his chief opponents, the Játs, Rájputs, Patháns, Ráthors, and Musalmáns yielded to his arms or to his policy. By 1792 he had wrung from the Mughal emperor the title of Vicegerent of the empire, the whole powers of which he thenceforth virtually wielded as his own, and in the autumn of that year he shattered the forces of his great rival in the Marátha confederation, Holkar of Indor. Early, however, in 1794 his life came to a sudden end, and the English were freed from a presence, which, if actively arrayed against them, might have had serious consequences to the consolidation of their mastery in India. Mádhaji Sindhia's power passed into the hands of his grand-nephew, Daulat Ráo; but his death by no means marked any collapse of Marátha activity. In 1795 their ubiquitous forces marched down upon the Nizám at Haidarábád, dispersed his army, and forced him to an ignominious surrender. În 1798 Daulat Ráo Sindhia was firmly established at Puna, and was the most considerable prince in Central and Northern India. Holkar and the Rája of Nágpur were masters of large forces and extensive territory, and none of them had forgotten their hostility to the English. What might have been the result of a general combination can only be surmised. But, fortunately for the British power in India, no such policy prevailed. On the contrary, in 1801 Sindhia, Holkar, and the Raja of Nagpur were at each other's throats in a fierce struggle for supremacy. There was also bitter enmity between the Peshwa and Holkar; and when in 1803 Sindhia came to the assistance of the former, a great battle ensued in which the allied armies were utterly crushed. The result was one by which Lord Wellesley, then Governor-General, took care to profit. For the Peshwa now sued to the English for their help, and taking refuge at Bassein, close to Bombay, signed a treaty of general defensive alliance with the British government, under which a strong subsidiary force, to be furnished by the English and paid by the Peshwa, was to be permanently stationed within his territory, and all his foreign relations were to be subordinated to the policy of England. The remaining Marátha powers, however, still had to be dealt with. And they now broke out into open hostilities, the chief of Nágpur organizing a league against the English, and with Sindhia marching up to the frontier of Haidarábád. Holkar refused to join the league, and the Gaekwár held aloof. The confederates therefore paused, hoping to win over Holkar. But Lord Wellesley, who was as anxious to bring matters to a crisis as they were to gain time, gave orders to General Wellesley, who was facing Sindhia in the west, and to General Lake, who was moving upon Sindhia's possessions in the north-west, to press the war with vigour. Accordingly General Wellesley called upon Sindhia and the Nagpur Rája to withdraw their army from the Nizám's borders. This they refused to do, and the consequence was the battle of Assaye in which Wellesley obtained a decisive victory.

He next inflicted a severe defeat upon the troops of the Nágpur Rája at Argáon, and took by storm the hill forts of Gawilgarh. Lake was equally active in the north-west. He took Aligarh by assault, dispersed Sindhia's force before Dehli, besieged and captured Agra, and finally at Láswári routed the last of Sindhia's regular army. "The result," says Sir A. Lyall,*" of these wellcontested and hardly won victories was to shatter the whole military organization upon which Sindia's predominance had been built up, to break down his connection with the Moghul court in the north, and to destroy his influence at Poona as the most formidable member of the Maratha confederacy. Both Sindia and the Nagpore Rája, finding themselves in imminent danger of losing all their possessions, acquiesced reluctantly in the terms that were dictated to them after the destruction of their armies. The treaty of Bassein was formally recognized; they entered into defensive treaties and made large cessions of territory. Sindia gave up to the British all his northern districts lying along both sides of the Jumna river; he ceded his sea-ports and his conquests on the west coast; he made over to them the city of Delhi and the custody of the Mogul emperor; he dismissed all his French officers, and accepted the establishment, at his cost, of a large British force to be stationed near his frontier. The Raja of Nagpore restored Berar to the Nizám, and surrendered to the British government the province of Cuttack, on the Bay of Bengal, which lay interposed between the upper districts of Madras and the south-western districts of Bengal." Holkar still remained to be reckoned with. He had been hoping to profit by Sindhia's discomfiture, and now thought to take advantage of his defenceless condition. He was, therefore, summoned by Lake to retire within his own territories, and on his refusal was attacked by the British troops. Although for a time Holkar had followed Sindhia's example of maintaining a staff of European officers and of drilling his troops after the European fashion, he had before this returned to the traditional Marátha tactics of rapid cavalry movements. His object was to evade a regular engagement, and it was not without a prolonged effort that Lake surprised and finally dispersed his bands. Holkar at last took refuge in the Panjab, whence he returned only to sign a treaty on terms similar to those imposed upon Sindhia and the Nagpur Rája. For some years there was peace between the English and the Maráthas. But in 1816 the Bhonsla Rája of Nágpur, with whom Lord Hastings had concluded a subsidiary treaty detaching him from the Marátha confederation, repented an engagement which tied his hands, and began to concert hostile measures with the Peshwa, who also was impatient of the restrictions placed upon him by alliance with the English. The latter, however,

* Rise of the British Dominion in India, pp. 227, 8.

before actually plunging into another struggle realized the danger he incurred of being stripped of all his possessions, and again entered into negotiations with the English whereby, in exchange for an increased subsidiary force, he made further cessions of territory, and virtually renounced all pretensions to supremacy in the Marátha confederation. His good faith was of short duration. In the following year he broke into open hostility and attacked the British troops at Puna, the Nágpur Rája imitating him in his outbreak. Their combination quickly proved ineffectual. The Peshwa was routed and his forts seized. In 1818 he surrendered, and the greater part of his territories passed under the British sovereignty, he being allowed to reside at Bithúr on a pension of £80,000 a year, the non-continuance of which after his death made an enemy of his adopted son, Dhundu Panth, commonly known as "Nana Sahib." The Nágpur State had also to cede several important districts, and thenceforth the Maratha powers ceased to exist except as feudatories of the British rule.