In the fifteenth century a new set of Mohammedan invaders--the Turkis or Tartars--came down upon the Arabs, and after more than a hundred years of raiding, invaded Hindostan in good earnest under a great leader, Baber. In 1526 they became masters of Delhi. Then for two hundred years strong man succeeded strong man, and there was consolidated what is called the Mogul Empire. Akbar, one of the great men of all time, reigned from 1556 until 1605--almost exactly the period of our own Elizabeth--and gathered all India north of the Narbada, from Kandahar to the Bay of Bengal, into a single Empire. His successors strove hard, though with indifferent results, to subjugate the Dekhan; but by the middle of the seventeenth century signs of decay were evident among the Moguls. The Hindus, whether warriors as the Rajputs, or meek and submissive, as the Bengalis, have an amazing power of silently and gradually absorbing all alien races into themselves. At this moment a sharp line divides Mohammedans from Hindus; and yet the Mohammedans have already caught the system of caste from the Hindus, and as centuries roll on will doubtless be more and more drawn into the likeness of the Hindus, until the two races are indistinguishable. Intermarriage contributes greatly to this; and it was intermarriage with Hindu women, and the consequent dilution of the stern Tartar blood, which weakened and ruined the Mogul Emperors. The last eminent man of the line, Aurungzib, perhaps inspired by the deterioration of his countrymen, was a rabid Mohammedan fanatic, so relentless in his persecutions that he raised up a host of enemies and brought about the ruin of the Mogul Empire. The Rajputs reappeared as the champions of Hinduism, but there also came forward two new defenders. The first may be described as a Puritan sect, the Sikhs. They were at the outset only martyrs, but later, when a man of genius was born among them, they became in the nineteenth century a great military power. The second and more important were the Marathas, the followers of Sivaji Bonsla, a petty chief from the hills above Bombay, who being a fine military leader, wore out the armies of Aurungzib by what we call guerilla tactics. What the Marathas were no one can say. They were not a caste, nor a sect, nor a nation; but they were a homogeneous body, and they would, but for us English, have become the masters of India.