१८५७ का स्वातन्त्र्य समर (वीर विनायक दामोदर सावरकर - अंग्रेजों द्वारा छपने से पूर्व प्रतिबन्धित महाग्रन्थ)

THE INTERLUDE AND THE PUNJAB
yet, although the Government and their officers had treated
them kindly and they were thankful to them for their
trust, they did not allow these private relations to come
in the way of the national cause, and they gave up their
body and soul to the cause, when the war-bugle for coun-
try and freedom sounded.
Before beginning the revolt at midnight, they had
despatched a horseman to inform their Pilhur comrades.
As soon as this messenger of freedom from Jullunder
arrived, the Pilhur regiment also rose. Now it only re-
mained for the Jullunder men to march to Pilhur! It
was not an easy task, for it was necessary to avoid the
English artillery and cavalry; but such was the tumult
and confusion among the English and so clear was the
map drawn by the Revolutionaries that, at last, all the
Jullunder Sepoys arrived at Pilhur in perfect order. See-
ing thousands of their comrades coming to meet them, the
were then conveyed by Cooper to Ajnala. Then came the question
what was to be done with them! There was no means of trans-
porting them to a place where they could be tried formally. On
the other hand, if they were summarily executed, other regiments
and intending rebels might take warning by their fate, and thus,
further bloodshed might be prevented. For these reasons, Cooper,
fully conscious as he was of the enormous responsibility which he
was undertaking, resolved to put them all to death. Next morn-
ing, accordingly, he brought them out in tens and made some Sikhs
shoot them. In this way, two hundred and sixteen perished. But,
there still remained sixty-six others who had been confined in one
of the bastions of the Tahsil. Expecting resistance, Cooper ordered
the door to be opened. But not a sound issued from the room;
forty-five of them were dead bodies lying on the floor. For, un-
known to Cooper, the windows had been closely shut and the wretch-
ed prisoners had found in the bastion a second Black-Hole. The
remaining twenty-one were shot, like their comrades. 1—8—’57.
For this splendid assumption of responsibility, Cooper was assailed
by the hysterical cries of ignorant humanitarians. But Robert
Montgomery unanswerably vindicated his character by proving that
he had saved the Lahore division.”—Holmes’s History of the Indian
Mutiny, page 363.
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