi for safety. When the walls could no longer be held, she and the women of the fort entered the fire, and the men opened the gates and fought until they fell.
02The rakhi to Humayun
A well-known tale says Karnavati sent a rakhi to the Mughal emperor Humayun, asking him as a brother to come to her aid, and that he set out but arrived too late. The story is not in the contemporary chronicles and appears in later writing. What is recorded is that Humayun soon drove Bahadur Shah out of Malwa and Gujarat, and Mewar regained Chittor within a short time.
The second saka of Chittor; the boy sent to safety, Udai Singh, later founded Udaipur.