In spite of these difficulties Aurangzib renewed operations against Sivaji, to which the Maratta retorted by raiding expeditions in Hindustan; whereby he hoped to impress on the Mogul the advisability of leaving him alone; his object being to organise a great dominion in the Deckan--a dominion largely based on his championship of Hinduism as against Mahometanism. When Sivaji died, in 1680, his son Sambaji proved a much less competent successor; but the Maratta power was already established. Aurangzib directed his arms not so much against the Marattas as to the overthrow of the great kingdoms of the Deckan. When he turned against the Marattas, they met his operations by the adoption of guerrilla tactics, to which the Maratta country was eminently adapted. Most of Aurangzib's last years were occupied in these campaigns. The now aged emperor's industry and determination were indefatigable, but he was hopelessly hampered by his constitutional inability to trust in the most loyal of his servants. He had deposed his own father and lived in dread that his son Moazzim would treat him in the same fashion. He died in 1707 in the eighty-ninth year of his life and the fiftieth of his reign. In the eyes of Mahometans this fanatical Mahometan was the greatest of his house. But his rule, in fact, initiated the disintegration of the Mogul Empire. He had failed to consolidate the Mogul supremacy in the Deckan, and he had revived the old religious antagonism between Mahometans and Hindus.
Prince Moazzim succeeded under the title of Bahadur Shah. Dissensions among the Marattas enabled him to leave the Deckan in comparative peace to the charge of Daud Khan. He hastened also to make peace with the Rajputs; but he was obliged to move against a new power which had arisen in the northwest, that of the Sikhs. Primarily a sort of reformed sect of the Hindus the Sikhs were converted by persecution into a sort of religious and military brotherhood under their Guru or prophet, Govind. They were too few to make head against the power of the empire, but they could only be scattered, not destroyed; and in later days were to assume a great prominence in Indian affairs. A detailed account of the incompetent successors of Bahadur Shah would be superfluous. The outstanding features of the period was the disintegration of the central Government and the development in the south of two powers; that of the Marattas and that of Asaf Jah, the successor of Daud Khan, and the first of the Nizams of the Deckan. The supremacy among the Marattas passed to the Peshwas, the Bramin Ministers of the successors of Sivaji, who established a dynasty very much like that of the Mayors of the Palace in the Frankish Kingdom of the Merovingians. But the final blow to the power of the Moguls was struck by the tremendous invasion of Nadir Shah the Persian, in 1739, when Delhi was sacked and its richest treasures carried away; though the Persian departed still leaving the emperor nominal Suzerian of India. Before twenty years were past the greatest of all revolutions in India affairs had taken place; and Robert Clive had made himself master of Bengal in the name of the British East India Company.
VOLTAIRE
Russia Under Peter the Great
François Marie Arouet, known to the world by the assumed name of Voltaire (supposed to be an anagram of Arou[v]et l[e] j[eun]), was born in Paris on November 21, 1694. Before he was twenty-two, his caustic pen had got him into trouble. At thirty-one, when he was already famous for his drama, "OEdipe," as well as for audacious lampoons, he was obliged to retreat to England, where he remained some three years. Various publications during the years following his return placed him among the foremost French writers of the day. From 1750 to 1753 he was with Frederick the Great in Prussia. When the two quarrelled, Voltaire settled in Switzerland and in 1758 established himself at Ferney, about the time when he published "Candide." His "Siècle de Louis Quatorze" (see ante) had appeared some years earlier. In 1762 he began a series of attacks on the Church and Christianity; and he continued to reign, a sort of king of literature, till his death, in Paris on May 30, 1778. An admirable criticism of him is to be found in Morley's "Voltaire"; but the great biography is that of Desnoiresterres. His "Russia under Peter the Great" was written after Voltaire took up his residence at Ferney in 1758. This epitome is prepared from the French text.
I.--All the Russias
When, about the beginning of the present century, the Tsar Peter laid the foundations of Petersburg, or, rather, of his empire, no one foresaw his success. Anyone who then imagined that a Russian sovereign would be able to send victorious fleets to the Dardanelles, to subjugate the Crimea, to clear the Turks out of four great provinces, to dominate the Black Sea, to set up the most brilliant court in Europe, and to make all the arts flourish in the midst of war--anyone expressing such an idea would have passed for a mere dreamer. Peter the Great built the Russian Empire on a foundation firm and lasting.
That empire is the most extensive in our hemisphere. Poland, the Arctic Ocean, Sweden, and China lie on its boundaries. It is so vast that when it is mid-day at its western extremity it is nearly midnight at the eastern. It is larger than all the rest of Europe, than the Roman Empire, than the empire of Darius which Alexander conquered. But it will take centuries, and many more such Tsars as Peter, to render that territory populous, productive, and covered with cities, like the northern lands of Europe.
The province nearest to our own realms is Livonia, long a heathen region. Tsar Peter conquered it from the Swedes.