The Admiral could not attack at once, owing to the state of the river, but to secure his own position against any counter-attack, such as was very likely with a man like Captain de la Vigne in the Fort, he sent up boats the same night, and sank the vessels which it was supposed the French intended to use as fire-ships; and the next day Mr. John Delamotte, master of the Kent, under a heavy fire, sounded and buoyed the passage for the ships.
The army, meanwhile, continued its monotonous work ashore, the soldiers building batteries for the French to knock to pieces, but succeeding in Clive's object, which was "to keep the enemy constantly awake."[[47]] Sometimes this work was dangerous, as, for instance, on the 21st, when a ball from the Fort knocked down a verandah close to one of the English batteries, "the rubbish of which choked up one of our guns, very much bruised two artillery officers, and buried several men in the ruins."[[48]]
By the 22nd Clive had worked his way round to the river, and was established to the north-east and south-east of the Fort so as to assist the Admiral, and on the river the Admiral had at last got the high tide he was waiting for. Surgeon Ives tells the story as follows:[[49]]—
"The Admiral the same evening ordered lights to be
placed on the masts of the vessels that had been sunk, with
blinds towards the Fort, that we might see how to pass
between them a little before daylight, and without being
discovered by the enemy.
"At length the glorious morning of the 23rd of March
arrived." Clive's men gallantly stormed the battery covering
the narrow pass,[[50]] "and upon the ships getting under sail the
Colonel's battery, which had been finished behind a dead
wall," to take off the fire of the Fort when the ships passed
up, began firing away, and had almost battered down the
corner of the south-east bastion before the ships arrived
within shot of the Fort. "The Tyger, with Admiral Pocock's
flag flying, took the lead, and about 6 o'clock in the morning
got very well into her station against the north-east bastion.
The Kent, with Admiral Watson's flag flying, quickly followed
her, but before she could reach her proper station, the tide of
ebb unfortunately made down the river, which occasioned her
anchor to drag, so that before she brought up she had fallen
abreast of the south-east bastion, the place where the Salisbury
should have been, and from her mainmast aft she was exposed
to the flank guns of the south-west bastion also. The accident
of the Kent's anchor not holding fast, and her driving down
into the Salisbury's station, threw this last ship out of action,
to the great mortification of the captain, officers, and crew,
for she never had it in her power to fire a gun, unless it was
now and then, when she could sheer on the tide. The French,
during the whole time of the Kent and Tyger's approach
towards the Fort, kept up a terrible cannonade upon them,
without any resistance on their part; but as soon as the
ships came properly to an anchor they returned it with such
fury as astonished their adversaries. Colonel Clive's troops
at the same time got into those houses which were nearest
the Fort, and from thence greatly annoyed the enemy with
their musketry. Our ships lay so near to the Fort that the
musket balls fired from their tops, by striking against the
chunam[[51]] walls of the Governor's palace, which was in
the very centre of the Fort, were beaten as flat as a half-crown.
The fire now became general on both sides, and was
kept up with extraordinary spirit. The flank guns of the
south-west bastion galled the Kent very much, and the
Admiral's aide-de-camps being all wounded, Mr. Watson went
down himself to Lieutenant William Brereton, who commanded
the lower deck battery, and ordered him particularly
to direct his fire against those guns, and they were accordingly
soon afterwards silenced. At 8 in the morning
several of the enemy's shot struck the Kent at the same
time; one entered near the foremast, and set fire to two or
three 32-pound cartridges of gunpowder, as the boys held
them in their hands ready to charge the guns. By the explosion,
the wad-nets and other loose things took fire between
decks, and the whole ship was so filled with smoke that the
men, in their confusion, cried out she was on fire in the
gunner's store-room, imagining from the shock they had
felt from the balls that a shell had actually fallen into her.
This notion struck a panic into the greater part of the crew,
and 70 or 80 jumped out of the port-holes into the boats
that were alongside the ship. The French presently saw
this confusion on board the Kent, and, resolving to take the
advantage, kept up as hot a fire as possible upon her during
the whole time. Lieutenant Brereton, however, with the
assistance of some other brave men, soon extinguished the
fire, and then running to the ports, he begged the seamen to
come in again, upbraiding them for deserting their quarters;
but finding this had no effect upon them, he thought the
more certain method of succeeding would be to strike them
with a sense of shame, and therefore loudly exclaimed, 'Are
you Britons? You Englishmen, and fly from danger? For
shame! For shame!' This reproach had the desired effect;
to a man they immediately returned into the ship, repaired
to their quarters, and renewed a spirited fire on the enemy.
"In about three hours from the commencement of the
attack the parapets of the north and south bastions were
almost beaten down; the guns were mostly dismounted, and
we could plainly see from the main-top of the Kent that the
ruins from the parapet and merlons had entirely blocked up
those few guns which otherwise might have been fit for
service. We could easily discern, too, that there had been
a great slaughter among the enemy, who, finding that our
fire against them rather increased, hung out the white flag,
whereupon a cessation of hostilities took place, and the
Admiral sent Lieutenant Brereton (the only commissioned
officer on board the Kent that was not killed or wounded)
and Captain Coote of the King's regiment with a flag of truce
to the Fort, who soon returned, accompanied by the French
Governor's son, with articles of capitulation, which being
settled by the Admiral and Colonel, we soon after took possession
of the place."
So far then from the besiegers' side; Renault's description of the fight is as follows:—
"The three largest vessels, aided by the high-water of
the equinoctial tides, which, moreover, had moved the vessels
sunk in the narrow passage, passed over the sunken ships,
which did not delay them for a moment, to within half
pistol shot of the Fort, and opened fire at 6 a.m. Then the
troops in the battery on the bank of the Ganges, who had
so far fired only one discharge, suddenly found themselves
overwhelmed with the fire from the tops of the ships,
abandoned it, and had much difficulty in gaining the Fort....
I immediately sent the company of grenadiers, with a detachment
of the artillery company as reinforcements, to the
south-eastern bastion and the Bastion du Pavillon, which two
bastions face the Ganges; but those troops under the fire of
the ships, joined to that of the land batteries, rebuilt the
same night, and of more than 3000 men placed on the roofs
of houses which overlooked the Fort, almost all took flight,
leaving two of their officers behind, one dead and the other
wounded. I was obliged to send immediately all the marine
and the inhabitants from the other posts.
"The attack was maintained with vigour from 6 a.m. to
10.30, when all the batteries were covered with dead and
wounded, the guns dismounted, and the merlons destroyed,
in spite of their being strengthened with bales of cloth. No
one could show himself on the bastions, demolished by the
fire of more than 100 guns; the troops were terrified during
this attack by the loss of all the gunners and of nearly
200 men; the bastions were undermined, and threatened to
crumble away and make a breach, which the exhaustion of
our people, and the smallness of the number who remained,
made it impossible for us to hope to defend successfully.
Not a soldier would put his hand to a gun; it was only the
European marine who stood to their duty, and half of these
were already killed or disabled. A body of English troops,
lying flat on the ground behind the screen which we had commenced
to erect on the bank of the Ganges, was waiting the
signal to attack. Seeing the impossibility of holding out longer,
I thought that in the state in which the Fort was I could not
in prudence expose it to an assault. Consequently I hoisted
the white flag and ordered the drums to beat a parley."
According to an account written later by a person who was not present at the siege, Renault lost his Fort by a quarter of an hour. This writer says the tide was rapidly falling, and, had the eastern defences of the Fort been able to resist a little longer, the ships would have found their lower tiers of guns useless, and might have been easily destroyed by the French. Suppositions of this kind always suppose a stupidity on the part of the enemy which Renault had no right to count upon. Admiral Watson must have known the strength of the fortress he was about to attack before he placed his ships in a position from which it would be impossible to withdraw them whenever he wished to do so.
The flag of truce being displayed, Captain Eyre Coote was sent ashore, and returned in a quarter of an hour with the Governor's son bearing "a letter concerning the delivery of the place." Articles were agreed upon, and about 3 o'clock in the afternoon Captain Coote, with a company of artillery and two companies of grenadiers, took possession of the Fort. Before this took place there occurred an event the consequences of which were very unfortunate for the French. Everything was in a state of confusion, and the deserters, who formed the majority of the garrison, expecting no mercy from the Admiral and Clive, determined to escape. Rushing tumultuously to the Porte Royale, their arms in their hands, they forced it to be opened to them, and, finding the northern road to Chinsurah unguarded, made the best of their way in that direction. They were accompanied by a number of the military and marine, as well as by some of the Company's servants and private persons who were determined not to surrender. As all this took place after the hoisting of the white flag and pending the conclusion of the capitulation, the English considered it a breach of the laws of warfare, and when later on the meaning of the capitulation itself was contested they absolutely refused to listen to any of the representations of the French. In all about 150 persons left the Fort. They had agreed to reassemble at a place a little above Hugli. The English sent a small force after them, who shot some and captured others, but about 80 officers and men arrived at the rendezvous in safety. The pursuit, however, was carried further, and Law writes:—
"Constantly pursued, they had to make forced marches.
Some lost their way; others, wearied out, were caught as they
stopped to rest themselves. However, when I least expected
it, I was delighted to see the officers and many of the soldiers
arrive in little bands of 5 and 6, all naked, and so worn out
that they could hardly hold themselves upright. Most of
them had lost their arms."
This reinforcement increased Law's garrison from 10 or 12 men to 60, and secured the safety of his person, but the condition of the fugitives must have been an object lesson to the Nawab and his Durbar which it was not wise for the French to set before them. A naval officer writes:—