1565
Battle of Talikota
The setting
Between Talikota and the Krishna river, in modern Karnataka
River line and open Deccan plateau scrub; the battle turned on a crossing the Vijayanagara army believed it controlled.
Reveal the outcome
Recorded sideVijayanagara Empire
Recorded resultannihilated; Rama Raya captured and beheaded on the field
Total defeat of Vijayanagara. Rama Raya was beheaded in the field and the capital was sacked over months.
How the atlas explains it
Two accounts compete and both may be partly true: sultanate artillery, loaded with copper coin as shot at close range, broke the Vijayanagara centre; and two Muslim commanders in Vijayanagara service changed sides during the engagement. Rama Raya, in his seventies and directing from a litter, was taken and killed in view of his own army, and the collapse followed immediately - the same single-point failure as Hemu nine years earlier.
What followed
Ended the last great independent Hindu empire of the south. Vijayanagara city - Hampi, one of the largest cities in the world at the time - was systematically destroyed over several months and never reoccupied. The ruins are now the primary source for what was lost.