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56 were suffered to enter without the countersign being demanded, and one of the guard was despatched to conduct them to head-quarters. They marched, and without giving any disturbance, or meeting with any opposition, till they arrived at a pagoda, where they were challenged by the sentinels, and simultaneously by others posted at an adjacent choultry, within which Clive was asleep. They answered these challenges, not as before, by an attempt to parley, but by discharging a volley into each place. That directed to the choultry was not far from deciding the question of success, a ball having shattered a box at Clive's feet, and killed a servant sleeping close to him. After this discharge, the enemy pushed into the pagoda, putting all they met to the bayonet.

Clive, awakened by the noise, and not imagining that the enemy could have advanced into the centre of his camp, supposed the firing to proceed from part of his own Sepoys, and that the cause of it was some groundless alarm. In this belief, he advanced alone into the midst of the party who were firing, as appeared to him, without purpose, and angrily demanded the cause of their conduct. In the confusion he was at first scarcely observed; but at length one of the enemy's Sepoys discovering, or suspecting him to be an Englishman, attacked and wounded him. By this time the French being in possession of the pagoda, Clive ordered the gate to be stormed; but it would admit only two men abreast, and the English deserters within fought with desperation. The officer who led the attack, and fifteen men engaged in it, were killed, and the attempt was then relinquished till cannon could be obtained.

At daybreak the French officer, seeing the danger of his situation, endeavoured to escape it by a sally; but being killed with several of his men, the rest retreated into the pagoda. Clive, advancing to the porch to offer them terms, experienced another of those remarkable escapes in which his career so much abounded. Rendered weak by the wounds which he had received, he leant upon