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BANDA.

48

Emperor

their authority seems to have been little more than During the whole period of the iMughal dynasty, the Bundela chiefs remained uncertain and rebellious vassals to the court of Delhi. They were always ready to seize upon the family dissensions, so frequent in the house of Akbar, as an opportunity for asserting their independence. Under Champat Rai they long resisted the power of Shah Jahan, and after his death they rallied round his son, their national hero, Chhatar Sal, who set himself up as the head of a Hindu league, to oppose the proselytizing efforts of Aurangzeb, and never rested until he had made himself practically independent of Delhi. He attained this object, however, through the dangerous aid of the Marathas, to whom, on his death, about 1734, he left one-third of his territories, including the present Districts of Lalitpur, Jalaun, and Jhansi. In 1738, Baji Rao, the second of the Peshwas, obtained the supremacy of all Bundelkhand, by treaty with the Rajas. From that time until 1803, the country remained more or less in the power of the Poona throne, though perpetually disturbed by intestine quarrels and predatory

that

nominal.

border warfare.

The

years formed a period of great misery Bundelkhand, as for tlie rest of Upper India. Military hordes collected the hill fastnesses were occupied by the forts of robber chiefs the villages were plundered and devastated the commercial and agricultural prosperity, which had grown under the fostering care of the Chandel and earlier Bundela princes, was utterly crushed and desolated by war in the time of the later Bundela kings. Added to all this miser)’, the mode of collecting the Maratha revenue was so oppressive that nothing remained to the cultivator beyond the

intervening sixty-five

and confusion

for





bare means of subsistence.

This was the condition of

British occupation took place.

After the battle of

affairs

Poona

when

the

in 1802, the

was concluded with the Peshwa, by which he agreed territories for the maintenance of a British force. These territories were afterwards exchanged, by a supplementary treaty in December 1803, for part of the Maratha dominions in Bundelkhand. An arrangement was also entered into with Raja Himmat Bahadur, a

treaty of Bassein

to

cede certain

military adventurer,

who

held a large part of Bundelkhand under the

was granted to him as the maintenance of troops under his command in the ser’ice of the British Government. Much opposition was offered by Shamsher Bahadur, the Maratha Nawab of Banda, as well as by the freebooting chiefs, each of whom had to be separately dislodged. But by the close of the year 1804, the country had been Peshwa, by which an extension of

price of his adherence,

sufficiently pacified to

Of

and

territory

for the

permit of

its

constitution into a British District.

Banda formed apart until the year separated under the name of Southern Bundelkhand. this District,

when it was The assignments

1819,