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

OUDH
in some other places, detachments of Sepoys were sent
out as guards. The arsenal and other public buildings
were also guarded by Sepoys. The Sepoys of the 15th
regiment elected a committee of war which resolved that
the English officers should be killed. But the chief officers
decided that the first promise should not be broken and
so they let them go away alive. They were even informed
that they might take with them all private property, but
no public property as that belonged to the King of Oudh !
Thereafter, the Revolutionaries themselves got boats ready
for the English and gave them some money ; then the
officers took leave of all the Sepoys and went away along
the Gogra in boats. On the morning of the 9th of June,
a Proclamation was issued that Fyzabad had become
independent, that the Company's rule was at an end, and
Wajid Ali Shah had recommenced to rule !
While the English were floating along in the boats, the
Sepoys of the 17th regiment saw them. They had received
a letter from Fyzabad Sepoys asking them to kill all the
Englishmen coming from there. The attack on the boats
commenced. The chief commissioner, Goldney, was killed;
so also Lieutenant Thomas, Ritchie, Mill, Edwardes,
Currie and others. Those that went to the town of
Mohadaba were killed by the police themselves. Only
one boat and its occupants concealed themselves success-
fully till the end and reached the English camp safely
with the help of the boat-men. While Raja Man Singh's
household was anxious about the safety of English women
and children given in his charge, many more men came
there again for refuge. Man Singh was, at the time, at
the chief city of Oudh. He wrote home that he had just
made an agreement with the Revolutionaries by which
they allowed him to give shelter to women and children,
provided that he did not take there any Englishmen, and
that it had been decided that his house should be searched
to see whether he observed the conditions. Therefore, the
Englishmen in his fort, with their families, left to cross the
253