Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/459

Book X. continued. In the day and night two Europeans were killed, and two wounded, but none of the Sepoys were hurt.

In the morning of the 7th the enemy began to fire, as was expected, from Lally's battery, but only from four of the embrasures and with a mortar on the right, all bearing upon the demi and north-east bastions, which together returned six guns: the other batteries continued as the day before, and the mortars in the night; during which no alarms were given either by the enemy or the garrison: two guns were disabled on the north-east bastion; two Europeans were killed, and five, and two Sepoys, wounded.

Notwithstanding the in efficacy of the breaching battery, the rest of the enemy's fire had by this time rent the salient angle of the demi bastion from top to bottom; and Mr. Lally, who viewed every thing with enthusiasm, ordered the principal engineers and artillery officers to give their opinion on the feasibility of storming this breach, and declared his own of success; but the officers considered the question with more deliberation. They agreed that the descent into the covered way from the breaching battery on one side, and the gabions on the other, of the salient angle of the glacis, was easy, and that the descent into the ditch and passage across it had been rendered very practicable by the mine they had sprung in the covered way from the eastern side of the glacis, of which the explosion had filled up a sufficient space at the end of the cuvette or trench of water dug along the middle of the ditch; but a rank of strong palisadoes ranged along the other side of the cuvette, and having hitherto received no damage must be torn down by hand, before the troops could gain the foot of the breach; who, during the descent into the ditch, would be exposed, without the cover of a single gabion on the flank, to the fire of the north-east bastion and of musketry from the blind before it; to six guns in the curving flank of the royal bastion, and abundance of small arms from the caponiere which led across the ditch to the north ravelin; and the havoc of these two fires would continue without the least resistance or interruption upon the troops whilst assaulting the breach itself. From these circumstances the officers declared the breach, although