Memorials of Christian Martyrs in the Indian Rebellion (Volume 3)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1859. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER II. OUTBREAK OF THE REBELLION IN 1857.--ESTIMATED NUMBER OF VICTIMS.--FIDELITY OF NATIVE CONVERTS.--APOSTATES AND RESTORED PENITENTS. On the 10th of May, 1858, appeared an official return of all who were known to have perished in the rebellion that had raged during the preceding twelve months in India. In this document we read how officers, civil servants, missionaries, traders, with their wives and sisters, the little children, their English nurses, their native servants, and, in some cases, the Christian converts, fell under the blow of the assassin. These columns show how extensive was the massacre of the English race, and how strong the determination to expel that race from India. It is harrowing to the feelings to read in these awful returns, how at Meerut, on the 10th of May, 1857, there fell, the first victims of the onslaught, thirty-one persons; at Delhi, where the work of blood began on the following day, forty women, fifty-four children; at Agra, thirty-three persons; and in the first Cawnpore massacre, between three and four hundred. On the night of the fatal 16th of July, three hundred more men, women, and children, were butchered by the order of the merciless Nana Sahib. Additions were made to the number of victims until they were counted by thousands. 'From that time forward, ' says the Rev. Joseph Mullens, ' began a series of atrocities unparalleled in the history of our colonial settlements. From that time, in numerous localities in upper India, men, women, children of our own nation, were exposed to trials, difficulties, and dangers, of the most awful kind, and were involved in one common ruin. They were hunted down, tied together, fastened to trees and stakes, and though unarmed and defenceless, were brutally slain. For several m...