south, stricken with terror, combined, and gathered in haste to the
new standard which alone seemed to offer some hope of protection. The
decayed old states crumbled away into nothingness, and the fighting
kings of Vijayanagar became the saviours of the south for two and a
half centuries.

And yet in the present day the very existence of this kingdom is
hardly remembered in India; while its once magnificent capital,
planted on the extreme northern border of its dominions and bearing
the proud title of the "City of Victory," has entirely disappeared
save for a few scattered ruins of buildings that were once temples
or palaces, and for the long lines of massive walls that constituted
its defences. Even the name has died out of men's minds and memories,
and the remains that mark its site are known only as the ruins lying
near the little village of Hampe.

Its rulers, however, in their day swayed the destinies of an empire
far larger than Austria, and the city is declared by a succession of
European visitors in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to have
been marvellous for size and prosperity -- a city with which for
richness and magnificence no known western capital could compare. Its
importance is shown by the fact that almost all the struggles of the
Portuguese on the western coast were carried on for the purpose of
securing its maritime trade; and that when the empire fell in 1565,
the prosperity of Portuguese Goa fell with it never to rise again.

Our very scanty knowledge of the events that succeeded one another in
the large area dominated by the kings of Vijayanagar has been hitherto
derived partly from the scattered remarks of European travellers
and the desultory references in their writings to the politics of