Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/140

134 front, and pressed hard upon one of the field-pieces, Which was gallantly rescued by Ensign Yorke, with a platoon of Adlercron's regiment. The fire of a few other platoons dispersed the enemy in front; and the troops being now within the company's territory, might have proceeded along the road on the inside of the ditch, quite up to Omichund's garden, where the Nabob still remained, surrounded by a large body of cavalry; but Colonel Clive thinking that they had already endured too much fatigue, continued marching straight along the avenue to the fort, where they arrived about noon. Twenty-seven of the battalion, 12 sailors, and 18 Sepoys, were killed, and 70 of the battalion, with 12 sailors, and 35 Sepoys, were wounded; two captains of the company's troops, Pye and Bridges, and Mr. Belcher, the secretary of Colonel Clive, were killed; Mr. Ellis, a factor, who with several other young men in the mercantile service of the company, served as a volunteer, lost his leg by a cannon ball. The greatest part of this mischief was done by the four pieces of cannon from the rampart of the Morattoe ditch. In the evening the troops returned to their camp, passing through the town along the streets nearest to the river, and part of the way within a quarter of a mile of the stations of the enemy, who did not molest, them.

The troops, officers as well as common men, dispirited by the loss which had been sustained, and the risques to which they had been exposed, as they thought, to very little purpose, blamed their commander, and called the attempt rash, and ill-concerted. It was nevertheless necessary, as well to convince the enemy that their former inactivity did not proceed from fear, as because the difficulty of obtaining provisions increased every hour whilst the Nabob remained so near Calcutta. But it was ill-concerted; for the troops ought to have assembled at Perring's redoubt, which is not half a mile from Omichund's garden, to which they might have marched from the redoubt, in a spacious road, capable of admitting 12 or 15 men a-breast, on the left exposed indeed to the annoyance of matchlocks from some enclosures, where, however, cavalry could not act; but their right would have been defended by the