The struggle lasted about an hour.  Four hundred of the assailants fell.  The garrison lost only five or six men.  The besieged passed an anxious night, looking for a renewal of the attack.  But when the day broke, the enemy were no more to be seen.  They had retired, leaving to the English several guns and a large quantity of ammunition.

The news was received at Fort St. George with transports of joy and pride.  Clive was justly regarded as a man equal to any command.  Two hundred English soldiers and seven hundred sepoys were sent to him, and with this force he instantly commenced offensive operations.  He took the fort of Timery, effected a junction with a division of Morari Row’s army, and hastened, by forced marches, to attack Rajah Sahib, who was at the head of about five thousand men, of whom three hundred were French.  The action was sharp; but Clive gained a complete victory.  The military chest of Rajah Sahib fell into the hands of the conquerors.  Six hundred sepoys, who had served in the enemy’s army, came over to Clive’s quarters, and were taken into the British service.  Conjeveram surrendered without a blow.  The governor of Arnee deserted Chunda Sahib, and recognised the title of Mahommed Ali.

Had the entire direction of the war been intrusted to Clive, it would probably have been brought to a speedy close.  But the timidity and incapacity which appeared in all the movements of the English, except where he was personally present, protracted the struggle.  The Mahrattas muttered that his soldiers were of a different race from the British whom they found elsewhere.  The effect of this languor was that in no long time Rajah Sahib, at the head of a considerable army, in which were four hundred French troops, appeared almost under the guns of Fort St. George, and laid waste the villas and gardens of the gentlemen of the English settlement.  But he was again encountered and defeated by Clive.  More than a hundred of the French were killed or taken, a loss more serious than that of thousands of natives.  The victorious army marched from the field of battle to Fort St. David.  On the road lay the City of the Victory of Dupleix, and the stately monument which was designed to commemorate the triumphs of France in the East.  Clive ordered both the city and the monument to be razed to the ground.  He was induced, we believe, to take this step, not by personal or national malevolence, but by a just and profound policy.  The town and its pompous name, the pillar and its vaunting inscriptions, were among the devices by which Dupleix had laid the public mind of India under a spell.  This spell it was Clive’s business to break.  The natives had been taught that France was confessedly the first power in Europe, and that the English did not presume to dispute her supremacy.  No measure could be more effectual for the removing of this delusion than the public and solemn demolition of the French trophies.