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

THE ERUPTION
Henderson also fell. But it is easier to give a list of those
that survived than of those that died ! As soon as Nana
Sahib’s order arrived, the massacre was at once stopped
and one hundred and twenty-five women and children
were taken alive out of the water. They were taken as
prisoners to Savda Kothi. The remaining Englishmen
were made to stand in a line and the order for their exe-
cution was read to them. One of them asked to be given
time to read to his comrades some sentences from a prayer-
book, and the request was granted.¹⁰ When the prayer was
finished, the Sepoys quickly cut off their heads with
swords ! Out of the forty boats, only one boat escaped ;
and out of the Englishmen in it, only three or four were
saved from the attacks of the villagers, and that too,
because a Zemindar, called Durvijay Singh, took pity
on them ! This Zemindar kept the naked and dying
Englishmen for a month and then sent them down to
Allahabad.
In short out of one thousand living Englishmen and wo-
men, on the 7th of June at Cawnpore, only four men and
one hundred and twenty-five women and children survived
on the 30th. The women and children were in the prisons
of Nana Sahib and the four half-dead men were partak-
ing of medicine and hospitality in the house of Durvijay
Singh. It is here necessary to record briefly the arrange-
ments made by Nana Sahib as regards the imprisoned
women and children. We would have had no occasion to
refer to this at all, had not English writers published a
series of “ reliable information ” and most shameless accu-
sations that the women were violated, that they were in-
sulted in the streets, that Nana Sahib himself attempted
to violate them, etc., and had not the English nation
been so blind and wicked as to believe these despicable
and diabolical falsehoods ! It is distinctly stated by the
special commission appointed by the English in this be-
10. Kaye and Malleson’s Indian Mutiny, Vol. II, page 263.
236