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

BENARES AND ALLAHABAD
doned for the new and scientific method. Village after
village could thus be razed to the ground ! After setting
villages on fire, and keeping the guns in position to over-
awe them, how long will it take to burn thousands of
natives ? This setting fire to villages on all sides and
burning the inhabitants, was so amusing to many English-
men that they sent letters to England giving a humorous
description of these scenes. The fires were so quickly and
skilfully lighted that no villager had any chance of escape
at all ! Poor peasants, learned Brahmins, harmless
Mussalmans, school children, women with infants in their
arms, young girls, old men, blind and lame, all were burnt
in the mass of flames ! Mothers with suckling babes also
succumbed to these fires ! Old men and women, and those
unable to move away even a step from the fire, were burnt
in their beds ! ⁹ And if a solitary man were to escape
the fire, what then ? One Englishman says in his letter,
“ We set fire to a large village which was full of them.
We surrounded them, and when they came rushing out of
the flames, we shot them ! ” ¹⁰
And was it only a solitary village that was thus treated ?
The English sent various detachments to the various parts
of the province to burn villages. Out of the many batches,
one officer, out of the many officers of a batch, says of one
of his many outings, “ You will, however, be gratified to
learn that twenty villages were razed to the ground !”
And all this account is only a summary of what has ac-
cidentally appeared in the works of English historians,
who openly swear, “ it is better not to write anything
about General Neill's revenge ! ”
Enough ! To add even a word more of our own to it, is
to spoil this naked picture of the inhuman barbarity of
the English !
9. Charles Ball's Indian Mutiny, Vol. I, pp. 243-244.
10. Charles Ball's Indian Mutiny, Vol. I, pp. 243-244.
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