were very swampy, and
altogether impracticable for guns. These fields were crossed by a
causeway which led to the village, but as it ran at an angle across
them, those advancing upon it were exposed to the fire of the English
front. Clive posted the Sepoys in the village, the Mahratta horsemen
in the grove, and the two hundred English, with the guns, on the
ground between them.

The enemy advanced at once. His native cavalry, with some infantry,
marched against the grove; while the French troops, with about fifteen
hundred infantry, moved along the causeway against the village.

The fight began on the English left. There the Mahratta cavalry fought
bravely. Issuing from the palm grove, they made repeated charges
against the greatly superior forces of the enemy. But numbers told,
and the Mahrattas, fighting fiercely, were driven back into the palm
grove; where they, with difficulty, maintained themselves.

In the meantime, the fight was going on at the centre. Clive opened
fire with his guns on the long column marching, almost across his
front, to attack the village. The enemy, finding themselves exposed to
a fire which they were powerless to answer, quitted the causeway, and
formed up in the rice fields fronting the English position. The guns,
protected only by a few Frenchmen and natives, remained on the
causeway.

Clive now despatched two of his guns, and fifty English, to aid the
hard-pressed Mahrattas in the grove; and fifty others to the village,
with orders to join the Sepoys there, to dash forward on to the
causeway, and charge the enemy's guns.

As the column issued from the village along the causeway, at a rapid
pace, the French limbered up their guns and retired at a gallop. The
infantry, dispirited at their disappearance, fell back across the rice
fields; an example which their horsemen on their right, already
dispirited by the loss which they were suffering, from the
newly-arrived English musketry and the discharges of the field pieces,
followed without delay.

Clive at once ordered a pursuit. The Mahrattas were despatched after
the enemy's cavalry, while he himself, with his infantry, advanced
across the causeway and pressed upon the main body. Three times the
enemy made a stand, but each time failed to resist the impetuosity of
the pursuers, and the night alone put a stop to the pursuit, by which
time the enemy were completely routed.

The material loss had not been heavy, for but fifty French and