THE I10YAL ARTILLERY INSTITUTION. 
433 
worse plight than Lorrain; for they mustered slowly, in the rear of the other 
regiment. Lorrain had also four field pieces. Draper and his advanced 
grenadier corps received and returned the fire of the platoons in the cross 
street, but pushed on at once, leaving a party to seal this passage; and, on 
gaining the main transverse thoroughfare of the Black Town, discerned 
Lorrain on their left, presenting its naked flank. Instantly they faced and 
fired, aided by others as they came up; and the Trench suffered much from 
this, and more from the well served English field pieces, which drove them 
to cover in the houses; and though they turned their own guns and fired 
once, the gunners then abandoned their pieces; and Draper, stopping his 
own fire, ordered the grenadiers to follow him, and seize the Trench artillery. 
But they had pushed on into an enclosure opposite; how far to escape the 
Trench fire must be left to conjecture. Tour men only followed Draper; 
and though he received from an officer who had stayed by the guns an offer 
to surrender himself and them, two of his four attendants being killed, and 
the others wounded, he was fain to return to his former station. Then the 
Trench emerged from their shelter, reinforced each moment by the gathering 
mass of the Indian battalion; the firing of guns and musketry raged hotly 
for twenty minutes; when Draper, afraid of being cut off by Daily's regiment 
from behind, notified a retreat; and the bulk of his party, abandoning their 
guns, pushed on for the esplanade. Here Brereton's covering force met 
them in good order; and thence they regained the fort; but in such a state 
of panic were many of the common men, that they scrambled over the glacis 
into the works. Daily's regiment, with Bussy at their head, gained the east 
entrance to the esplanade in time, but not in condition, to attack the re¬ 
treating party; nor were they the more inclined to do so from the fact, that 
the fort guns commanded that open space. I said, Draper notified a retreat. 
No drummer appeared to sound one. Hence the grenadiers, sequestered in 
their enclosure, were unaware of it in time; and were compelled to surrender, 
as ignominiously as by the same number of men, (eighty) 6000 Beloochees 
were “ cribbed, cabined, and confined/' and parallyzed by Napier in the 
battle of Meeanee. 
Many more English were killed in the houses, where their antagonists 
lay, killed also, beside them. Some 200 Europeans were slain or taken on 
each side. The loss of the grenadiers, a the prime men of the garrison," 
was poorly compensated by the death of Saubinet, and the capture of 
D'Estaign, the only officer whom Dally seems to have cordially liked and 
trusted. 
The area comprised within the original fortifications of St George had 
been only fifteen acres. But latterly, and in anticipation of the present crisis, 
this space had been doubled, by an outer and more elaborate circuit of 
ramparts and bastions, on all sides except towards the sea; where a brick 
wall, four feet thick, with a battery of thirteen guns before the sea-gate 
in the middle of this wall, and a trench all along it, were the sole defences. 
Trom the proximity of the fort to the sea, no guns could reach the east side 
from the land; while the surf formed generally a tolerable security against a 
landing from the sea. The great danger, it will be seen as we proceed, was 
lest a force should come along shore, and attack the sea-gate. To guard 
against this, a fascine battery was erected close to the north-east angle of 
the old fort; and at each end of the new one a strong stockade, with a 
