houses, which command it, a square of about 600 feet,[21]
built of brick, flanked with four bastions, with six guns
each, without ramparts or glacis. The southern curtain,
about 4 feet thick, not raised to its full height, was
provided only with a battery of 3 guns; there was a similar
battery to the west, but the rest of the west curtain was
only a wall of mud and brick, about a foot and a half thick,
and 8 or 10 feet high; there were warehouses ranged
against the east curtain which faced the Ganges, and which
was still in process of construction; the whole of this side
had no ditch, and that round the other sides was dry, only 4
feet in depth, and a mere ravine. The walls of the Fort up
to the ramparts were 15 feet high, and the houses, on the
edge of the counterscarp, which commanded it, were as much
as 30 feet."

Perhaps the Fort was best defended on the west, where the Company's
Tank[22] was situated. Its bank was only about twelve feet from the
Fort Ditch. This use of tanks for defensive purposes was an
excellent one, as they also provided the garrison with a good supply
of drinking water. A little later Clive protected his great barracks
at Berhampur with a line of large tanks along the landward side.
However, this tank protected one side only, and the task of holding
such a fort with an inadequate garrison was not a hopeful one even
for a Frenchman. It was only his weakness which had made Renault
submit to pay the contribution demanded by the Nawab on his
triumphant return from Calcutta in July of the previous year, and he
and his comrades felt very bitterly the neglect of the Company in
not sending money and reinforcements. One of his younger
subordinates wrote to a friend in Pondicherry:[23]--