“I commenced to pull down the church and the house of the Jesuit fathers, situated on the edge of the Ditch, also all the houses of private persons which masked the entire north curtain.  The wood taken from the ruins of these served to construct a barrier extending from bastion to bastion and supporting this same north curtain, which seemed ready to fall to pieces from old age.”

This barrier was placed four feet outside the wall, the intervening space being filled in with earth.

“Also in front of Porte Royale” (i.e. outside the gate in the avenue), “the weakest side of the Fort, I placed a battery of 3 guns, and worked hard at clearing out and enlarging the Ditch, but there was no time to make it of any use as a defence.  A warehouse on which I put bales of gunny[26] to prevent cannon balls from breaking in the vaults of the roof, served it as a casemate.”

The east or river curtain was left alone.  The French were, in fact, so confident that the ships of war would not be able to force their way up the river, and that Clive would not therefore think of attacking on that side, that the only precaution they took at first was the erection of two batteries outside the Fort.  It is a well-known maxim in war that one should attack at that point at which the enemy deems himself most secure, and it will be seen that all Clive’s efforts were aimed at preparing for Admiral Watson to attack on the east.

As regards artillery Renault was better off.

“The alarm which the Prince” (Siraj-ud-daula) “gave us in June last having given me reason to examine into the state of the artillery, I found that not one of the carriages of the guns on the ramparts was in a serviceable condition, not a field-piece mounted, not a platform ready for the mortars.  I gave all my attention to these matters, and fortunately had time to put them right.”

To serve his guns Renault had the sailors of the Company’s ship, Saint Contest, whose commander, M. de la Vigne Buisson, was the soul of the defence.

About this time he received a somewhat doubtful increase to his garrison, a crowd of deserters from the English East India Company’s forces.  The latter at this time were composed of men of all nationalities, English, Germans, Swiss, Dutch, and even French.  Many of them, and naturally the foreigners especially, were ready to desert upon little provocation.  The hardships of service in a country where the climate and roads were execrable, where food and pay were equally uncertain, and where promises were made not to be kept, were provocations which the best soldiers might have found it difficult to resist.  We read of whole regiments in the English and French services refusing to obey orders, and of mutinies of officers as well as of men.  The one reward of service was the chance of plunder, and naturally, then, as soon as the fighting with the Nawab had stopped for a time,