The river was passed; and, at the close of a toilsome day’s march, the army, long after sunset, took up its quarters in grove of mango-trees near Plassey, within a mile of the enemy.  Clive was unable to sleep; he heard, through the whole night the sound of drums and cymbals from the vast camp of the Nabob.  It is not strange that even his stout heart should no and then have sunk, when he reflected against what odds, and for what a prize, he was in a few hours to contend.

Nor was the rest of Surajah Dowlah more peaceful.  His mind, at once weak and stormy, was distracted by wild and horrible apprehensions.  Appalled by the greatness and nearness of the crisis, distrusting his captains, dreading every one who approached him, dreading to be left alone, he sat gloomily in his tent, haunted, a Greek poet would have said, by the furies of those who had cursed him with their last breath in the Black Hole.

The day broke, the day which was to decide the fate of India.  At sunrise the army of the Nabob, pouring through many openings of the camp, began to move towards the grove where the English lay.  Forty thousand infantry, armed with firelocks, pikes, swords, bows and arrows, covered the plain.  They were accompanied by fifty pieces of ordnance of the largest size, each tugged by a long team of white oxen, and each pushed on from behind by an elephant.  Some smaller guns, under the direction of a few French auxiliaries, were perhaps more formidable.  The cavalry were fifteen thousand, drawn, not from the effeminate population of Bengal, but from the bolder race which inhabits the northern provinces; and the practised eye of Clive could perceive that both the men and the horses were more powerful than those of the Carnatic.  The force which he had to oppose to this great multitude consisted of only three thousand men.  But of these nearly a thousand were English; and all were led by English officers, and trained in the English discipline.  Conspicuous in the ranks of the little army were the men of the Thirty-Ninth Regiment, which still bears on its colours, amidst many honourable additions won under Wellington in Spain and Gascony, the name of Plassey, and the proud motto, Primus in Indis.

The battle commenced with a cannonade in which the artillery of the Nabob did scarcely any execution, while the few fieldpieces of the English produced great effect.  Several of the most distinguished officers in Surajah Dowlah’s service fell.  Disorder began to spread through his ranks.  His own terror increased every moment.  One of the conspirators urged on him the expediency of retreating.  The insidious advice, agreeing as it did with what his own terrors suggested, was readily received.  He ordered his army to fall back, and this order decided his fate.  Clive snatched the moment, and ordered his troops to advance.  The confused and dispirited multitude gave way before the onset of disciplined valour.  No mob attacked by regular soldiers was