Rajah Sahib learned that the Mahrattas were in motion.  It was necessary for him to be expeditious.  He first tried negotiation.  He offered large bribes to Clive, which were rejected with scorn.  He vowed that, if his proposals were not accepted, he would instantly storm the fort, and put every man in it to the sword.  Clive told him in reply, with characteristic haughtiness, that his father was an usurper, that his army was a rabble, and that he would do well to think twice before he sent such poltroons into a breach defended by English soldiers.

Rajah Sahib determined to storm the fort.  The day was well suited to a bold military enterprise.  It was the great Mahommedan festival which is sacred to the memory of Hosein, the son of Ali.  The history of Islam contains nothing more touching than the event which gave rise to that solemnity.  The mournful legend relates how the chief of the Fatimites, when all his brave followers had perished round him, drank his latest draught of water, and uttered his latest prayer, how the assassins carried his head in triumph, how the tyrant smote the lifeless lips with his staff, and how a few old men recollected with tears that they had seen those lips pressed to the lips of the Prophet of God.  After the lapse of near twelve centuries, the recurrence of this solemn season excites the fiercest and saddest emotions in the bosoms of the devout Moslem of India.  They work themselves up to such agonies of rage and lamentation that some, it is said, have given up the ghost from the mere effect of mental excitement.  They believe that, whoever, during this festival, falls in arms against the infidels, atones by his death for all the sins of his life, and passes at once to the garden of the Houris.  It was at this time that Rajah Sahib determined to assault Arcot.  Stimulating drugs were employed to aid the effect of religious zeal, and the besiegers, drunk with enthusiasm, drunk with bang, rushed furiously to the attack.

Clive had received secret intelligence of the design, had made his arrangements, and, exhausted by fatigue, had thrown himself on his bed.  He was awakened by the alarm, and was instantly at his post.  The enemy advanced, driving before them elephants whose foreheads were armed with iron plates.  It was expected that the gates would yield to the shock of these living battering-rams.  But the huge beasts no sooner felt the English musket-balls than they turned round, and rushed furiously away, trampling on the multitude which had urged them forward.  A raft was launched on the water which filled one part of the ditch.  Clive, perceiving that his gunners at that post did not understand their business, took the management of a piece of artillery himself, and cleared the raft in a few minutes.  When the moat was dry the assailants mounted with great boldness; but they were received with a fire so heavy and so well directed, that it soon quelled the courage even of fanaticism and of intoxication.  The rear ranks of the English kept the front ranks supplied with a constant succession of loaded muskets, and every shot told on the living mass below.  After three desperate onsets, the besiegers retired behind the ditch.