The flat-topped hills around absolutely bristle with forts that the "Mountain Rats," as Aurungzebe called the Mahratta warriors, loved to build everywhere. A zigzag pathway leads from the city up to the western gate of "Azim Tarah," the most renowned of these strongholds. If individual energy and vehement self-assertion indicate character, the Mahratta soldiers possess it to an extraordinary degree, over and over again proving themselves grandly capable of confronting the very dangers they had brought down upon themselves. This fort is full of stories of Mahratta exploits against their threefold enemies. It has been captured, lost, and recaptured over and over again. It was built by a King Panalah in 1192, and was once the state-prison of the great Sivaji. It was defended against the emperor Aurungzebe by Phryaji Phrabu, a brave _hawaldar_,[68] who had learned the art of war under Sivaji. When the Mohguls attempted to enter the "Star City" huge stones were rolled down the mountain-sides, and were as destructive as the discharge of artillery. Tarbhyat Khan, a Mohgul in the service of Aurungzebe, undertook to destroy it by mining the north-east angle, one of its strongest points. The mine was completed after months of severe labor; a storming-party was formed on the brow of the hill. Aurungzebe, confident of success, marshalled his men in brilliant array to see the attack. The first explosion crushed many of the Mahratta garrison to death, and was followed by another that rolled down great rocks upon the Mohguls, destroying, it is said, two thousand men at once. Animated by this disaster to the enemy, the garrison would have continued to hold out, but their supplies failed and they were obliged to capitulate. After the well-known rupture with Baji Row, the English troops marched into Satarah, took possession of the fort, and installed as king Pra Thap Singh, the eldest son of Shah Hoo the Second. He was deposed, however, on account of a series of intrigues against the East India government, and was imprisoned at Benares. Apa Saihib, the last of the descendants in a direct line of the great Sivaji, was then placed on the throne, but on his death the province, much to the indignation of the princes and people of Western India, was annexed to the possessions of the East India Company. It is but just to say that there were men among the court of directors who remembered, with Sir George Clark, then governor of Bombay, the treaty of 1819, and knew that the East India Company had agreed to cede in perpetual sovereignty, to the rajah of Satarah and his heirs and successors, the territories which he held, and they protested, but all in vain, against the annexation of Satarah, calling it "an act of unrighteous usurpation." Here, alas! was laid the first seed of the "Sepoy mutiny," that terrible retribution which ten years after overtook not the guilty, but the innocent and faithful servants of the Company.