ne upon them.

In the 17th century Chhatarsal, the Bundela chieftain, deprived the
Mandla principality of part of the Vindhyan plateau and the Nerbudda
valley. In 1733 the peshwa of Poona invaded Bundelkhand; and in 1735 the
Mahrattas had established their power in Saugor. In 1742 the peshwa
advanced to Mandla and exacted the payment of _chauth_ (tributary
blackmail), and from this time until 1781, when the successors of
Sangram Sah were finally overthrown, Garha-Mandla remained practically a
Mahratta dependency. Meanwhile the other independent principalities of
Gondwana had in turn succumbed. In 1743 Raghoji Bhonsla of Berar
established himself at Nagpur, and by 1751 had conquered the territories
of Deogarh, Chanda and Chhattisgarh. In 1741 Ratanpur had surrendered to
the Mahratta leader Bhaskar Pant without a blow, and the ancient Rajput
dynasty came to an end. In Chanda and Deogarh the Gond rajas were
suffered by Raghoji Bhonsla and his successor to carry on a shadowy
existence for a while, in order to give them an excuse for avoiding the
claims of the peshwa as their overlord; though actually decisions in
important matters were sought at Poona. Raghoji died in 1755, and in
1769 his son and successor, Janoji, was forced to acknowledge the
peshwa's effective supremacy. The Nagpur state, however, continued to
grow. In 1785 Mudhoji (d. 1788), Janoji's successor, bought from the
Poona court the cession of Mandla and the upper Nerbudda valley, and
between 1796 and 1798 this was followed by the acquisition of
Hoshangabad and the larger part of Saugor and Damoh by Raghoji II. (d.
1816). Under this latter raja the Nagpur state covered practically the
whole of the present Central Provinces and Berar, as well as Orissa and
some of the Chota Nagpur states.

In 1803 Raghoji joined Sindhia against the British; the result was the
defeat of the allies at Assaye and Argaon, and the treaty of Deogaon, by
which Raghoji had to cede Cuttack, Sambalpur and part of Berar. Up to
this time the rule of the Bhonsla rajas, rough warriors of peasant
extraction, had been on the whole beneficent; but, soured by his defeat,
Raghoji now set to work to recover some of his losses by a ruthless
exploitation of the peasantry, and until the effective intervention of
the British in 1818 the country was subjected to every kind of
oppression. After Raghoji II.'s death in 1816 his imbecile son Parsaji
was deposed and murdered by Mudhoji, known as Appa Sahi