OU are now permitted to peep into the citadel of Arcot, the old capital of the Carnatic. Its walls are ruinous, its ramparts unfitted for guns, its battlements too low to protect soldiers. The town is in the hands of four thousand native troops, assisted by one hundred and fifty Frenchmen. Within the fort there are but a hundred and twenty Europeans and two hundred Sepoys. Their stock of provisions is very low. At the request of the Sepoys the Europeans take the rice, while the faithful natives contrive to keep body and soul together on the water in which it has been boiled. The defenders are daily diminishing in number from starvation, disease, and the musketry fire of the enemy, but there is no talk of surrender. You judge that their leader must be a man of no common courage and resolution, and you are right. Within yonder room their young English captain is placidly sleeping, though he knows that the enemy is about to assault his feeble post.
Already he has been offered honourable terms and a bribe of money if he will but yield. He has rejected both with the utmost scorn and defiance, though he knows full well that the capture of the fort means the death of every man in it. In haughty tones the young Englishman has told the prince who commands the besieging army that his father is a usurper, that his forces are a mere rabble, and that he will do well to think twice before he sends such poltroons against English soldiers. It is now the 14th day of November, and on the 30th of August last he and his little army marched through a violent storm of thunder and rain, and captured the fort without striking a blow. He has already held out for seventy-five days, hoping hourly for relief. But he has not been inactive. Time after time he and his little band have sallied forth and inflicted considerable damage on the besiegers. The artillery of the enemy has already made much havoc; two great breaches gape in the walls. Every attempt to storm them has failed. Now the enemy is in overwhelming force, and to-day an assault is to be made; yet the commander of the post lies calmly sleeping, though a touch on the shoulder will awaken him and bring him on to the walls to direct the defence. He has made all arrangements; he has done all that man can do. Now he is recruiting his exhausted strength for the critical struggle that awaits him.
To-day is the most solemn festival in the Mohammedan calendar, a day on which the followers of Mohammed believe that he who falls in fight against the infidel will enter at once into Paradise. The religious enthusiasm of the besiegers is almost a frenzy, and they have further increased their madness by a free use of the intoxicating drug which they call bhang. They are ready to go to death with eager joy; no man of them will flinch from the most dangerous duty; all are zealous for the privilege of sacrificing their lives.
Suddenly you hear the discharge of three bombs. It is the signal for the attack. Our young Englishman is awake now, and you get your first glimpse of him. One glance at his face convinces you that he is a warrior of warriors, that there is not a particle of fear in his whole composition, that he is a born leader of men. His Sepoys positively worship him. They believe him to be more than mortal. Whatever he commands they obey. Their devotion to him exceeds that of the Tenth Legion to Cæsar and of the Old Guard to Napoleon.
Such is Robert Clive, a young man of twenty-five, who left his Shropshire home as the scapegrace of the family. In his home at Styche and in the grammar school of Market Drayton he acquired a most unenviable reputation—always in mischief, ready to use his fists on the slightest provocation, an idle, worthless dunce. In desperation his father packed him off to India as a book-keeper; but he has exchanged the pen for the sword, and has now found his vocation. It is he who suggested this desperate enterprise, and to-day he is about to lay the foundations of his great fame.
The attack has begun. A vast multitude of besiegers is beneath the walls carrying ladders, while against the four points where the fort is weakest—the two gates and the two breaches—organized and simultaneous attacks are preparing. Huge elephants, with their foreheads armed with iron plates, are driven forward, and you expect that the gates will be smashed to matchwood by the impact of these living battering-rams. But watch! Now you see Clive directing his men to pour their fire into the elephants. They do so, and the huge beasts, stung by the bullets, turn round and trample under foot the dense masses of men behind them. The enemy has been hoist with his own petard.
There is a wild rush into the north-west breach, which is blocked with yelling natives. Suddenly you hear a volley, and down go scores of the assailants. Clive has dug trenches behind the breaches, and his men are in them pouring a murderous fire on the living, struggling mass that swarms through the gap in the wall. As soon as the guns are discharged they are handed to the rear-rank men to be loaded, and others charged and primed are received in exchange. Three field-pieces now open fire, and every shot tells. After three desperate onsets the enemy is driven back.
Meanwhile the south-west breach is attacked. Water fills one part of the ditch which protects it, and on this the foe has launched a raft crowded with soldiers, who are urging it towards the shattered walls. The gunners at this post fire wildly and their aim is bad. Clive springs to the gun and works it himself. In three discharges he has cleared the raft and torn it asunder. Many of its occupants are drowning in the ditch, the remainder are swimming back to the bank.
The fight has now lasted an hour, and four hundred of the assailants are dead. The grand attack has failed. There is firing during the night, but when day breaks the besiegers are nowhere to be seen. They have hurriedly abandoned the town, leaving their artillery and ammunition behind them.
At once India rings with the praises of Clive. Reinforced, he proceeds upon his victorious career, and the natives tremble at his name. Within the next three years, by his marvellous energy and skill, he will establish British supremacy in India.