Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/220

214 coming up to Wariore; and on the 15th, the day after the first arrived, the enemy began to throw shells into the town during the night several parties at different times and places advanced to the ditch, not with any intention of scaling the walls, but only to keep the garrison from rest by repeated alarms. These alerts and the bombardment were continued during the four succeeding days and nights; and on the 20th, M. D'Autueil, thinking the garrison, sufficiently harrassed, summoned Captain Smith in the name of the king of France, to surrender the town, and spare the effusion of blood, warning him that he should resent in the severest manner any ill usage which might have been inflicted on the French prisoners. Captain Smith answered, that he should maintain the town for the king of England; and that the prisoners had always been treated with more lenity than their practices deserved. Some hours after, spies brought intelligence, that the enemy intended to make a general assault in the approaching night, and at one in the morning the greatest part of their force advanced towards the west face of the town; but a few discharges of canon made them retreat, and the continual vigilance of the rounds, witnessed by their lights and a variety of military music, deterred them from any farther attempt. By this time several of the neighbouring Polygars had joined the army before Madura, and were of service in supplying the camp with provision, as well as by cutting off such as were going to the town, and Captain Calliaud had entered into a negotiation with some of the Jemautdars, to deliver up the city, or to assist in surprizing it. Colonel Smith, on the first appearance of the enemy's troops on the other side of the Coleroon, had dispatched express messengers to him, with the intelligence, which he received on the 11th at three in the afternoon. At six, he began his march, with 120 Europeans and 1200 Sepoys, leaving the rest under the command of Lieutenant Rumbold and Mahomed Issoof, whom he empowered to conclude with the Jemautdars. The troops marched without tents, baggage, or artillery; a few bullocks carried the spare ammunition, and servants belonging to the commissary