Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/127

Book VII. much diminished by the loss of the English trade: which had determined him to permit their return; but under the same restrictions as they were subject to in the reign of Jaffier, before their embassy to Delhi. On hearing of the arrival of the armament, he ordered his whole army to assemble at Muxadavad, and prepared to march to Calcutta. The governor of this place, Monickchund, having foreseen the war, had been diligent in improving his garrison, had fortified Buz-buzia, and had begun to erect a fort, which he called Aligur, on the bank of the river opposite to Tannah; but only part of the rampart commanding the river was finished. The Phousdar of Hughley purchased two ships, which he loaded with bricks, intending to sink them in the narrow pass of the river between Tannah and Aligur. Before the arrival of the armament, letters from the court of directors in England, had appointed Mr. Drake, with three other members of the council, to act as a select committee, in the conduct of all political and military affairs. They had already associated Major Kilpatrick, and as soon as the fleet arrived at Fulta, they added Mr. Watson and Colonel Clive to their board. The letters which Clive had brought from Madrass, accompanied by one from himself and another from Mr. Watson, full of threats, were sent open to Monickchund, the governor of Calcutta, in order to be forwarded to the Nabob. Monickchund replied that he dared not send letters written in such menacing terms: and on receiving this answer, it was determined to commence hostilities. The absence of the troops on board the Cumberland was in some measure supplied by the recovering men of Kilpatrick's detachment, and by a company of seventy volunteers, who embodied themselves at Fulta.

All the ships and vessels, as well-those which were just arrived, as those which before were assembled at Fulta, left this place on the 27th of December, and the next afternoon anchored at Mayapore, a town ten miles below the fort of Buz-buzia. This fort Mr. Watson determined to attack the next day; and, as it was supposed that the garrison would defend it but a very little while, it was resolved to lay an ambuscade, in order to intercept their retreat towards