Lachmi Bai, Rani of Jhansi: The Jeanne D'Arc of India

LACHMI BAI
The Jeanne D'Arc of India
By Michael White
New York J. F. Taylor & Company 1901
COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY J. F. TAYLOR AND COMPANY, NEW YORK
Press of Riggs Printing Company Albany, N. Y.
To my wife
Being young, vigorous, and not afraid to show herself to the multitude, she gained a great influence over the hearts of the people. It was this influence, this force of character, added to a splendid and inspiring courage, that enabled her to offer a desperate resistance to the British.... Whatever her faults in British eyes may have been, her countrymen will ever believe that she was driven by ill-treatment into rebellion; that her cause was a righteous cause. To them she will always be a heroine.
KAYE AND MALLESON, History of the Indian Mutiny .
Within no peerless Taj Mahal her body lies, No gilded dome, nor fairy minarets against the azure skies, Proclaim the place, where she, called by her foes, the bravest and the best, Was laid by reverential hands to her victorious rest: But in the eternal sanctuary of her race, The holy river, holy Mother Ganges, that coveted embrace, Doth hold her ashes, and for a monument to her name, Sufficeth it, that in the people's hearts, her fame, Doth shine immortal. For she was deeply loved, this Queen, The beauteous, valiant Rani, India's great heroine.

It was a day of angry, torrid heat. The June sun of Central India blazed fiercely upon an uneven plain, upon a river winding to the northward, a lake bordered by trees, and upon the walled city of Jhansi with its rock fortress rising precipitously to guard the western front. Beneath the south wall, amid groves of acacia, whose parched and dust-coated limbs seemed to implore a speedy descent of the rains then due, were discernible the white domes of temples and tombs. A little further away, surrounded by gardens, were situated the bungalows of the Foreign residents, the cantonments of their troops, and the Star Fort containing their treasure and arms.