Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/724

700 six more, they repeated the same importunities to the town and the English post, and received the same repulses. Examples of this severity rarely occur; and in civilized war is never exercised but with the utmost reluctance. At length Colonel Coote, finding Mr. Lally inflexible, let the whole multitude pass. Their only sustenance, excepting the little they had brought out of the town, secreted about their persons, had for eight days been the roots of grass they picked up in the fields, in which they lay. They were all extenuated by famine, and few had homes or friends to go to; nevertheless their thanks were inexpressible, even for this chance of preservation. The Nabob was present at this act of mercy, and concurred in it. He left Arcot on the 15th of November, and went to Madrass to confer a few hours with Mr. Pigot, from whence he arrived in the camp on the 3d of December. On the 2d and 3d, two vessels, a sloop, and a pinnace remaining at Pondicherry, sailed away for Tranquebar, but the pinnace was taken by the boats of Devicotah.

Four ricochet batteries, which were first to open against the town, were finished on the 8th. We have already given some description of Pondicherry, when attacked by Mr. Boscawen in 1748. All the bastions remained in their first form, which, for a town of this size, was very confined; but counter-guards had been made before three of them, and ravelins raised before the three gates to the land; a rampart of earth had been added to the curtains, which before were only walls of brick five feet thick. A wet ditch had been compleated on the three sides to the land, excepting in an extent of 200 yards on the south side towards the sea, where the ground rising higher required a deeper excavation, which for this reason, as being more laborious and expensive, had not yet been dug; to the extremity of this higher ground where the ditch ceased, came a large creek from the river of Ariancopang, which supplied the ditch all round with water. The berm within the ditch was 25 feet broad; the covered way was narrow, and the glacis not sufficiently raised. The face to the east being within a few yards of the surf, and exposed only to an escalade by surprize, had no ditch, but its curtain was flanked by projecting batteries, which likewise commanded the road. The citadel