भारतीय इतिहास के ६ स्वर्णिम पृष्ठ (वीर सावरकर - विदेशी आक्रान्ताओं पर विजय गाथा)

and put heavy fetters on their hands and feet. They and their relatives, their families and friends were all subjected to unbearable torture. The brutal humiliation Tipu himself inflicted on the royal ladies in the palace and caused his followers to perpetrate elsewhere in the city, is beyond all description! The young and fair ones of the royal ladies were first put to inhuman torture and then brutally ravished. Tipu locked in his harem, the exceptionally beautiful young lady from the royal family and took her to his capital. The sight of the inhuman and disgraceful treatment meted out to her daughters and daughters-in-law, nieces and grand-daughters broke the heart of Pethe's grand old mother and she died instantaneously. 567. Tipu's army too spared no pains in torturing and violating the Hindu men and women in the city of Nargund and plundered to their fullest satisfaction, the palatial residences of the wealthy Lingayats as also every single house of the commonest of Hindu citizens. Finally, setting fire to their houses, Tipu carried away the select Hindu men and women as abject slaves. 568. Tipu next fell violently on the other Hindu state of Kittur and stamped it out of existence in the like manner. He himself repeated and made his army repeat to the letter all the infernal outrages, which were performed at Nargund, on the Kittur ruler, his family, all the men and women in his pay and all the people in the city. 569. By this time, the main body of the Maratha army was advancing rapidly, reconquering the regions and cities formerly subjugated by Tipu. Skipping over the other details of this campaign on Tipu, which are not quite pertinent to the topic in hand, we think it quite sufficient to say that in the end, Sardar Patwardhan Phadke, Behare Holkar, Bhonsale and other Maratha Chiefiains routed the Muslim armies of Tipu on various battle, fields and after rescuing the whole of Karnatak, pressed him back up to Mysore and there, encircled him into a tight grip! Snatching this opporutunity of Tipu's distress, the English at Mudras too marched on him. As the strokes of the Maratha swords and the thrusts of their spears began to make bloody incisions on the back of Tipu's religious fanaticism, the devil in him began to relent and his haughtiness began to temper down. Tipu grew despondent. And then Tipu fell at the feet of Hindu Gods 570. Whether to appease the Marathas or to win back the millions of Hindus groaning sorely under the yoke of his religious persecution, Tipu,