With Clive in India; Or, The Beginnings of an Empire

by G. A. Henty

During the fight Tim and the faithful Hossein, now fully recovered and promoted to the rank of an officer, had remained close beside him; and were, with him, the last to leave the town.

The instant the evacuation was complete, the guns of the hill battery opened upon the town; and a tremendous fire of musketry was poured upon it from every point of the castle which commanded it; while the guns, which from their lofty elevation, could not be depressed sufficiently to bear upon the town, directed their fire upon the bodies of troops still beyond the walls. The enemy had captured the town, indeed, but its possession aided them but little in their assault upon the fort. The only advantage it gave them, would have been that it would have enabled them to attack the lower gate of the fort, protected by its outer wall from the fire of the hill battery. Charlie had, however, perceived that this would be the case, and had planted a number of mines under the wall at this point. These were exploded when the defenders of the town entered the fort, and a hundred yards of the wall were thus destroyed; leaving the space, across which the enemy must advance to the attack of the gate, exposed to the fire of the hill battery, as well as of the numerous guns of the fort bearing upon it.

Two days passed without any further operations on the part of the enemy; and then Bussy, seeing that nothing whatever could be done towards assaulting the fortress, so long as the battery remained in the hands of the besieged, determined to make a desperate effort to carry it, ignorant of its immense strength. At night, therefore, he ordered two bodies of men, each fifteen hundred strong, to mount the hillside, far to the right and left of the town; to move along at the foot of the wall of rock, and to carry the battery by storm at daybreak.

Charlie, believing that such an attempt would be made, had upon the day following the fall of the town taken his post there, and had ordered a most vigilant watch to be kept up, each night; placing sentries some hundred yards away, on either side, to give warning of the approach of an enemy.

Towards daybreak on the third morning a shot upon the left, followed a few seconds later by one on the right, told that the enemy were approaching. A minute or two afterwards the sentries ran in, climbed from the ditch by ladders which had been placed there for the purpose, and, hauling these up after them, were soon in the battery, with the news that large bodies of the enemy were approaching on either flank. Scarcely were the garrison at their posts, when the French were seen approaching. At once they broke into a run, and, gallantly led, dashed across the space of cleared rock, in spite of the heavy fire of musketry and grape.

When they came, however, to the edge of the deep gulf in the solid rock, they paused. They had had no idea of meeting with such an obstacle as this. It was easy enough to leap down, but impossible to climb up the steep face, ten feet high, in front of them; and which, in the dim light, could be plainly seen. It was, however, impossible for those in front to pause. Pressed upon by those behind, who did not know what was stopping them, large numbers were compelled to jump into the trench, where they found themselves unable either to advance or retreat.

By this time, every gun on the upper side of the castle had opened on the assailing columns, taking them in flank, while the fire of the battery was continued without a moment's intermission. Bussy himself, who was commanding one of the columns, pushed his way through his struggling soldiers to the edge of the trench; when, seeing the impossibility of scaling the sides, unprovided as he was with scaling ladders, he gave the orders to retreat; and the columns, harassed by the flanking fire of the guns of the castle, and pursued by that of the battery, retreated, having lost some hundreds of their number; besides a hundred and fifty of their best men, prisoners in the deep trench around the battery.

These were summoned to surrender; and, resistance being impossible, they at once laid down their arms. Ladders were lowered to them, and they were marched as prisoners to the fort.

The next morning, when the defenders of the fortress looked over the valley, the great camp was gone. The nizam and Bussy, despairing of the possibility of carrying the position, at once so enormously strong by nature, and so gallantly defended, had raised the siege; which had cost them over two thousand of their best soldiers, including two hundred French killed and prisoners, and retreated to the plateau of the Deccan.

The exultation of the rajah and his troops was unbounded. They felt that, now and henceforth, they were safe from another invasion; and the rajah saw that, in the future, he should be able to gain greatly increased territory, as the ally of the English. His gratitude to Charlie was unbounded, and he literally loaded him with costly presents.