Death and succession

It is said that he died due to contracting intestinal anthrax. The funeral ceremony was arranged in Raigad in presence of his son Rajaram, and wife Soyarabai. After Shivaji Maharaj's death, his elder son Sambhaji and Soyarabai, fought for control of the kingdom. After a brief struggle Sambhaji was crowned king.[27]

A few months after Shivaji Maharaj's death, Aurangzeb's son, Prince Akbar, rebelled against his father and was sheltered by Sambhaji.[27][32] Thereafter, in 1681, Aurangzeb, his army, entourage and the royal court moved in mass to the Deccan to wage an all out war for the complete destruction of Maratha power. He marshalled the immense amount of resources available to the Mughal empire and focused it toward the annihilation of the Maratha nation. And this marked the beginning of the 27 year war in which Aurangzeb failed to achieve a complete victory against the Marathas. However he was able to capture, torture and kill Sambhaji.[27] This put the Maratha kingdom in a disarray and under the overpowering Mughal assault the endangered Maratha capital was forced to be moved and evacuated from Raigad to Jinjee in the south and for a time it seemed that Aurangzeb's objective of stamping out the Maratha threat, once and for all, would be achieved.

In the following months and years the tide of the war began to turn.[33] The Marathas adapted very well to the huge but slow moving Mughal menace and fought Aurangzeb to a stalemate. And towards the end of the second decade, the Marathas gathered more strength and began to turn the tide of the war. The Mughal forces were dealt several serious body blows by able Maratha generals like Santaji Ghorpade and Dhanaji Jadhav. They effectively employed lightning fast and highly mobile attacks, tactics initially developed and effectively used by Shivaji Maharaj.[33]

Eventually a broken, defeated Aurangzeb retreated in sickness from the Deccan in 1705. The final Mughal withdrawal came two years later. He had spent most of his empire's treasury, other remaining resources and manpower trying to defeat the Marathas and ended up significantly weakening the once mighty Mughal Empire. Aurangzeb's heirs never again challenged the Marathas and about seventy years after Shivaji's death, they were themselves finally overtaken and dominated by their formerly implaccable enemy - the indominatable Maratha nation.

In 1751–52, Ahamdiya treaty was signed between the Marathas and Mughals, Balaji Bajirao was the Peshwa and the ruler of the greatly expanded Maratha Kingdom.[34] Through this treaty, virtually the whole of India came under Maratha suzerainty and Mughal rule was restricted only to Delhi (Mughals remained the nominal heads of Delhi). After Balaji Bajirao, Maratha empire was further strengthened by Madhavrao Peshwa and the two Maratha sardars, namely Shinde,and Holkar.

Sir Jadunath Sarkar, a noted Indian historian and scholar, estimated that about 500,000 Mughal soldiers and 200,000 Marathas died during this decades long epic struggle for dominance of the Indian sub-continent. It would be pertinent to also quote another noted historian, Bamber Gascoigne, who wrote thus about the significance of the advent and enterprise of Shivaji Maharaj:
“ "He (Shivaji) taught the modern Hindus to rise to the full stature of their growth. So, when viewed with hindsight through twentieth century prism, Aurangzeb on the one side and Shivaji on the other come to be seen as key figures in the development of India. What Shivaji began Gandhi could complete …… and what Aurangzeb stood for would lead to the establishment of the separate state of Pakistan." (The Great Moghuls, London: Constable)