With Clive in India; Or, The Beginnings of an EmpireHenty, G. A. (George Alfred)
History
With Clive in India; Or, The Beginnings of an Empire
Henty, G. A. (George Alfred)
India -- History -- British occupation, 1765-1947 -- Fiction
Looking round the field, Clive saw that two of the divisions which
formed the arc of the circle were marching back towards the
intrenchments; but that the third, that on the left of their line, had
wheeled round and was marching towards the rear of the grove. Not
having received the letter which Meer Jaffier had written to him, he
supposed that this movement indicated an intention to attack his
baggage; and he therefore detached some European troops, with a field
gun, to check the advance. Upon the gun opening fire, the enemy's
division halted. It ceased its advance, but continued apart from the
rest of the enemy. In the meantime, Clive had arrived upon the mound
which Saint Frais had left; and, planting his guns there, opened fire
upon the enemy within their intrenchments.
The Indian soldiers and inferior officers, knowing nothing of the
treachery of their chiefs, were indignant at being thus cannonaded in
their intrenchments by a foe so inferior in strength; and horse, foot,
and artillery poured out again from the intrenchments, and attacked
the British.
The battle now raged in earnest. Clive posted half his infantry and
artillery on the mound of the tank nearest to the enemy's
intrenchments, and the greater part of the rest on rising ground, two
hundred yards to the left of it; while he placed a hundred and sixty
picked shots, Europeans and natives, behind the tank close to the
intrenchments, with orders to keep up a continuous musketry fire upon
the enemy, as they sallied out.
The enemy fought bravely. Saint Frais worked his guns unflinchingly at
the redoubt, the infantry poured in volley after volley, the cavalry
made desperate charges right up to the British lines. But they had no
leader, and were fighting against men well commanded, and confident in
themselves. Clive observed that the division on the enemy's extreme
left remained inactive, and detached from the army; and it, for the
first time, struck him that this was the division of Meer Jaffier.
Relieved for the safety of his baggage, and from the attack which had
hitherto threatened in his rear, he at once determined to carry the
hill in advance of Saint Frais's battery, and the redoubt occupied by
the French leader.
Strong columns were sent against each position. The hill was carried
without opposition, and then so heavy and searching a fire was poured
into the intrenched camp that the enemy began to fall back, in utter
confusion. Saint Frais, finding himself isolated and alone in the
redoubt, as he had before been on the mound, was forced to retire.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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