as the champion of the Mughal Emperor in his hereditary capital. Before the end of 1803, both Sindhia and the Bhonsla Rájá of Nágpur sued for peace. Sindhia ceded all claims to the territory north of the Jumna, and left the blind old Emperor Sháh Alam once more under British protection. The Bhonsla forfeited Orissa to the English, who had already occupied it with a flying column in 1803, and Berar to the Nizám, who gained fresh territory by every act of complaisance to the British Government. The freebooter Jaswant Ráo Holkar alone remained in the field, supporting his troops by
raids through Malwá and Rájputána. The concluding years of Wellesley's rule were occupied with a series of operations against Holkar, which brought little credit on the British name. The disastrous retreat of Colonel Monson through Central India (1804) recalled memories of the convention
of Wargaum, and of the destruction of Colonel Baillie's force by Haidar Alí. The repulse of Lake in person at the siege of Bhartpur (Bhurtpore) is memorable as an instance of a British army in India having to turn back with its object unaccomplished (1805). Bhartpur was not finally taken till
1827.
India after Lord Wellesley, 1805.—Lord Wellesley during his six years of office carried out almost every part of his territorial scheme. In Northern India, Lord Lake's campaigns brought the North-Western Provinces (the ancient Madhyadesa) under British rule, together with the custody of the puppet emperor. The new Districts were amalgamated with those previously acquired from the Nawáb Wazír of Oudh into the 'Ceded and Conquered Provinces.' This arrangement of Northern India remained till the Sikh wars of 1845 and 1849 gave us the Punjab. In South-Eastern India, we have seen that Lord Wellesley's conquests constituted the Madras Presidency almost as it exists at the present date. In South-western India, the Peshwá was reduced to a vassal of the Company. But the territories now under the Governor of Bombay were not finally built up into their existing form until the last Maratha war in 1818.
