Siege of Chittorgarh, Emperor Akbar vs Rajputs, 1567

[A1Kaid]

Mughal Siege of Chittoor Fortress - YouTube

Date 23 October 1567 - 23 February 1568


Location 250km northwest east of Agra


Result The most decisive victory and a successful siege by Mughal Emperor Akbar.


Territorial
changes The Mughal Empire swept into the territories of Udai Singh.


The Siege of Chittorgarh began when Akbar and his personal fierce and elite Mughal force of 5,000 soldiers surrounded a 6 mile territory around Chittorgarh Fort. On 23 October 1567, Akbar arrived and setup encampments he raised green flags of the Mughal Empire, according to Hindu accounts he also brought large Islamic banners and emblems (Islamic flags were commonly used by the Mughal army). His personal presence in the battlefield was a message for the Rajput flanks inside the fort that the siege was not a temporal affair. The next day Akbar unleashed his powerful cannons, but within a few days of the siege it was evident that his mortars needed higher elevation. Akbar then ordered his men to build the Mohur Margi (Mohur Hill, also known as: Coin Hill).

After an arduous siege Akbar ordered his men and augmented them to lift baskets of earth during both day and night, in order to create a hill right in front of the fort by which the Mughal Cannons could be placed, when the hill was completed Akbar placed his cannons and mortars near its tip, but cannons were too slow to breach the thick stone walls of Chittorgarh Fort.

The Mughal Emperor Akbar believed that the only way to achieve victory and break the deadlock was to blow a hole underneath Chittorgarh Fort. Akbar then organized his sappers to dig two tunnels and to plant two separate mines under the heavy stone walls of the fortress of Chittor. More than 5000 Mughals then dug their way through a secret tunnel that neared the gates of Chittorgarh Fort, but one of the mines exploded prematurely during a military assault killing about a hundred Mughal Sowars.

As the Siege of Chittorgarh commenced a massive Mughal Army of nearly 60,000 gathered for battle and in this situation, Akbar had prayed for help for achieving victory and vowed to visit the tomb of the Sufi Khwaja at Ajmer if he was victorious. As the bombardment and the continuous assaults on Chittorgarh Fort continued, during one particular assault it is believed that a shot from Akbar's own Matchlock wounded or killed the commander of the already demoralized Hindu Rajputs. It was only when almost all the Rajput women committed Jauhar (self immolation of women) did The Mughals realize that the condition inside the fort was now out of control and the total victory was within grasp.

Siege of Chittorgarh - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Mughal Power! Emperor Akbar conquers all of Rajasthan with a crushing victory.

 

[A1Kaid]

The 445th anniversary of the epic Siege of Chittorgarh is February 25, 2013.

Emperor Akbar, Emperor, fearless warrior, and conqueror of Hind.

 

[rockstarIN]

Mughal Siege of Chittoor Fortress - YouTube




Siege of Chittorgarh - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Mughal Power! Emperor Akbar conquers all of Rajasthan with a crushing victory.

We Indians call him "Akbar the Great" in our text books.

 

[anilindia]

 

[haviZsultan]

The Deccan Nizam with which I have links is also there.

Only Indian who posted something useful on this entire thread.

 

[haviZsultan]

For this attack Pashtuns lead the armies of the Mughals in this attack. Even Baloch general Ghazi Khan Dodai was involved and in his name Dera Ghazi Khan is named. Later Maharaja Pratap singh was beaten at the battle of Haldighati. That was the fall of the Rajputs.

Tajputs still are a part of Punjabi history so we shouldn't celebrate. Its a part of our history. Both sides are.

 

[A1Kaid]

According to some historical accounts Emperor Akbar himself with his matchlock shot the Rajput commander of the garrison in Chittoor Fortress.

 

[A1Kaid]

Battle for Chitor: Storming the Last Hindu Fortress in 1567

By Jeffrey Say Seck Leong
Originally published by Military History magazine. Published Online: August 21, 2006


The walls had been breached. The Mogul forces were closing in on the gallant Rajput defenders inside Chitor Garh, the fort of Chitor. Suddenly, flames were seen rising up in the air from three places inside the fort. The courtiers of Akbar the Great, the Mogul emperor, gave various explanations for the fires. Then Raja Bhagwant Das, a Rajput leader who had allied himself with the Moguls, said that the fires could only mean one thing. The johar–the Rajput custom of burning their women to death in the face of impending defeat–had been performed. Now the Rajput warriors sallied forth to meet the invaders in a desperate last stand with their traditional cry of 'death for all before dishonor.

It was Tuesday, February 23, 1568. For more than four months, the Mogul army had undertaken a costly and grueling siege of the fort, directed personally by their commander in chief and emperor, Akbar. Now the campaign had reached its apocalyptic climax.


Abu-al-Fath Jalal-ud-Din Muhammad Akbar was born on October 15, 1542. His grandfather and the first of the Mogul emperors, Babur, was a Chaghatai Turk who came from an area in what is now Uzbekistan in Central Asia–and was a descendent of the Mongol conquerors Genghis Khan and Tamerlane. Akbar became emperor at the age of 14 upon the death of his father, Humayun, in 1556. In his nearly 50 years on the throne (1556*1605), Akbar proved to be a tolerant statesman, a shrewd administrator and an avid patron of the arts. He was also a strong-willed individual and a brilliant military commander whose courage and determination enabled him to become master of a vast empire that covered almost two-thirds of the Indian subcontinent. One of the greatest testaments to Akbar's military and political skills was his subjugation of the martial Rajput kingdoms.

The domain of Rajputana or Land of the Rajputs (in what is now the desert state of Rajasthan) occupied the northwestern portion of India and had presented special difficulties for preceding Muslim rulers, as well as the Moguls. The hostile Rajput kingdoms lay across the routes that ran south from the principal Muslim centers of Delhi and Agra and were uncomfortably close to Dehli and Agra themselves. Mogul rulers also feared that the independent Rajput kingdoms could provide a safe haven for rebels plotting against them. Furthermore, Rajputana bordered on Gujarat, an important center of commerce with western Asia and Europe. To Akbar and the Moguls, therefore, there were potentially huge political and economic advantages to be gained by securing Rajputana.

The Rajputs (sons of kings) had begun to settle in northern and northwestern India after the breakup of the mighty Gupta empire in the late 5th century. They were probably descendants of Central Asian invaders who had contributed to the fall of the Gupta dynasty. Others believe that the Rajputs were the descendants of the kshatriyas (warrior caste, the second tier of the Hindu caste system), who had lived during the Vedic period between 1500 and 500 bc, when an Indo-European people from Iran, called the Aryans, settled in India.


The Rajputs were governed by a chivalric warrior's code not unlike that of the knights of medieval Europe. It emphasized compassion for defeated foes, generosity toward the helpless, fair play in battle, respect for women, and conduct of warfare by elegant forms and ceremonies. The Rajputs were renowned for their courage on the battlefield.

Their proud martial tradition and passion for war enabled the Rajputs to become the dominant power in northern India by the 9th century, but internecine conflicts led to the emergence of numerous petty kingdoms within their own domain. From time to time, the Rajputs would form confederacies to repel the Turko-Afghan armies that invaded India from the 8th century onward. Such unity tended to be only temporary, however, and their internal discord would ultimately prove to be their undoing.

Source: Battle for Chitor: Storming the Last Hindu Fortress in 1567


The Rajputs at Chittoor Fortress burned their women during the siege, they knew their end was coming.