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Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 9, p. 71.

THE r UNDER LjS 71 against Shah Jahan, and his territory was confiscated. The central part of Bundelkhand was ruled by Champat Rai from Mahoba. He joined in Bir Singh Deo's revolt, and, though attacked by forces from Agra, from Allahabad, and from the Deccan, maintained a guerrilla warfare near the Betwa. He finally accepted service under the emperor and obtained the pargana of KCmch in Jalaun, and, in return for assis- tance given to Aurangzeb at the battle of Samogarh, received further grants, but lost favour and was assassinated by his wife's relations. Champat Rai's son, Chhatarsal, soon became chief leader of the Bundelas, and in a few years held the whole of western Bundelkhand, and gradually extended his power, taking Kalinjar and most of what is now British Bundelkhand. He defeated the imperial troops again and again, and in 1707, on the accession of Shah Alam Bahadur, was con- firmed in all the acquisitions he had made. In 1723 Muhammad Khan Bangash of Farrukhabad, while governor of Malwa, was ordered to bring the Bundelas to order; and in 1727, after his transfer to Alla- habad, he attacked them again, laying waste the whole country. Unable to resist the invasion, Chhatarsal called in the Marathas in 1729, and Muhammad Khan barely escaped with his life, glad to promise never to enter Bundelkhand again. When Chhatarsal died, about 1734, he bequeathed one-third of his territory (Jhansi and Jalaun) to the Marathas, and the rest was divided among his heirs. Bundel- khand was valuable to the Marathas, as it lay on the road from the Deccan to the Doab, and the Peshwa Baji Rao made constant use of it, the Bundelas binding themselves by treaty to co-operate with him. In 1747 the Peshwa further extended his possessions in this region by a fresh treaty, and nearly twenty years later troops from here assisted Shuja-ud-daula of Oudh in his unsuccessful struggle with the British. British troops first entered Bundelkhand in 1776, when war broke out with the Marathas after the Treaty of Purandhar, but they passed through without retaining any hold on the country. The Bundelas then succeeded in freeing themselves to some extent from the Maratha power. A Gosain or religious mendicant named Himmat Bahadur, who had already commanded troops, now began to rise into power; and he combined with Ali Bahadur, an illegitimate grandson of Baji Rao, who was in command at Gwalior, to crush the Bundela chiefs. A long struggle took place between r7go and 1802, when All Bahadur died while attempting to take Kalinjar: By the Treaty of Bassein in 1802 the Peshwa ceded territory to the British, some of which was afterwards exchanged for part of the Maratha possessions in Bundelkhand. Another portion of these possessions was acquired under a later treaty. The subordinate Maratha chiefs, however, refused to recognize these treaties ; and Shamsher Bahadur, son of Ali Bahadur, proceeded to lay waste Bundelkhand and the