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

DELHI FALLS
new batteries. This produced consternation among the
Delhi Sepoys. While, outside the walls, the English were
steadily advancing in good order, inside there was a cli-
max of disorder, anarchy, and disobedience among the
Indian troops ! The Indians on the English side worked
so arduously in the work of constructing the battery, in
spite of the artillery-fire of Delhi, that Forrest writes,
“ The natives excelled in steady and unparalleled bravery.
When man after man was being killed, they would keep
up their work. If the man in front was killed by a bomb,
they would stop for a moment, shed a tear or two for
the dead, put the new body in the line of corpses, and
begin work again in that terrible place ! ” The Indians
under the English worked with such discipline, while
those in the town of Delhi shirked their work. From
this difference, what a lesson has to be learnt ! Honour-
ing the officers and obeying their word of order is the
very essence of discipline. But this principle was being
trampled down everywhere at Delhi. Most of the fault
lay on the incapable officers, and the rest on disorderly
sepoys, and, now, there was disheartening despair to
crown all ! The 14th of September came. The English
army was divided into four columns—three under Nichol-
son stood on the left and the fourth under Major Reid
stood on the right to force the Kabul gate and enter Delhi.
When the sun rose, the English guns which had been so
long shattering the walls stopped suddenly. There was a
dead silence for a moment in the English camp and im-
mediately the force under Nicholson dashed against the
wall. The first column went up to the breach which had
been effected in the Kashmir Bastion. From within, the
guns of the Revolutionaries kept up a hot fire. The
English fell in heaps one upon another in the trenches but
some reached the walls. A ladder was placed over the
wall and the English army began to scale up the ladder.
The Revolutionaries fought desperately and shot down
hundreds after hundreds of the Feringhi army. But the
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