Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/230

224 return of a detachment of 50 Europeans, which had come from, and had been lately sent back to Fort St. David; and as soon as they returned, he took the field with 90 Europeans, 400 Sepoys, an eighteen-pounder, and 200 horse supplied by the king of Tanjore; more than half the Europeans were French and Dutch deserters, chosen, that none but the English soldiers might be left to guard the French prisoners in the city. The renter Moodilee naturally timorous, and awed by the imperious temper of Mahomed Issoof, had quitted the camp, and followed Calliaud when he marched to the relief of Tritchinopoly; from whence he now again returned with him to Madura. The detachment set out on the 25th of June, and arrived on the 3d of July. The Sepoys called from Tinivelly had joined a few days before; but Mr. Rumbold had nevertheless been obliged to reduce his operations to preventing the garrison from getting water from the river, and provisions from the country.

Calliaud, seeing the dexterity with which the enemy had counteracted the battery of Bumbold, resolved to prevent them from opposing the same obstacles to that which he intended to erect, by keeping them in ignorance of the part he should attack, until the first shot was fired. The gabions, fascines, and platforms, were prepared in the camp; and as soon as all were ready, the troops allotted marched on the 9th at night to the watercourse which runs to the west of the city, and raised the battery against the curtain between the gateway and the tower which had been attempted by escalade of the 1st of May. It mounted two eighteen-pounders, with four field-pieces, was finished before the morning, and at day-break began to fire. The parapet of the fausse-bray was soon beaten down, and the inward wall, although strong, was by noon shaken so much, that the parapet of this likewise fell entirely, and the wall itself was sufficiently shattered, to permit a man to clamber to the top: but, in this short time, the, garrison had staked the rampart behind with the trunks of Palmeira trees set on end: a few shot knocked down some, nor could any of them have been firmly fixed, and to leave the enemy no more time to prepare farther defences, Calliaud,