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True Valor
Akbar set statues of the two men who had held Chittor against him at the gate of his own fort, where every visitor to his court would ride past them.
When Akbar took Chittor in February 1568, he did something that no conqueror is expected to do. He had statues of the two men who had held it against him carved in stone, mounted on elephants.
And he set them up at the gate of his own fort at Agra.
They stood there for over a century. Their names were Jaimal and Patta.
Akbar came to Chittor on 23 October 1567. Udai Singh II was Karnavati's rescued infant, now the Rana. And he did not stay to be besieged.
He withdrew into the hills on the counsel of his nobles, to keep the dynasty alive. And he left the fort under the command of Jaimal Rathore of Merta.
The siege lasted four months. It was expensive. Mughal casualties were heavy. The defenders held the walls.
And the sabat, the covered approach trench Akbar's engineers drove towards the fort, cost lives every yard of the way.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.