He sought help from the Bijapur Sultan and attacked Venkata III in Chandragiri – Vellore in 1638[citation needed].
[citation needed] Sriranga III required the consent of his nayakas to be crowned, but struggled to obtain it.
When the nayaka of Tanjavur allied himself with Golkonda, Tirumala, worried that the alliance would turn against him, asked Bijapur to send help, but the strategy backfired.
On 4 April 1646, Sriranga III collected a large army with help from Mysore, Gingee and Tanjore and met the Golkonda forces in battle, but despite the aid he received, he was defeated.
Sriranga III spent his last years under the support of one of his vassal chieftains, Shivappa Nayaka of Ikkeri, and was still hoping to retrieve Vellore from the Muslim forces.
Thirumala Nayaka's treachery to Sriranga III made the Mysore ruler Kanthirava Narasaraja I wage a series of ravaging wars with Madurai, later capturing the territories of Coimbatore and Salem, regions which were retained by Mysore till 1800.
Sriranga died in 1678/1681 as an emperor without an empire, putting an end to over three centuries of Vijayanagara rule in India.