Clive posted the Sepoys in the village, the Mahratta horsemen
in the grove, and the two hundred English, with the guns, on the
ground between them.
The enemy advanced at once. His native cavalry, with some infantry,
marched against the grove; while the French troops, with about fifteen
hundred infantry, moved along the causeway against the village.
The fight began on the English left. There the Mahratta cavalry fought
bravely. Issuing from the palm grove, they made repeated charges
against the greatly superior forces of the enemy. But numbers told,
and the Mahrattas, fighting fiercely, were driven back into the palm
grove; where they, with difficulty, maintained themselves.
In the meantime, the fight was going on at the centre. Clive opened
fire with his guns on the long column marching, almost across his
front, to attack the village. The enemy, finding themselves exposed to
a fire which they were powerless to answer, quitted the causeway, and
formed up in the rice fields fronting the English position. The guns,
protected only by a few Frenchmen and natives, remained on the
causeway.
Clive now despatched two of his guns, and fifty English, to aid the
hard-pressed Mahrattas in the grove; and fifty others to the village,
with orders to join the Sepoys there, to dash forward on to the
causeway, and charge the enemy's guns.
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