Page:History of the French in India.djvu/484

 458 G0DEHEU AND DE LEYElT. chap. Smith. But guarded withiu the walls were 500 French . prisoners, and d'Auteuil naturally hoped that these, if 1757. they could not openly aid him, would, at all events, draw off the attention of a great part of the garrison. On the morning of the 14th, the French leader, crossing the river, took up a position at the Wariur pagodas, nearly three miles west of the city ; from this place he opened a fire of shot and shell, and continued it to the 20th, when he sent a summons to Smith to surrender. This summons was, however, answered by defiance. It had been the intention of d'Auteuil to attempt an assault on the morning of the 21st, but he received during the day intimation that Calliaud, at the head of 120 Europeans and 1,200 sipahis, was in full march from Madura to relieve TrichinapalH. He deemed it, therefore, advisable to defer his attack in order the better to intercept this force. Instead, however, of massing the greater portion of his troops, leaving a few only to watch Smith, and moving out to crush Calliaud on the road, he resolved to follow the old plan, — dear, we must suppose, from its repeated failure, — of occupying the strong places to the south and east of the town. Like Astruc and Brennier before him, he marched to take up a position stretching from the Five Rocks to the French Rock, occupying, besides those two, in considerable force, the Fakir's Tope and the Golden and Sugar-loaf Rocks. He thus shut out Calliaud from TrichinapalH on the only side on which he could hope to gain it ; should the English attempt to force in their way between any of the rocks indicated, it would, he calculated, be in his power to crush them at a blow. The better to acquaint himself with the movements of the enemy, he had arranged that several spies should join them, and with these he had settled an efficient mode of communication. But this was, after all, but a gouty mode of carrying on war. To sit still, and to depend on spies for in-