Page:Lord Clive.djvu/112

104 an end to this cross-fire Clive saw that the one remedy was to storm the redoubt. He was unwilling, however, to risk his troops in a severe contest with the French so long as the army corps, the movements of which I have described in the preceding paragraph, should continue to occupy its apparently threatening position. That corps might be the corps of Mír Jafar, but there was no certainty that it was so, for Clive had not then received Mír Jafar's letter, nor was he aware of the flight of the Nawáb. It was just at this critical moment that he observed the corps in question making the retrograde movement I have referred to. Then all doubt was over in his mind. It must, he was convinced, be the corps of his adherent. Certain now that he would not be molested, he hurled his troops against the redoubt and the hillock to the east of it. St. Frais displayed a bold front, but, abandoned almost immediately by his native allies, and deeming it wiser to preserve his handful of Europeans for another occasion, he evacuated the redoubt, leaving his field-pieces behind him. His resistance was the last opposition offered to the English. The clocks struck five as he fell back, thus tolling the memorable hour which gave to England the richest province in India; which imposed upon her the necessity to advance upwards from its basis until she should reach the rocky region called with some show of reason the 'Glacis of the Fortress of Hindustán.'

Just as the beaten and betrayed army was moving