Page:Our Indian Army.djvu/74

50 defence of Arcot, promised to send a detachment to its assistance. Rajah Sahib, on hearing this, apprehensive of the probable result, sent in a flag of truce, with proposals for the surrender of the fort; offering honourable terms for the garrison, and a large sum of money for Clive, and threatening in case of refusal the immolation of every man in it. Clive refused the offer in terms of haughty defiance, and even fired a volley of small arms on a body of the enemy that hovered round the ditch, trying to reduce the British Sepoys, by which many of them were killed and wounded.

The day appointed for storming the breach at length arrived, the 14th of November, one of the most distinguished in the Mahomedan calendar; for every happy Mussulman to whom it brought death, by the sword of an unbeliever, was certain of immediate transmission to the prophet's paradise. By this belief the enthusiasm of the enemy's troops was wrought up almost to madness, and it was further increased by the free use of an intoxicating substance called bang.

The morning came, and the enemy approached in a vast multitude, bringing ladders to every part of the wall that was accessible; but Clive and his little garrison were at their posts, according to the dispositions previously made, to meet the coming conflict. Four principal divisions of the enemy's troops marched upon the four points where an entrance to the fort seemed most likely to be effected, the two gates and two breaches which had been made in the wall. The parties who attacked the gates drove before them several elephants, armed with plates of iron on their foreheads, with which it was expected they would beat down the obstacles that stopped the course of the assailants; but the elephants, wounded by the musketry of the British force, turned and trampled upon those who were urging them forward. At the north-west breach, as many as it was capable of admitting rushed wildly in, and passed the first trench before their opponents gave fire; but then it was with terrible effect. A number of mus-