When our nation commenced its conquering career in the middle of the eighteenth century, the Muhammadan Empire was in a state of collapse. Within thirteen years of Aurungzeb's death, in 1706, six sovereigns were seated on the imperial throne. Shah Alum was nominal emperor from 1759 to 1806, and all the time he was a wanderer, a prisoner, or a pensioner of the Mahrattas, the Rohillas, or the English. He was as melancholy an example of fallen greatness as can well be conceived, a greatness which retained its title while its bearer was subjected to every indignity. He had been for some time in the hands of the Mahrattas, who used his seal freely, and at the same time treated him with the utmost cruelty. The food supplied was so insufficient that he and his household were almost starved. When Lord Lake took Delhi from the Mahrattas in 1803 he found the poor old blind emperor under a tattered canopy, trembling at what might now befall him. Some years previously his eyes had been gouged out by one of his Rohilla keepers. At once he was treated by us with the highest consideration. Power was not given, but a handsome pension was assigned, and he was personally treated with all the honour due to a reigning sovereign. When these facts are remembered, it is strange we should be charged with overthrowing the Muhammadan Empire in India. Whoever was injured by our conquest, Shah Alum and his family were assuredly benefited. Our contention was with those whose only claim to rule rested on the sword. Bold adventurers had risen everywhere, and were snatching at the fallen sceptre. There were still emperors, as we have mentioned, and their prestige gave value to documents bearing their seal, but they did not retain a shred of power. Daring Europeans, helped by native allies, had set to carving out principalities for themselves. The viziers and nawabs that ruled in the name of the emperors rendered them neither obedience nor tribute. Our first great battle was fought with Suraj ud Dowla, the Nawab of Bengal, the grandson of Aliverdi Khan, an Afghan adventurer, who had acquired the government of the country. In the South we fought with Hyder Ali, a trooper who gathered under him a marauding band, and by courage and craft rose to being a sovereign, and with his son Tippoo Sahib. Our longest and most severe contests were with the Mahrattas, a warlike tribe of Hindus in Western India, who came first into prominence in the seventeenth century under Sivajee, a petty chieftain, and gradually advanced under various leaders till they became for a time the paramount power. Their hordes of horsemen scoured the country in all directions, north and south, east and west, demanding the _chauth_, the fourth part of the revenue, and returning to their capitals laden with spoil. The leaders with whom we had most to do, sometimes in the way of friendship, far more frequently in the way of warfare, were the Peshwa, the head of the Mahratta confederacy, the heir