MAHRATTAS. The Mahratta state comprehended a country in Hindustan, very extensive, and of great natural strength, being interspersed with mountains, defiles, and fortresses, and well adapted for defensive war. It extended across the peninsula of India, and, generally speaking, was in possession of the peishwa, Nagpoor Rajah, Scindia, Holkar, Guicowar, and other inferior chiefs. The Mahrattas were not originally a military tribe like the Rajpoots; nor do they possess the same grace and dignity of person, being of a diminutive stature and badly made, and having more the character of freebooters than of soldiers. Their original country is said to have included Khandesh, Baglana, and part of Berar, and north-west as far as Gujeratand the Nerbuddah River. Others again say that they are foreigners, who came into India from the western parts of Persia about 1200 years ago. Little is known of the history of the Mahratta people till about the middle of the seventeenth century, when they possessed a narrow tract of country on the western side of the peninsula, extending from the fifteenth to the twenty-first degree of north latitude. The founder of the Mahratta state, or at least the first person who raised this nation from obscurity, was Sevajee, who was born about the year 1626, and died in 1680, and who claimed a descent, but upon very doubtful grounds, from the ranahs of Odeypoor. The father of Sevajee, named Sahoo Bhosila or Bhoonsla, was an officer in the service of the last Mahommedan king of Bejapoor or Visiapoor. The Mahratta country was originally divided amongst a number of principalities, ruled by independent chiefs, who were combined into one under Sevajee. He was succeeded by his son Sambajee, who extended his conquests, but who was finally taken prisoner by Aurungzebe in 1689, and put to death. Sahoo Rajah, who succeeded him, extended his conquests from sea to sea, and obtained possession of fortresses commanding a territory reaching from the province of Agra to Cape Comorin. This great monarch was succeeded by his son Ram Rajah, whose power was usurped by the two chief officers of the state, the peishwa or prime minister Bajeerow, and the paymaster-general Ragojee, who divided the empire between them. The former fixed his residence at Poonah; the latter founded a new kingdom at Nagpoor, in the province of Gundwaneh. Bajeerow, the peishwa, died in 1759, and was succeeded by his son Ballajeerow. In 1760 the Mahrattas had extended their conquests as far as the city of Delhi, when a formidable rival appeared in Ahmed Shah Abdalli, the sovereign of Afghanistan, to dispute with them the empire of India. With the Afghans was fought, on the 7th of January 1761, the great battle of Paniput, in which the Mahrattas were speedily overthrown with the loss of a great number of their chiefs. From this period their power began to decline. Ballajeerow died soon after the battle of Paniput, and was succeeded by his son Madhoorow, who died in 1772, and was succeeded by his son Narrainrow, who was murdered the following year by his uncle Ragobah, who was opposed in his designs on the throne by a combination of twelve chiefs. At the head of these was Balla-jee Pundit, who became dewan or prime minister to the infant prince. Ragobah fled to Bombay, where he solicited and obtained, by means of an advantageous treaty, the aid of the British government. But this aid was ineffectual in seating the murderer upon the Mahratta throne. His crime had brought upon him the general obloquy of the nation; and his appeal to foreign aid united against him the whole confederate chiefs of the Mahratta empire. By the interference of the Bengal government, a treaty was concluded; but in 1777 the Bombay government again espoused the cause of Ragobah, and a war ensued, which was terminated by a disgraceful convention, and Ragobah abandoned. A general war afterwards took place between the British and the Mahrattas, and was terminated by a treaty in 1782, by which every conquest was restored except the island of Salsette. At this period the Mahrattas commenced hostile operations against all those independent states which lay between their territories and those of the Company; and in the course of six or seven years they were all subdued, by which the Mahratta frontier bordered with the British dominions. In 1785 they carried on an unsuccessful war with Tippoo, and were obliged to purchase peace by the cession of several valuable provinces, all of which they recovered by their alliance with the British in 1790. The posthumous and infant son of Madhoorow, who succeeded to the peishwaship when hecame to maturity, died in 1795, and the two sons of Ragobah contended for the office. The cause of the eldest brother, named Bajeerow, was espoused by Scindia, by whose aid he was fixed on the throne; but he was permitted to enjoy nothing of the sovereignty but the name. In the year 1802 the united armies of the peishwa and Scindia were defeated by Holkar; and the former having taken refuge in the territory of the British, was, by their aid, reinstated on the throne, agreeing in return to a treaty offensive and defensive, and to receive into his pay a force of six thousand infantry, with the usual proportion of artillery attached, for the payment of which he assessed districts in the southern quarter of the country. From this period the pcishwa, murmuring under his degradation into a state of dependence, cherished schemes of hostility against the British. The first overt act of hostility was the murder of the Guicowar’s ambassador, through the agency of his ambassador Trimbuckjee. But his intrigues and schemes being discovered, he vowed the strictest fidelity in future; and [7:14:41]in 1815 he delivered up his prime minister to the British. He soon contrived, however, to escape to the court of Poonah; and the peishwa, no longer dissembling, joined the confederacy which had at that time been formed amongst the native princes of India, namely, Scindia, Ameer Khan, Holkar, and the Berar Rajah, for the destruction of the British power. But this confederacy was signally overthrown; the peishwa’s armies were entirely routed; and he, reduced to the character of a wandering fugitive, at last surrendered himself a prisoner to Sir John Malcolm, on condition of an allowance being assigned him. It was now resolved by the Anglo-Indian government to abolish the authority and the name of the peishwa, which had become a rallying point for the disaffected, and to occupy the whole of the Poonah dominions for the British nation, with the reservation of certain territories for the Satarah family. Thus was extinguished not only the political influence, but the name and authority, of the Mahratta state.