01Master of the Deccan balance
After the death of Achyuta Raya and a bloody succession quarrel, Rama Raya placed the young Sadashiva on the throne around 1542 and took the real power himself, with his brothers Tirumala and Venkatadri commanding the army. For two decades he joined first one Sultan and then another in their wars, against Ahmadnagar with Bijapur, against Bijapur with Ahmadnagar and Golconda, and Vijayanagara’s armies marched deep into Sultanate land. Firishta writes that in these campaigns the Vijayanagara troops desecrated mosques; the Sultans came to see him as a danger to them all.
02Talikota and after
Bijapur, Ahmadnagar, Golconda and Bidar joined hands, and on 23 January 1565 their armies met Vijayanagara’s at Rakkasa-Tangadi, near Talikota on the Krishna. Rama Raya, then an old man, directed the battle from a litter. The first attacks went his way. Then two Muslim commanders in his service turned, the Ahmadnagar guns tore the centre, and Rama Raya was taken and beheaded on the order of Hussain Nizam Shah. The army broke. The capital, left undefended, was plundered for some five months. The Italian Cesare Federici, who passed through in 1567, found it standing empty.
