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

THE VOLCANO
were the stimulants of that great rebellious movement.
The quarrel about the greased cartridges was but the
chance spark flung in among all the combustible material.
If that spark had not lighted it, some other would have
done the work .... The Meerut Sepoys found, in a
moment, a leader, a flag, and a cause, and the mutiny was
transformed into a revolutionary war. When they reached
the Jumna, glittering in the morning light, they had all
unconsciously seized one of the great critical moments of
history and converted a military mutiny into a national
and religious war!" ⁴
Charles Ball writes: "At length, the torrent overflowed
the banks, and saturated the moral soil of India.
It was then expected that those waves would overwhelm
and destroy the entire European element and that, when
the torrent of rebellion should again confine itself within
bounds, patriotic India, freed from its alien rulers, would
bow only to the independent sceptre of a native prince.
The movement, now, assumed a more important aspect.
It became the rebellion of a whole people incited to out-
rage by resentment for imaginary wrongs and sustained
in their delusions by hatred and fanaticism." ⁵
White writes in his Complete History of the Great
Sepoy War :—" I should be wanting in faithfulness as an
historian if I failed to record with admiration the courage
displayed by the Oudhians. The great fault of the Oudh
Talukdars from a moral point of view was their having
made a common cause with the murderous mutineers.
But for this, they might have been regarded as noble
patriots, fighting in a good cause, pro rege et pro patria,
for the King and the Motherland"—for Swaraj
and Swadesh!
4. History of Our Own Times, Vol. III.
5. Indian Mutiny, Vol. I, page 644.
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