'thoroughly roused most of the latent passions of the stogy Tories,' as one Sarcastic he called Dyer a terrorist he worried about foreign opinion he He had been warned to be quiet and judicial. Now the secretary of state for India, would open for the government, Reluctantly agreed to a full-dress debate. Leading Conservative MPs took up his cause, and Lloyd George Morning Post, Churchill's old scourge, subscribed L2,500 for a The House of Lords passed a measure commending him. Guardians of the Golden Temple enrolled him in the Brotherhood of Sikhs. Seniorīritish officers applauded his suppression of 'another Indian Mutiny.' The This incrediably, made him a martyr to millions of Englishmen. Moral lesson to the Punjab.' In the storm of outrage which followed, theīrigadier was promoted to major general, retired, and placed on the inactive Back in his headquarters, he reported to his superiors that he hadīeen 'confronted by a revolutionary army,' and had been obliged 'to teach a Of exhaustion.' Dyer then marched away, leaving 379 dead and over 1,500 Ten minutes, and it stopped only when the ammunition had reached the point Many threw themselves down on the ground,Īnd the fire was then directed on the ground. When fire was directed upon the centre, they ran to the sides. Through three or four bodies' the people 'ran madly this way and the other. The Indians, inĬhruchill's words, were 'packed together so that one bullet would drive Warning, he ordered his machine gunners to open fire.
When Dyer appeared at the head of a contingent of British troops. Traflagar Square, had been peacefully listening to the testimony of victims
The throng, penned in a narrow space smaller than Punjabis had gathered in Amritsar's Jallianwallah Bagh to protest theseĮxtraordinary measures. Within lathi length of British policemen. He had also authorized the indiscriminate, public whipping of natives who came The Raj's localĬommander, Brigadier General Reginald Dyer, had issued an order requiringĪll Indians using that street to crawl its length on their hands and knees. Had been molested on a street in the Punjab city of Amritsar. Months after the war an Englishwoman, a missionary, had reported that she The origins of that day's controversy lay in a shocking episode. Churchill did it on July 8, 1920, thereby vindicating England's Eloquence, wit, and charge have notīeen uncommon in that body, but seldom in its six centuries has a speechĪctually changed the opinion of the majority, transforming imminent defeat George, could hold the House as Winston did. "The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill Visions of Glory 1874-1932"īy William Manchester, Copyright William Manchester 1983,