to see me quit his country.  He knew I could not do this without risk, and, according to the custom of the infidels, he gave me the strongest possible assurances of my safety and tranquillity.  I took care not to trust to them; I was then, as I said above, without entrenchments and without defence, so in the evening I set to work at surrounding myself with a ditch, the mud taken out of which would serve me for embrasures.  I was short of provisions, which made me very anxious, and I was still more so when I learned that the enemy were trying to cut me off from provisions on all sides, and that their intention was to capture me by famine or treachery.  Their number quickly increased to 3000 men, of whom a part came over to my side of the river, and harassed my people whenever they went out for provisions.  This forced me to detach.  MM.  Chevalier and Gourlade, with about 10 men, some peons and boatmen, against one of their little camps, where there were about 150 men, foot and horse.  Our men received their fire, stormed the camp, and destroyed it after having put every one to flight.  There was not a single person wounded on our side.  This little advantage gave me time to make a good provision of rice and other things in the villages near my entrenchments.  I cleared out these villages and drove out the inhabitants, but I was still in need of a quantity of things necessary to life.  To procure these, I tried to frighten the enemy by cannonading their chief camp on the other side of the river.  This only resulted in making them withdraw altogether beyond the reach of my guns, not with the idea of going away, but of starving me out, and, as I learned later, to give time for a reinforcement of artillery which they were expecting to arrive.  They had already 4 or 5 guns, but their calibre was small compared with mine, as I was able to see from the balls which fell in my camp when it was entrenched only on the land side.

“The 19th of January, early in the morning, I sent across the river a number of workmen, supported by a little detachment under M. Gourlade, to cut down a grove of bamboos which masked my guns, and to burn down some houses which were also in their way.  I forbade them to engage the enemy, and all went well until some topasses and peons advanced too far towards the enemy’s camp, and I heard discharges so loud and frequent on both sides, that I ordered a retreat to be beaten in my entrenchments, to make my people recross the river.  I fired my guns continually to facilitate this and to cover the movement.  In this skirmish I had only one soldier wounded, and I do not know whether the enemy had any losses.  This day more than 1500 shots were fired on both sides.  Some of the guns which the enemy brought up troubled us greatly, as we were not entrenched on the water side.  Several balls fell at my side or passed over my head.  This determined me to set all my people at work the next night with torches, to put us under cover on this side also.”

[It was apparently this fight which Kasim Ali reported to Clive on the 24th of January:—­