Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/455

Book X. and opened his cannon across the morass, although at the distance of 1000 yards, which were answered by only six three-pounders. The Sepoys, and even the Europeans on both sides, fired sometimes likewise with their small arms: but the horse were never near each other. From the advantage of situation, notwithstanding the disparity of the cannon, the loss in Preston's army did not much exceed the enemy's, being 15 Sepoys, one European, and five horse killed, and five Sepoys wounded; whereas the enemy left nine Europeans and thirteen horses dead on the plain. At sunset they retreated to Viparee, where Mr. Lally likewise remained with the detachment of infantry; and Preston, for want of provisions, returned to Trimliwash.

In the night the enemy threw fewer shells than usual: from the morning of the 2d to the morning of the 3d, was the first day since the 4th of January, in which no one was killed in the fort; and no Sepoys received any hurt, but five Europeans were wounded. The pioneers of the garrison continued the two mines: they who were at work under the blind discovered no signs of the sap they suspected; but the miners, who were pushing under the covered-way towards the breaching battery, heard, at two in the morning, the sound of men working near them in the enemy's mine on the right under the east face of the glacis, which it was supposed they had relinquished since it failed on the 23d. At daybreak they sprung this mine on the inside of the covered-way, through the counterscarp of the ditch, at the extremity of the cuvette; into which the bulk of the explosion was thrown. Fragments of the brick-work wounded five Europeans and a Sepoy; but the explosion itself blew up none: nevertheless, to destroy many men seemed the only intent; for if it was meant to facilitate the descent into the ditch, their approaches were not sufficiently forward to attempt this operation; since the excavation was entirely commanded by the three innermost guns in the flank of the royal bastion, of which all the seven being covered on the flank by the oreillon, and by traverses in the rear, had received no hurt from the