Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/221

Book VIII. were sent forward to provide the meal at the different places of halt. On the 25th at day-break they arrived and halted at the village of Eliapore, nineteen miles from Tritchinopoly. On the road Calliaud had received advices from Captain Smith, that D'Autueil, apprized of his approach, had quitted his first station at the Pagodas of Wariore, and had disposed his troops in a line of communication which extended from the Faquieres tope, round the Five rocks, the Golden, and the Sugar-loaf, to the French rock; by which all access on the southern aspect of the city was precluded. It had also been discovered that several spies belonging to D'Auteuil had mingled with and accompanied the English troops, on which Calliaud ordered them to be narrowly observed by his own, but without appearance of suspicion, intending to make them the instruments of deceiving those by whom they were employed. The troops having taken sufficient rest, and a full meal, marched from Eliapore at two in the afternoon, and at six arrived at Aour, a village in Tondiman's Woods, about twelve miles from Tritchinopoly, where they stopped half an hour. Calliaud then bent his march, as if he intended to come out upon the plain, between the Five rocks and the Sugar-loaf, opposite to the middle of the enemy's line, and advanced in this direction six miles. It was now 8 o'clock, and quite dark, when the French spies, fully persuaded of the intelligence they were carrying, went off to inform D'Autueil where they supposed the English troops intended to force their way. Half an hour after their departure, none of them appearing again, Calliaud entirely changed his rout, striking on the east along the skirts of Tondiman's Woods, until he came opposite to Elimiserum. The ground, from the woods to this place on the south, beyond it to the Caveri on the north, to the west of it as far as the French rock, and a greater space to the east, is a plain mostly laid out in rice fields, which, throughout India, are divided into areas of no great extent; each enclosed by a separate bank, and kept overflowed with water until a fortnight before the harvest is cut down, until which time they remain, as these now were, a heavy swamp of mud. The French, supposing all this part of the country impassible to a body of troops, had not thought