Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: How long did The Maratha Conquests last?
The Maratha Conquest of North-west India, occurred between 1757 and 1758. Though it was short-lived, it had long-lasting effects upon the politics of the Indian subcontinent.
Apparently, there was peace for nearly ten years from 1196 CE, following the quelling in war by Kulothunga Chola III of his rivals and feudatories like Hoysalas, Pandyas, Cheras of Venad, and finally the Telugu Chodas. The Telugu Chodas were to acknowledge suzerainty of the Cholas up to 1216–18 CE. This interlude allowed Kulothunga Chola III to consolidate on his war gains and concentrate on administration and development work in the Chola territories. He had also by this time initiated construction work on the famous Sarabeswarar temple at Tribhuvanam, near Kumbakonam in Thanjavur district.
The Persian and Greek invasions had repercussions in the north-western regions of the Indian subcontinent. The region of Gandhara, or present-day eastern Afghanistan and north-west Pakistan, became a melting pot of Indian, Persian, Central Asian, and Greek cultures and gave rise to a hybrid culture, Greco-Buddhism, which lasted until the 5th century CE and influenced the artistic development of Mahayana Buddhism.
The Maurya Empire (322–185 BCE) unified most of the Indian subcontinent into one state, and was the largest empire ever to exist on the Indian subcontinent. At its greatest extent, the Mauryan Empire stretched to the north up to the natural boundaries of the Himalayas and to the east into what is now Assam. To the west, it reached beyond modern Pakistan, to the Hindu Kush mountains in what is now Afghanistan. The empire was established by Chandragupta Maurya assisted by Chanakya (Kautilya) in Magadha (in modern Bihar) when he overthrew the Nanda dynasty.
It was now Maravarman Sundara Pandya's turn to repeat the act of Kulothunga Chola III, in performing a "virabhishekam" in the coronation hall of the Cholas at Ayirattali in Thanjavur district. The Pandya monarch did not stop at this, he marched up to Chidambaram where he worshipped at the famous shrine of Nataraja. On his way back, Maravarman Sundara Pandyan fixed his camp at Pon Amaravati in Pudukottai. At this time, Kulothunga Chola III appealed for aid to Hoysala Veera Ballala II, with whom the Chola monarch had marital alliance. Veera Ballala II responded quickly, and 'sent an army under his son Vira Narasimha II to Srirangam. Maravarman Sundara Pandya, therefore, had to make peace with the Cholas and restore the Chola kingdom to Kulothunga Chola III and Rajaraja Chola III, after they made formal submission at Pon Amaravati and acknowledged him as suzerain. This was the beginning of the second empire of the Pandyas though it was not yet quite the end of that of the Cholas. The wheel of fortune had thus, turned a full circle during the last part of Kulothunga III's reign itself, and from being the powerful suzerains of the once-dominated Pandyas, it was the turn of Cholas to remain dominated and subservient to their arch-enemy, during the best part of their remaining existence between 1217 CE to 1280 CE. The period 1217–1280 CE was a period was a period of continuous decline of the Cholas which is also characterized by the steady and constant growth of the renewed power of the Pandyas. Kulothunga Chola III and his son Rajaraja Chola III became tribute-paying subordinates of Maravarman Sundara Pandya. The aging Kulothunga Chola III did not live long after sustaining defeat against the Pandyas and died in 1218 CE. He was succeeded by his son and heir-apparent Rajaraja Chola III (1218–1256 CE).
The history of the British Raj refers to the period of British rule on the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947. The system of governance was instituted in 1858 when the rule of the East India Company was transferred to the Crown in the person of Queen Victoria (who in 1876 was proclaimed Empress of India). It lasted until 1947, when the British provinces of India were partitioned into two sovereign dominion states: the "Dominion of India" and the "Dominion of Pakistan", leaving the princely states to choose between them. The two new dominions later became the Republic of India and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (the eastern half of which, still later, became the People's Republic of Bangladesh). The province of Burma in the eastern region of the Indian Empire had been made a separate colony in 1937 and became independent in 1948.
The Samyukta Maharashtra Movement achieved its aim when the present state of Maharashtra was created on 1 May 1960. The state reorganization left Marathi-speaking areas in Northern Karnataka, such as Belgaon, outside Maharashtra. The newly liberated people of Goa in a 1967 referendum rejected merger with Maharashtra.
Chandragupta I (r. c. 319-335 or 319-350 CE) was a king of the Gupta dynasty, who ruled in northern India. His title "Maharajadhiraja" ("king of great kings") suggests that he was the first emperor of the dynasty. It is not certain how he turned his small ancestral kingdom into an empire, although a widely-accepted theory among modern historians is that his marriage to the Lichchhavi princess Kumaradevi helped him extend his political power. Their son Samudragupta further expanded the Gupta empire.
Between 1185–1186, Kulothunga Chola III undertook a second campaign against the Pandya King Vira Pandya following a rebellion by him and non-payment of tribute to his Chola overlord. This time, however, Pandya King Vira Pandya did not get the usual support from the Sinhala and Venad kingdoms. Kulothunga Chola III also seems to have grown from strength to strength, for in his first ten years, in addition to his feuds against his traditional enemies the Pandya and Sinhala kingdoms, he was able to reign on his traditional feudatories, who had taken advantage of the relatively weaker authority of Kulothunga Chola III's predecessors Rajaraja Chola II and Rajadhiraja Chola II and had started to assert their independence.
The Hundred Years' War was a series of conflicts waged from 1337 to 1453 by the House of Plantagenet, rulers of the Kingdom of England, against the French House of Valois, over the right to rule the Kingdom of France. Each side drew many allies into the war. It was one of the most notable conflicts of the Middle Ages, in which five generations of kings from two rival dynasties fought for the throne of the largest kingdom in Western Europe. The war marked both the height of chivalry and its subsequent decline, and the development of strong national identities in both countries.
The births of Mahavira and Buddha in the 6th century BC mark the beginning of well-recorded history in the region. Around the 5th century BC, the ancient region of Pakistan was invaded by the Achaemenid Empire under Darius in 522 BC forming the easternmost satraps of the Persian Empire. The provinces of Sindh and Panjab were said to be the richest "satraps" of the Persian Empire and contributed many soldiers to various Persian expeditions. It is known that an "Indian" contingent fought in Xerxes' army on his expedition to Greece. Herodotus mentions that the Indus satrapy supplied cavalry and chariots to the Persian army. He also mentions that the Indus people were clad in armaments made of cotton, carried bows and arrows of cane covered with iron. Herodotus states that in 517 BC Darius sent an expedition under Scylax to explore the Indus. Under Persian rule, much irrigation and commerce flourished within the vast territory of the empire. The Persian empire was followed by the invasion of the Greeks under Alexander's army. Since Alexander was determined to reach the eastern-most limits of the Persian Empire he could not resist the temptation to conquer India (i.e. the Punjab region), which at this time was parcelled out into small chieftain-ships, who were feudatories of the Persian Empire. Alexander amalgamated the region into the expanding Hellenic empire. The "Rigveda", in Sanskrit, goes back to about 1500 BC. The Indian literary tradition has an oral history reaching down into the Vedic period of the later 2nd millennium BC.
Abu'l-Fath Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar (15 October 1542– 27 October 1605), popularly known as Akbar I (), also as Akbar the Great ("Akbar-i-azam" ), was the third Mughal emperor, who reigned from 1556 to 1605. Akbar succeeded his father, Humayun, under a regent, Bairam Khan, who helped the young emperor expand and consolidate Mughal domains in India. A strong personality and a successful general, Akbar gradually enlarged the Mughal Empire to include nearly all of the Indian Subcontinent north of the Godavari river. His power and influence, however, extended over the entire country because of Mughal military, political, cultural, and economic dominance. To unify the vast Mughal state, Akbar established a centralised system of administration throughout his empire and adopted a policy of conciliating conquered rulers through marriage and diplomacy. To preserve peace and order in a religiously and culturally diverse empire, he adopted policies that won him the support of his non-Muslim subjects. Eschewing tribal bonds and Islamic state identity, Akbar strove to unite far-flung lands of his realm through loyalty, expressed through an Indo-Persian culture, to himself as an emperor who had near-divine status.
The Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti achieved its goal on 1 May 1960, when the State of Bombay was partitioned into the Marathi-speaking State of Maharashtra and the Gujarati-speaking State of Gujarat. However Goa (then a Portuguese colony), Belgaum, Karwar and adjoining areas, which were also part of the Maharashtra envisaged by the Samiti, were not included in Maharashtra state. The prominent leaders of sanyukt maharashtra samiti decided to quit samiti after 1 May 1960, but the then chairman of the samiti Bhai Uddhavrao Patil continued his fight for the 862 Marathi-speaking villages of Karnataka that were excluded in 1960.
The Hundred Years' War, which lasted from 1337 to 1453, was the backdrop to their pillaging. The Hundred Years' War was fought between two royal families over control of the French throne: the Plantagenets from England, and the House of Valois from France. The War, which is divided into three stages - the Edwardian War (1337-1360), the Caroline War (1369-1389), and the Lancastrian War (1415-1429) - saw the development of new tactics and weaponry that revolutionised warfare during that time period.
The Seven Years' War was a global conflict fought between 1756 and 1763. It involved every European great power of the time and spanned five continents, affecting Europe, the Americas, West Africa, India, and the Philippines. The conflict split Europe into two coalitions, led by the Kingdom of Great Britain (including the Kingdom of Prussia, the Kingdom of Portugal, the Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and other small German states) on one side and the Kingdom of France (including the Austrian-led Holy Roman Empire), the Russian Empire (until 1762), the Kingdom of Spain, and the Swedish Empire on the other. Meanwhile, in India, some regional polities within the increasingly fragmented Mughal Empire, with the support of the French, tried to crush a British attempt to conquer Bengal. The war's extent has led some historians to describe it as "World War Zero", similar in scale to other world wars.
The Mongol conquest of China was a series of major military efforts by the Mongol Empire to invade China proper. It spanned six decades in the 13th century and involved the defeat of the Jin dynasty, Western Xia, the Dali Kingdom and the Southern Song. The Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan started the conquest with small-scale raids into Western Xia in 1205 and 1207. By 1279, the Mongol leader Kublai Khan had established the Yuan dynasty in China and crushed the last Song resistance, which marked the onset of all of China under the Mongol Yuan rule. This was the first time in history that the whole of China was conquered and subsequently ruled by a foreign or non-native ruler.
The last known inscription by a Gupta emperor is from the reign of Vishnugupta (the Damodarpur copper-plate inscription), in which he makes a land grant in the area of Kotivarsha (Bangarh in West Bengal) in 542/543 CE. This follows the occupation of most of northern and central India by the Aulikara ruler Yashodharman circa 532 CE.
During the reign of Chandragupta II, Gupta Empire maintained a large army consisting of 500,000 infantry, 50,000 cavalry, 20,000 charioteers and 10,000 elephants along with a powerful navy with more than 1200 ships. Chandragupta II controlled the whole of the Indian subcontinent; the Gupta empire was the most powerful empire in the world during his reign, at a time when the Roman Empire in the West was in decline.
When Akbar became emperor, he tried to bring normalcy to Mithila region. He came to the conclusion that only after a Maithil Brahmin was made King, peace can prevail and rent can be collected in Mithila. In 1577, Emperor Akbar declared Pt. Mahesh Thakkur as the ruler of Mithila.
Pt. Mahesh Thakkur was of the mool, Kharaure Bhaur and hence that dynasty was called ‘Khandwala Kul’ and the capital was made at Rajgram in Madhubani District.
In the Allahabad Pillar inscription, Gupta and his successor Ghatotkacha are described as "Maharaja" ("great king"), while the next king Chandragupta I is called a "Maharajadhiraja" ("king of great kings"). In the later period, the title "Maharaja" was used by feudatory rulers, which has led to suggestions that Gupta and Ghatotkacha were vassals (possibly of Kushan Empire). However, there are several instances of paramount sovereigns using the title "Maharaja", in both pre-Gupta and post-Gupta periods, so this cannot be said with certainty. That said, there is no doubt that Gupta and Ghatotkacha held a lower status and were less powerful than Chandragupta I.
Historians commonly divide the war into three phases separated by truces: the Edwardian War (1337–1360), the Caroline War (1369–1389), and the Lancastrian War (1415–1453). Local conflicts in neighbouring areas, which were contemporarily related to the war, including the War of the Breton Succession (1341–1365), the Castilian Civil War (1366–1369), the War of the Two Peters (1356–1369) in Aragon, and the 1383–85 crisis in Portugal, were availed by the parties to advance their agendas. Later historians adopted the term "Hundred Years' War" as a historiographical periodisation to encompass all of these events, thus constructing the longest military conflict in European history.
The Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti achieved its goal when Bombay State was reorganised on linguistic lines on 1 May 1960. Gujarati-speaking areas of Bombay State were partitioned into the state of Gujarat. Maharashtra State with Bombay as its capital was formed with the merger of Marathi-speaking areas of Bombay State, eight districts from Central Provinces and Berar, five districts from Hyderabad State, and numerous princely states enclosed between them. The pro-Samyukta Maharashtra writers claimed that in all 105 persons died in the 
battle for Bombay. As a memorial to the martyrs of the Samyukta Maharashtra movement, Flora Fountain was renamed as "Hutatma Chowk" (Martyr's Square), and a memorial was erected, since it was the starting point of the agitation.
In Punjab, Adina Beg Khan, along with Sikhs was already in revolt with Ahmad Shah Abdali who had invaded Punjab multiple times. He decided to call Marathas for help. On 7 March, Raghunathrao had encamped at Rajpura where he received Adina Beg Khan’s envoys, and was informed that the latter, accompanied by 15,000 Sikh fighters, belonging to the bands (the jathas) of Jassa Singh Ahluwalia and Baba Ala Singh of Patiala had closed upon Sirhind from the other side of Satluj. A concerted attack on the fort of Sirhind was made by the Marathas and their associates on 8 March 1758. Ahmad Samad Khan, with his 10,000 Afghan troops, held out for about two weeks before his capitulation on 21 March. After the victory, the town was thoroughly sacked by the victors. After defeating the Afghan-Rohilla forces, the Marathas pursued the Afghans into the Punjab.
The Imperial Maratha Conquests were a series of conquests in the Indian subcontinent which led to the building of the Maratha Empire. These conquests were started by Shivaji in 1659 from the victory at the Battle of Pratapgad. The conquests conclusively defeated and overtook the Mughal Empire in the Indian subcontinent and its vassals. It ended with the eventual fall of the Maratha Empire after the second and the third Anglo-Maratha Wars.
After the death of Aurangzeb in 1707, the 27 Years War ended in Maratha victory. This was followed by the phase of rapid expansion of the Maratha Empire for the next 50 years under patronage of Shahu and his appointed Peshwas Baji Rao I and Balaji Baji Rao. They conquered Gujarat, the whole of Central India and Orissa, subdued Rajputana and raided into Bengal and Tiruchirapalli in Tamil Nadu, and imposed chauth upon these areas. Their ambition pushed them further northwards than Delhi into Punjab, which collided with the ambitions of Ahmad Shah Abdali, the founder of Durrani Empire. In 1757, Ahmad Shah Abdali raided Delhi and captured Punjab and Kashmir with the help of Rohilla chief Najib Khan. He installed his son Timur Shah Durrani in Lahore and went back to Afghanistan.
There is no doubt that the single most important power to emerge in the long twilight of the Mughal dynasty was the Maratha Confederacy (1674 CE - 1818 CE). The Marathas are responsible, to a large extent, for ending Mughal rule in India. The Maratha Empire ruled large parts of India following the decline of the Mughals. The long and futile war bankrupted one of the most powerful empires in the world. Mountstart Elphinstone termed this a demoralizing period for the Muslims as many of them lost the will to fight against the Maratha Empire. Maratha empire at its peak stretched from Tamil Nadu (Trichinopoly) "present Tiruchirappalli" in the south to the Afghan border in the north. In early 1771, Mahadji, a notable Maratha general, recaptured Delhi and installed Shah Alam II as the puppet ruler on the Mughal throne. In north India, the Marathas thus regained the territory and the prestige lost as result of the defeat at Panipath in 1761. However regions of Kashmir, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Western Punjab, were captured by Marathas between 1758 and 1759, remained in Afghan rule before ascension of Sikh power. Mahadji ruled the Punjab as it used to be a Mughal territory and Sikh sardars and other Rajas of the cis-Sutlej region paid tributes to him. A considerable portion of the Indian subcontinent came under the sway of the British Empire after the Third Anglo-Maratha War, which ended the Maratha Empire in 1818.