Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan, Volume 1.djvu/111

Book I. and one day a detachment escorting two pieces of battering cannon was defeated, and the cannon taken. Some troops were sent immediatelv to recover them; but could not come up before the enemy had conveyed them under shelter of the ramparts. After much hard labour the trenches were advanced within 800 yards of the walls, when it was found impossible to carry them on any nearer; for a large morass extended itself before this part of the town, and the French had preserved a back water, with which they overflowed not only the morass, but likewise all the ground lying between the trenches and the foot of the glacis. During the approaches, and the construction of the batteries on the edge of the morass, the enemy kept up a constant fire on the working parties, by which many were killed.

Two batteries were finished and began to fire on the 26th of September, one of eight, the other of four pieces of cannon, of 18 and 24 pounders: a bomb-battery of five large mortars and fifteen royals, and another of fifteen cohorns were likewise erected. The French now opened several embrasures in the curtain, and began likewise to fire from two or three batteries on the crest of the glacis, insomuch that the fire of the besieged was double that of the besiegers. Mr. Boscawen, willing to employ all the means of annoyance in his power, ordered the ships to batter the town; and before the next morning all the ships of two tiers had warped within the distance of 1,000 yards of the walls, the shallowness of water not permitting them to approach nearer: the cannonading was incessant, and terrible in appearance, but of no real effect; for the distance of the ships, and the motion of the sea, hindered the shot from striking successively the same object. The French at first withdrew a great number of their artillery-men from the land side, and employed them in firing against the ships from the batteries which commanded the road; but perceiving the little damage that the town sustained from the fire of the ships, they slackened their defence on that side, and renewed it to the land side with as much vigour as before. The cannonading from the ships continued until night, when Mr. Boscawen, finding that they had expended a vast quantity of ammunition to no purpose, ordered them to move in the night out of the reach of cannon-shot; but the wind setting in from the sea prevented