01October 1824
Mallasarja Desai died in 1816, and his son Shivalingarudra Sarja in September 1824, after adopting a boy as heir. St John Thackeray, Collector of Dharwad, would not accept the adoption and came to seal the treasury and take over the state. On 23 October 1824 the gates were shut against him; in the fight that followed Thackeray was shot dead and two British officers were taken prisoner. Chennamma released them on a promise that the war would end. The Company sent a larger force instead, and after a siege the fort fell in early December. Chennamma was held at Bailhongal fort, where she died on 21 February 1829.
02Rayanna and the ruins
Her commander Sangolli Rayanna kept up a guerrilla war in the hills for years, until he was betrayed, taken and hanged near Nandagad on 26 January 1831. The fort was dismantled. Inside the broken walls the Karnataka government keeps a museum of Kittur arms, coins and carvings, and every October the town holds the Kittur Utsava in Chennamma’s memory, around the date of her stand.
The life of this place
- 23 October 1824Thackeray is killed at the gates of Kittur.
- December 1824The fort falls to a second Company force; Chennamma is taken.
- 21 February 1829Chennamma dies a prisoner at Bailhongal.
- 26 January 1831Sangolli Rayanna is hanged near Nandagad.
Kittur is on the Pune–Bengaluru highway between Belagavi and Dharwad; the fort museum is open daily except public holidays.
