The Nabob commenced the attack by six o’clock, and his numerous artillery kept up a heavy cannonade for some hours, which was warmly responded to by the British. Lieut.-Colonel Clive sheltered his troops in the adjacent grove; and they were ordered to sit down, while the field-pieces alone answered the enemy’s cannon from behind the bank. At eleven o’clock Lieut.-Colonel Clive consulted his officers at the drumhead, when it was resolved to maintain the cannonade during the day, and at midnight to attack the enemy. At noon a heavy shower of rain covered the plain, and damaged the enemy’s powder to such on extent that his fire slackened, but the British ammunition remained serviceable. A crisis had arrived, and Lieut.-Colonel Clive, no longer acting on the defensive, became the assailant. Seizing the opportunity, he advanced, and obtained possession of a tank, and two other posts of consequence, which the enemy vainly attempted to recover. A successful attack was then made upon the eminence and angle of the Nabob’s camp, defended by forty French soldiers (the men who had escaped from the garrison of Chandernagore), and their two pieces of cannon were captured. This was followed by a general rout, and the discomfited enemy was pursued for six miles: upwards of forty pieces of cannon, abandoned by the fugitives, fell into the hands of the victors. In this astonishing victory, which laid the foundation of the British dominion in Bengal, five hundred of the enemy were killed, while the army under Lieut.-Colonel Clive sustained a loss of only twenty-two killed and fifty wounded. It appears from a manuscript journal kept by Captain Eyre Coote, now in the library of the Honourable East India Company, that the following officers of the THIRTY-NINTH were present in the battle of _Plassey_: namely, Captains Archibald Grant, and Eyre Coote; Lieutenant John Corneille; and Ensigns Joseph Adnett, and Martin Yorke. The motto “_Primus in Indis_,” and the word “_Plassey_,” borne by royal authority on the regimental colour and appointments of the THIRTY-NINTH, are proud memorials of its having been the first King’s regiment which served in India, and of the gallantry displayed in this battle.[13] Lieut.-Colonel Clive, accompanied by a guard of two hundred Europeans, and three hundred Sepoys, entered the city of Moorshedabad on the 29th of June, and saluted Meer Jaffier as Nabob, who received the usual homage from the people as Soubah of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa. Surajee was subsequently taken prisoner, and fell a victim to the dagger of the son of Meer Jaffier.