Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/139

Book VII causeway but to halt immediately after they had passed it, intending to form them into some disposition, proper to storm the pass; this brought the whole together into one irregular heap, and whilst Colonel Clive was waiting for the return of two or three officers, whom he had sent to examine the barricade, the troops were unexectedly assailed by a discharge from two pieces of heavy cannon, loaded with langrain, and mounted within 200 yards, upon a small bastion of the Morattoe ditch, to the right of the barricade, which killed and disabled 22 Europeans; another discharge soon followed, with less, but however with some effect. This annoyance instantly overset the resolution of storming the pass; and the line immediately began to extend itself again, as well to present the fewest bodies to the cannonade, as to gain without delay a broad high road, which, bout half a mile to the south of the causeway, crosses the Morattoe ditch into the company's territory, and then joins the avenue leading to the fort of Calcutta. But their progress was now continually retarded by the excessive labour and difficulty of transporting the field-pieces; for the ground between the causeway and the road was laid out in small rice fields, each of which was enclosed by a separate bank, so that the field-pieces could only be drawn along the ditches between the banks, and were therefore at every field in a different direction: sometimes, likewise, it was necessary to raise them over the banks into the field, in order to repulse the enemy's cavalry; who after nine o'clock, when the fog cleared, were discovered threatening to the left; ever and anon advancing so near, that it was necessary to detach platoons from the line to repulse them. In the mean time the fire of the enemy's two pieces of cannon continued, and a quarter of a mile to the south of these two other pieces began likewise to annoy the line from the same rampart. At ten, after much fatigue and action, the troops, having abandoned two of the field-pieces, which had broken down, arrived, and formed in the high-road leading to the avenue, where a body of horse and foot were posted in front to defend the passage across the Morattoe ditch. Several very large bodies of cavalry likewise assembled in the rear, acting with more courage than those in