Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan, Volume 1.djvu/227

Book III. where they were received with a smart fire, which soon obliged them to retreat with five Europeans and ten Sepoys wounded. A reinforcement was immediately sent to take charge of the bank, and all remained quiet until morning, when the enemy, perceiving that preparations were making to bombard them, surrendered. Fifteen Europeans, thirty Sepoys, and two pieces of cannon, one of them a fine 18 pounder, were found here; the smaller piece of cannon, with some Sepoys, were left to garrison this post; the rest returned with the other gun to Tritchinopoly, which was presented to the Nabob, as the first which had been taken during the campaign. Two days after the grenadiers, who had always behaved with the spirit peculiar to this class of soldiers, gained another advantage. The great men of the allied army complained, that they were much disturbed in their daily ablutions in the Caveri, by a gun which fired from the choultry lying half-way between the pagoda of Seringham and the river. Captain Dalton was sent to attack this post who concealed his men behind an old wall on the bank of the river, where they waited till near noon, when the great heat of the sun induced a part of the enemy's guard to return to the camp, and the rest to retire into the choultry to sleep: the grenadiers then rushed across the river, which was fordable, and entered the post with so much rapidity that they took the gun before the enemy had time to fire it more than once: it was brought away without any opposition, for some field pieces had been sent to the river-side to cover the retreat. Events of such a nature as the attacks of Elimiserum and the choultry, as well as several others, which appear in the course of this work, would have no influence in such sanguinary wars as most writers have only thought worthy of their attention: and these details may therefore by many be deemed equally tiresome and superfluous; but the stress of this Indian war lying on the European allies, who rarely have exceeded a thousand men on a side, the actions of a single platoon in India may have the same influence on the general success, as the conduct of a whole regiment in Europe: and to give a just idea of the superiority of European arms, when opposed to those of Indostan, is one of the principal intentions of this narrative. The new activity which began to appear in the English battalion, induced Morari-row