Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/178

172 grove, when, to their great surprize, the continual sound of drums, clarions, and cymbals, which always accompany the night watches of an Indian camp, convinced them that they were within a mile of the Nabob's army. His intention to remain at Muncarra, had arisen from a supposition that the English would advance immediately after they had taken Cutwah, and would arrive at Plassy before his own could get there; but as soon as he found that they were not so active, he continued his march, and arrived at the camp of Plassy twelve hours before them.

The guards and centinels being stationed, the rest of the troops were permitted to take rest. The soldier slept; but few of the officers, and least of all the commander. On the other hand, the despondency of the Nabob increased as the hour of danger approached. Sitting in his tent in the evening of his arrival at the camp, it chanced that his attendants quitted him one after another in order to say their usual prayers at sun-set, until they left him quite alone; when a common fellow, either through ignorance, or with an intention to steal, entered the tent unperceived, until he was discovered by the Nabob; who starting from the gloomy reflections in which he was absorbed, hastily recalled his attendants with this emphatic exclamation, "Sure they see me dead." The grove of Plassy extended north and south about 800 yards in length, and 300 in breadth, and was planted with mango-trees, in regular rows. It was inclosed by a slight bank and ditch, but the ditch was choaked with coarse weeds and brambles. The angle to the south-west was 200 yards from the river, but that to the north-west not more than 50. A little to the north of the grove, and on the bank of the river, stood a hunting-house of the Nabob's, encompassed by a garden-wall. The river, a mile before it reaches this house, curves to the south-west nearly in the shape of an horse-shoe, including a peninsula about three miles in circumference, of which the neck, from the stream to the stream again, is not more than a quarter of a mile across. About 300 yards to the south of the peninsula, began an entrenchment, which Roydoolub had thrown up to secure his camp: the southern face, fronting the grove of Plassy,