your bridge home
True Valor
The emperor has spent thirteen years taking their forts, and their new commander decides to stop defending them.
Aurangzeb had killed one Chhatrapati, driven the second into exile at Jinji, and outlived him.
In March 1700 Rajaram died of illness at Sinhagad, and the Maratha state had, once again, no adult king.
What it had was a twenty-five-year-old widow, and a four-year-old boy.
And she turned out to be the worst thing that had happened to the emperor in twenty years.
Tarabai was born in 1675, daughter of Hambirrao Mohite, Shivaji's own commander-in-chief. She was raised in a military household and married into the royal one at eight.
She had been present for the entire disaster: Sambhaji's execution, the fall of Raigad, the flight to Jinji, the siege there, the years of exile.
So she was not a court figure who discovered ability under pressure. She had spent her whole life inside the running of a war, and when it fell to her she did not need to be taught.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.