Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan, Volume 1.djvu/201

Book III. understanding the rules of European war, numbers of them remained near the ditch parleying with the Sepoys, and persuading them to desert. The croud was several times warned to retire, but continuing to disregard the injunction, were dispersed by a volley of small arms, which killed several of them.

Lieutenant Innis's party, reinforced to the number of 150 Europeans, and with four field pieces, was now advancing under the command of Capt. Killpatrick; and on the 9th of November a detachment of Morattoes arrived in the neighbourhood, and intercepted some ammunition going to the enemy. They likewise attempted to enter the town; but finding every street and avenue barricaded, they contented themselves with plundering and setting fire to some houses in the skirts of it, after which they retreated. By this time the enemy had, from their battery to the south-west, made a breach much larger than that to the north-west, for it extended near 30 yards; but the ditch before it was full of water, and not fordable: and the garrison had counterworked this breach with the same kinds of defences as the other.

Rajah-saheb, exasperated by the answer he had received to his summons, and alarmed by the approach of the Morattoes, and the detachment from Madrass, determined to storm the fort. In the evening a, spy brought intelligence of this to the garrison, and at midnight another came with a particular account of all the enemy's dispositions, and of the hour of attack, which was to begin at the dawn of day by the signal of three bombs. Captain Clive, almost exhausted with fatigue, laid down to sleep, ordering himself to be awakened at the first alarm. It was the 14th of November, and the festival which commemorates the murder of the brothers Hassein and Jassein happened to fall out at this time. This is celebrated by the Mahomedans of Indostan with a kind of religious madness, some acting and others bewailing the catastrophe of their saints with so much energy, that several die of the excesses they commit: they are likewise persuaded, that whoever falls in battle, against unbelievers, during any of the days of this ceremony, shall instantly be translated into the higher paradise, without stopping at any of the intermediate purgatories.