And here they lived and sallied into the plains, and fought and increased the borders of their kingdom, or were suddenly and stealthily murdered, or stood shoulder to shoulder against the incursions of the “Devil men” from the north. In 1150 _A. D._ was born Samar Singh, and he married into the family of Prithi Raj, the last Hindu Emperor of Delhi, who was at feud, in regard to a succession question, with the Prince of Kanauj. In the war that followed, Kanauj, being hard pressed by Prithi Raj and Samar Singh, called Shahabuddin Ghori to his aid. At first, Samar Singh and Prithi Raj broke the army of the Northmen somewhere in the Lower Punjab, but two years later Shahabuddin came again, and, after three days’ fighting on the banks of the Kaggar, slew Samar Singh, captured and murdered Prithi Raj, and sacked Delhi and Amber while Samar Singh’s favorite queen became _sati_ at Chitor. But another wife, a princess of Patun, kept her life, and when Shahabuddin sent down Kutbuddin to waste her lands, led the Rajput army, in person, from Chitor, and defeated Kutbuddin. Then followed confusion, through eleven turbulent reigns, that the annalist has failed to unravel. Once in the years between 1193 and the opening of the fourteenth century, Chitor must have been taken by the Mussalman, for it is written that one prince “recovered Chitor and made the name of Rana to be recognized by all.” Six princes were slain in battles against the Mussalman, in vain attempts to clear far away Gya from the presence of the infidel. Then Ala-ud-din Khilji, the Pathan Emperor, swept the country to the Dekkan. In those days, and these things are confusedly set down as having happened at the end of the thirteenth century, a relative of Rana Lakhsman Singh, the then Rana of Chitor, had married a Rajput princess of Ceylon--Pudmini, “And she was fairest of all flesh on earth.” Her fame was sung through the land by the poets, and she became, in some sort, the Helen of Chitor. Ala-ud-din heard of her beauty and promptly besieged the Fort. When he found his enterprise too difficult, he prayed that he might be permitted to see Pudmini’s face in a mirror, and this wish, so says the tale, was granted. Knowing that the Rajput was a gentleman he entered Chitor almost unarmed, saw the face in the mirror, and was well treated; the husband of the fair Pudmini accompanying him, in return, to the camp at the foot of the hill. Like Raja Runjeet in the ballad the Rajput-- “ ...trusted a Mussalman’s word Wah! Wah! Trust a liar to lie! Out of his eyrie they tempted my bird, Fettered his wings that he could not fly.”