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

RANEE LAKSHMI BAI
did do their best ! As soon as they saw Tatia, these
troops which had been bound over by secret oaths to
Tatia refused, point-blank, to fight against the Peshwa.
As previously arranged, they joined the Peshwa with all
their officers ; the guns were silent and everyone in
Gwalior honoured the flag of the Peshwa. The throne
of the Scindia thus crumbled to pieces at the touch of
the Revolutionary magician.
And so, Jayaji Rao Scindia, coward as he was, and his
minister, Dinkar Rao, fled, not only from the field, but
from Gwalior itself, and ran to Agra !
Gwalior, was now mad with joy. The army fired salutes
in honour of the Shrimant. The Finance Minister, Amar
Chand Bhatia, surrendered the whole treasury of the
Scindia, to the last pie, to Shrimant. Those few patriots
who were in prison under the old regime for having shown
sympathy with the Revolutionaries were released from
their prisons amidst the joyous cries of the populace.
The traitors who had advised the Scindia to join the
English had fled, but their mansions and their property
were destroyed so that not a vestige of them remained.
The black charge that the Asiatics do not understand
the true relation between a ruler and his subjects, was
washed away completely by Gwalior. For, how can he
who goes against his own country and against his own
Dharma be a ruler ? Poona had been in 1818 guilty of
being a traitor to the motherland in not having dragged
Rao Baji from his Peshwai in right time. Gwalior was
not guilty of that ! And therefore, this Revolution of
1857 must be recorded in history as the first indication
in modern India of the omnipotence of the vox populi,
the power of the people. If Scindia joins not his country,
the country shall not aid him either. Swords and guns,
infantry and cavalry, Durbar and Sirdars, Mankarees and
citizens, temples and images—all are for the country,
alone ; and if the Scindia is not for the country,
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