the British prestige, of
the British position in Southern India, if he, without cavalry, were
to abandon the field to an enemy largely provided with that arm, and
who would be urged to extraordinary energy by the fact that the
unconquered hero of Arcot had fled before them?

[Footnote 2: The reader who would care to read such a detailed
account will find it in the writer's _Decisive Battles of India_, ch.
ii.]

No: he would think only of conquering; and he conquered. After four
hours of fighting, all to his disadvantage, he resolved to act, _in
petto_, on the principle he had put into action when he first seized
Arcot. He would carry the war into the enemy's position. By a very
daring experiment he discovered that the rear of the wooded redoubt
occupied by the French had been left unguarded. With what men were
available he stormed it; took the enemy by surprise, the darkness
wonderfully helping him; and threw them into a panic. Of this panic
he promptly took advantage; forced the Frenchmen to surrender; then
occupied their strong position, and halted, waiting for the day. With
the early morn he pushed on and occupied Kaveripak. The enemy had
disappeared. The corpses of fifty Frenchmen and the bodies of 300
wounded showed how fierce had been the fight. He had, too, many
prisoners. His own losses were heavy: forty English and thirty
sipahis. {67}But he had saved Southern India. He had completely
baffled the cunningly devised scheme of Dupleix.

The consequences of the battle were immediately apparent. Northern
Arcot having been freed from enemies, Clive returned to Fort St.
David, reached that place the 11th of March, halted there for three
days, and was about to march to strike a blow at the other extremity,
Trichinopoli, when there arrived from England his old and venerated
chief, Stringer Lawrence. The latter naturally took command, and two
days later the force Clive had raised, and of which he was now second
in command, started with a convoy for Trichinopoli. On the 26th it
was met eighteen miles from that fortress by an officer sent thence
to inform Lawrence that the French had despatched a force to
intercept him at Koiladi, close to and commanding his line of
advance. By great daring, Lawrence made his way until he had passed
beyond the reach of the guns of the badly-commanded enemy and the
fort, and before daybreak of the following morning was joined by a
small detachment of the garrison: another, of greater f