The victory was a complete and decisive one. A thousand of the best troops of Murari Reo had fallen, besides some hundreds of their irregular allies, whose loss was incurred almost wholly at the gorge in the retreat. The rajah was in the highest state of delight at the splendid result, obtained by the European training of his troops; and these, proud of their victory over such formidable opponents, were full of enthusiasm for their young English leader. The rejoicings in Ambur that night were great, and all felt confident that the danger was at an end.  
"What think you," the rajah said to Charlie, as, the long feast at an end, they sat together in the divan, smoking their narghileys, "will be the result, when the news of the defeat of Murari Reo reaches Hyderabad?"
 
"It is difficult to say," Charlie replied. "It is possible, of course, that it may be considered that it is better to leave you in peace; but, upon the other hand, it may be that they will consider that you are so formidable a power, that it is absolutely necessary to crush you at once, rather than to give you the chance of joining against them, in the war which must sooner or later take place between them and the English. In that case, it will be a very different affair from that which we have had today.
 
"Still, I should send off a messenger tomorrow, to acquaint the nizam with the defeat you inflicted upon the Mahrattas who have invaded you, to assure him again of your loyalty, and to beg him to lay his authority upon Murari Reo, not to renew the attack."
 
Ten days later a messenger arrived from the nizam, ordering the rajah to repair, at once, to Hyderabad, to explain his conduct. The latter sent back a message of humble excuses, saying that his health was so injured, by the excitement of recent events, that he was unable to travel; but that, when he recovered, he would journey to Hyderabad to lay his respects at the feet of the nizam.
 
Two or three days later a messenger arrived from Mr. Saunders, with a letter to Charlie. In this he expressed his great satisfaction at the defeat Murari Reo had received; a defeat which would, for some time, keep him quiet, and so relieve the strain upon the English. Affairs had, he said, since the departure of Clive for England, been going badly. Dupleix had received large reinforcements, and the English had suffered several reverses. Mr. Saunders begged him to assure the rajah of the respect and friendship of England, and to give him the promise that, if he should be driven from his capital, he would be received with all honor at Madras, and should be reinstated in his dominions, with much added territory, when the English were again in a position to take the field in force, and to settle their long feud with the French.
 
Ten days later, they heard that the army of the nizam, of fifteen thousand troops, with eight hundred French under Bussy, were marching against them; and that the horsemen of Murari Reo were devastating the villages near the frontier. A council of war was held. Charlie would fain have fought in the open again, believing that his trained troops, flushed with their recent victory, would be a match even for the army of the nizam. But the rajah and the rest of the council, alarmed at the presence of the French troops, who had hitherto proved invincible against vastly superior forces of natives, shrank from such a course; and it was decided that they should content themselves with the defence of the town and castle.
 
Orders were accordingly issued that the old men, the women, and children should at once leave the town; and, under guard of one battalion of troops, take refuge in an almost impregnable hill fort some miles away. One battalion was placed in garrison in the castle. The other three, with the irregulars, took post in the town, whence they could, if necessary, retreat into the castle.
 
The day following the removal of the noncombatants the enemy appeared, coming down the valley, having marched over the hills; while the Mahratta cavalry again poured up from below.
 
Charlie had taken the command of the town, as it was against this that the efforts of the enemy would be first directed. It was an imposing sight, as the army of the nizam wound down the valley; the great masses of men with their gay flags, the elephants with the gold embroidery of their trappings glistening in the sun, the bands of horsemen careering here and there, the lines of artillery drawn by bullocks; and, less picturesque but far more menacing, the dark body of French infantry, who formed the nucleus and heart of the whole. The camp was pitched just out of range of the guns of the fort, and soon line after line of tents, gay with the flags that floated above them, rose across the valley.
 
Charlie had mounted to the castle, the better to observe the movements of the enemy, and he presently saw a small body of horsemen ride out of the camp, and mount the hillside across the valley. A glass showed that some of these were native officers, while others were in the dark uniform of the French.
 
"I have no doubt," Charlie said to the rajah, "that is the nizam himself, with Bussy, gone up to reconnoitre the position. I wonder how he likes the look of it. I wish we could have turfed the battery above, and the newly stripped land. We might, in that case, have given them a pleasant surprise. As it is, they are hardly likely to begin by an attack along the slopes in the rear of the town, and you will see that they will commence the attack at the farther face of the town. The battery above cannot aid us in our defence there; and although the castle may help, it will only be by a direct fire. If they try to carry the place by a coup de main, I think we can beat them off, but they must succeed by regular approaches.
 
"We must inflict as much loss as we can, and then fall back. However, it will be sometime before that comes."
 
The next morning, Charlie found that the enemy had, during the night, erected three batteries on the slopes facing the north wall of the town, that farthest removed from the castle. They at once opened fire, and the guns on the walls facing them replied, while those on the castle hurled their shot over the town into the enemy's battery. For three days, the artillery fire was kept up without intermission. The guns on the wall were too weak to silence the batteries of the besiegers, although these were much annoyed by the fire from the fort, which dismounted four of their guns, and blew up one of their magazines. Several times the town was set on fire by the shell from the French mortars; but Charlie had organized the irregulars into bands with buckets, and these succeeded in extinguishing the flames before they spread.
 
Seeing that the mud wall of the town was crumbling rapidly before the besiegers' fire, Charlie set his troops to work, and levelled every house within fifty yards of it, and with the stones and beams formed barricades across the end of the streets beyond. Many of the guns from other portions of the walls were removed, and placed on these barricades. The ends of the houses were loopholed, and all was prepared for a desperate defence.
 
Charlie's experience at Arcot stood him in good stead, and he imitated the measures taken by Clive at that place. When these defences were completed, he raised a second line of barricades some distance further back; and here, when the assault was expected, he placed one of his battalions, with orders that, if the inner line of entrenchments was carried, they should allow all the defenders of that post to pass through, and then resist until the town was completely evacuated, when they were to fall back upon the fort. He had, however, little fear that his position would be taken at the first assault.
 
Upon the evening of the third day, the besiegers' fire had done its work, and a gap in the wall some eighty yards wide was formed. The garrison were ordered to hold themselves in readiness, and a strict watch was set.
 
Towards morning, a distant hum in the nizam's camp proclaimed that the troops were mustering for the assault. The besiegers' guns had continued their fire all night, to prevent working parties from placing obstacles in the breach. As the first shades of daylight appeared the fire ceased, and a great column of men poured forward to the assault.
 
The few remaining guns upon the end wall opened upon them, as did the infantry who lined the parapet, while the guns in the castle at once joined in. The mighty column, however, composed of the troops of the nizam, pressed forward, poured over the fragments of the wall, and entered the clear space behind it.
 
Then, from housetop and loophole, and from the walls on either side, a concentrated fire of musketry was poured upon them, while twelve guns, four on each barricade, swept them with grape. The head of the column withered away under the fire, long lines were swept through the crowded mass; and, after a minute or two's wild firing at their concealed foes, the troops of the nizam, appalled and shattered by the tremendous fire, broke and fled.
 
The instant they had cleared the breach, the guns of the besiegers again opened furiously upon it, to check any sortie which the besieged might attempt.
 
An hour later, the besiegers hoisted a white flag, and requested to be allowed to bury their dead, and remove their wounded. This Charlie agreed to, with the proviso that these should be carried by his own men beyond the breach, as he did not wish that the enemy should have an opportunity of examining the internal defences. The task occupied some time, as more than five hundred dead and dying lay scattered in the open space.
 
During the rest of the day, the enemy showed no signs of resuming the assault. During the night they could be heard hard at work, and although a brisk fire was kept up to hinder them, Charlie found that they had pushed trenches, from the batteries, a considerable distance round each corner of the town.
 
For four days the besiegers worked vigorously, harassed as they were by the guns of the fort, and by those of the battery high up on the hillside, which were now able to take in flank the works across the upper angle of the town. At the end of that time, they had erected and armed two batteries, which at daylight opened upon the walls which formed the flanks of the clear space behind the breach. Although suffering heavily from the fire of the besieged, and losing many men, these batteries kept up their fire unceasingly, night and day, until great gaps had been made in the walls, and Charlie was obliged to withdraw his troops from them, behind the line of barricades.
 
During this time the fire of the batteries in front had been unceasing, and had destroyed most of the houses which formed the connecting line between the barricades. Each night, however, the besieged worked to repair damages, and to fill up the gaps thus formed with piles of stones and beams, so that, by the end of the fourth day after the repulse of the first assault, a line of barricades stretched across the line of defence.
 
The enemy, this time, prepared to attack by daylight, and early in the morning the whole army of the nizam marched to the assault. Heedless of the fire of the castle, they formed up in a long line of heavy masses, along the slope. One huge column moved forward against the main breach, two advanced obliquely towards the great gaps in the walls on either side. The latter columns were each headed by bodies of French troops.
 
In vain the guns of the fort, aided by those of the battery on the hill, swept them. T............