Kondavidu fell to Vijayanagara, and the Gajapati prince Virabhadra was taken prisoner.
01The eastern war
In 1513 Krishnadevaraya turned on the Gajapati kingdom of Odisha, which held the coast from the Krishna northwards and the forts south of it. Udayagiri in the Nellore country fell first, after a siege of more than a year. The army then moved up to Kondavidu, a hill fort with walls running along the ridge. The Portuguese horse-trader Fernão Nuniz, who lived at Vijayanagara, describes the king’s men working under the walls while the defenders held out for weeks. Saluva Timmarasu, the minister the people called Appaji, directed much of the work. When the fort fell, Prataparudra’s son Virabhadra and a number of Odia nobles were captured.
02To Simhachalam and peace
From Kondavidu the Vijayanagara army crossed the Krishna, took Kondapalli and Rajahmundry, and marched as far as Simhachalam near the sea, where Krishnadevaraya’s grants record his visit to the temple of Narasimha. The war ended in a treaty. A Gajapati princess was married to Krishnadevaraya, and the lands north of the Krishna went back to Odisha, so the river became the border. Kondavidu stayed with Vijayanagara and became the seat of its governors in the east, Saluva Timmarasu among them.
Kondavidu gave Vijayanagara the Andhra coast up to the Krishna and freed Krishnadevaraya to turn west against Bijapur, which he did at Raichur in 1520.