Page:Lord Clive.djvu/113

Rh off with its impedimenta, its elephants, its camels, leaving to be scrambled for an enormous mass of baggage, stores, cattle, and camp equipage, Clive received messengers from Mír Jafar requesting an interview. Clive replied by appointing a meeting for the morrow at Dáudpur, a village twenty miles to the south of Murshidábád. Thither the bulk of the troops, their spirits cheered by the promise made them that they would receive a liberal donation in money, marched that evening; whilst a detachment under Eyre Coote went forward in pursuit, to prevent the enemy from rallying. After a short halt, to enable the commissariat to exchange their small and worn-out bullocks for the splendid oxen of the Súbahdár, the troops pressed on, and at eight o'clock the entire force was united at Dáudpur.

Such was the battle of Plassey. The loss of the English force was extremely small, amounting to seven Europeans and sixteen sipáhís killed, and thirteen Europeans and thirty-six sipáhís wounded. No officer was killed: two were wounded, but their names are not recorded. A midshipman of the Kent, Shoreditch by name, was shot in the thigh, whilst doing duty with the artillery. The enemy's casualties were far greater. It was calculated to be, in killed and wounded, about a thousand, including many officers. They had been far more exposed than the English. Writing, in the letter already referred to, of the phases of the action between two and five o'clock, Clive states that their horse exposed them-