Too late to save Chitor,
he retook it, and restored Bikramajit to the throne; but the guardian
goddess had turned her face from the doomed city, and its final fall was
at hand. The Emperor Akbar, having laid almost all India at his feet,
determined to bring the proud princes of Rajputana into subjection. He
attacked Chitor, but was foiled by the masculine courage of the Rana's
concubine queen.
Again, in 1568, the Emperor Akbar attacked, and this time he found the
fated city in evil case, for Oodi Singh,[5] the Rana, for whom in infancy
his nurse had sacrificed her own child, was a degenerate son of his race.
He left Chitor to be defended by his lieutenants Jeimul and Putta.
In the first "saka" by Alla, twelve crowned heads defended the "crimson
banner" to the death. In the second, when conquest, at the hand of Bahadur,
came from the south, the chieftain of Deola, a noble scion of Mewar,
claimed the crown of glory and of martyrdom. But on this, the third and
greatest struggle, no royal victim appeared to appease the Cybele of
Chitor and win her to retain its battlements as her coronet.
When Jeimul fell at the Gate of the Sun, the command devolved upon Putta
of Kailwa, a lad of sixteen. His mother commanded him to don "the saffron
robe," then, with him and his young bride, she fell full armed upon the
foe, and the heroic trio died before the eyes of the war-worn garrison.
Once more was the Johur commanded, while 8000 Rajputs ate the last "beera"
together, and put on their saffron robes.
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