There were at the same time powers existing in India to keep the Mahrattas in check, and some parts of India were excepted from their depredations. The English power was rising at Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. The nascent Sikh power prevented Mahratta incursions from being permanently successful in the Punjab. As the Mogul Empire broke up, some separate Mahommedan powers rose upon its ruins. The nizam of the Deccan established himself at Hyderabad, comparatively near the headquarters of the peshwa. Hyder Ali was proclaimed sultan of Mysore in the south. Ahmed Shah Abdali burst upon India from Afghanistan. The Mahrattas bravely encountered him at Panipat near Delhi in 1761, and were decisively defeated. The defeat, however, did not essentially shake the Mahratta confederation. It was collision with the English that broke that wonderful fabric to pieces. The first collision with the English occurred in 1775, arising from a disputed succession to the peshwaship. The English government at Bombay supported one of the claimants, and the affair became critical for the English as well as for the Mahrattas. It was at this conjuncture that Warren Hastings displayed his political genius and rendered signal service to his country, by succouring from Bengal the defeated Bombay army and negotiating a peace (in 1782) that restored the _status quo_. The next collision happened in 1803. The peshwa had fallen into grave difficulties with some of the principal members of the Mahratta confederation. He therefore placed himself under British protection, and this led to the great Mahratta War, in which the Marquis Wellesley displayed those talents for military and political combination which rendered him illustrious. It was during the campaigns which ensued that General Arthur Wellesley defeated Sindhia and the Bhonsla raja at Assaye, and General Lake won the victories of Farrukhabad, Dig and Laswari over Sindhia and Holkar. The three confederates, Sindhia, Holkar and the Bhonsla, concluded peace with the British government, after making large sacrifices of territory in favour of the victor, and submitting to British control politically. It was during these events that the British won the province of Orissa, the old Hindustan afterwards part of the North-Western Provinces, and a part of the western coast in Gujarat.