[3] To show that I have not overstated the condition of the East India Company's armies during the rise of England's Eastern empire, it is sufficient to quote the description given by a great historian of the soldiers with whom Clive achieved the capture of Covelong and Chingleput: "The only force available for this purpose was of such a description that no one but Clive would risk his reputation by commanding it. It consisted of five hundred newly levied Sepoys, and two hundred recruits who had just landed from England, and who were the worst and lowest wretches that the Company's crimps could pick up in the 'flash-houses' of London."
A few days later startling news came to the garrison of Huttee-Ghur (Elephant's Home).
An armed escort on its way down the valley from the fort to the town of Kalipur, with some empty store-waggons (taking Bob Burton with them as a prisoner), had been attacked on the march, just as evening was closing in, by a large body of native soldiers, or of native robbers (which meant very much the same thing), who were not beaten off without a sharp fight, in which the English lost several men, including Bob Burton himself, as well as Sam Black and Tom Tuffen.
Nor was this all. Several of the native drivers were nowhere to be found after the fighting was done, and were believed to have gone over to the enemy in the confusion. Moreover, three or four of the soldiers stoutly declared that the leader of their assailants was the famous robber-chief Kala-Bagh (Black Tiger), the terror of the whole district, and further, that he was no other than the pretended juggler whose tricks had amused their barrack-square only a week before!
This would have been unwelcome news at any time; but it was doubly ominous just then.
The great war that had been threatening so long had fairly broken out at last. The Mahratta hosts were sweeping over the great central plain, the English troops advancing to meet them; and all Northern India was holding its breath, as it were, to see which would win. A single disaster to the British arms, and all the subject provinces would blaze at once into open insurrection; and the unheard-of boldness of these native banditti in daring to attack British soldiers in open daylight, plainly showed which of the two parties _they_ thought more likely to get the best of it.