Page:A Brief History of the Indian Peoples.djvu/158

154 The British won India, not from the Mughals, but from the Hindus.—Before we appeared as conquerors, the Mughal Empire had broken up. Our final and most perilous wars were neither with the Delhi king, nor with his revolted Muhammadan viceroys, but with the two Hindu confederacies, the Maráthás and the Sikhs. Muhammadan princes fought against us in Bengal, in the Karnátik, and in Mysore; but the longest opposition to the British conquest of India came from the Hindus. Our last Maráthá war dates as late as 1818, and the Sikh Confederation was overcome only in 1849.

The following summary must suffice to show the principal events in the ruin of the Mughal Empire after the death of Aurangzeb, the last of the great Mughal emperors, in 1707.