Bengal. Nawab Alivardi Khan was successful in repelling only the first invasion in 1741. in 1743 two Maratha Armies invaded - one belonged to Raghuji Bhosla, the other to Balaji Rao. Alivardi Khan was obliged to pay him a subsidy, promising to pay him Chauth tax. The continuous conflict took a heavy toll on the population of Bengal. The Hindu Maratha warriors invaded and occupied western Bengal up to the Hooghly River. During this period, warriors called as "Bargis", perpetrated atrocities against the local population, against Hindu Bengalis Muslims and Biharis. As reported in Burdwan Kingdom's and European sources, the Bargis are said to have plundered villages, and Jan Kersseboom, chief of the Dutch East India Company factory in Bengal, estimated that perhaps 400,000 Hindu civilians in Western Bengal and Bihar were dead owing to the invasion of Bargis.> The resulting casualties of Bargi onslaught against in Bengal are considered to be among the deadliest massacres in Indian history. According to the 18th-century Bengali text Maharashtra Purana written by Gangaram: In 1751, the Marathas signed a peace treaty with the Nawab of Bengal, according to which Mir Habib (a former courtier of Alivardi Khan, who had defected to the Marathas) was made provincial governor of Orissa under nominal control of the Nawab of Bengal. It made The Nawab of Bengal a tributary to the Marathas who agrees to pay Rs. 1.2 million annually as the chauth of Bengal and Bihar, and the Marathas agreed not to invade Bengal again. The Nawab of Bengal also paid Rs. 3.2 million to the Marathas, towards the arrears of chauth for the preceding years. The chauth was paid annually by the Nawab of Bengal up to 1758, until the East India Company took over. Conflict with the Durrani Empire After his initial invasions of India, Ahmed Shah Durrani appointed his son Timur Shah Durrani as the governor of Punjab and Kashmir. Balaji Rao then dispatched Raghunath Rao to check the advance of the Durranis. In 1758, Raghunath Rao conquered Lahore and Peshawar, and drove out Timur Shah Durrani. This was the high-water mark of Maratha expansion, where the boundaries of their empire extended north of the Sindhu river all the way down south to northern Kerala. The Marathas thus became the Durrani's major rivals in the north-western part of the subcontinent. Meanwhile, the Marathas had reduced the Mughal emperor to a figurehead, and Balaji