THE MARATHAS AND THEIR RULE

239 dominion in Upper India, until the Sikhs crossed the Sutlaj long afterwards in 1845. When Warren Hastings assumed the government of Bengal in 1772, the different Maratha chiefs were just beginning to found separate rulerships without aban- doning their confederacy under the Peshwa. And from WARREN HASTINGS, GOVERNOR- GENERAL OF BENGAL. 1774, during the whole of his Governor-Generalship, the state and course of the East India Company's for- eign affairs were governed principally by the varying relations of the English with these chiefs. Hastings found that a Maratha army had made its annual irrup- tion into the districts northwest of Bengal, where the emperor Shah Alam, who had been living at Allahabad on the revenues assigned him by Clive in 1765, solicited and obtained their assistance toward recovering his