'History of the Indian Navy. (1613-1863).' [‎357] (376/622)

HISTORY OF THE INDIAN NAVY.
357
plains, entered the entrenched camp of the enemy, who fled,
taking with them five guns, while they left behind sixteen guns
and one mortar, and the whole of their stores and ammunition ;
that so few guns were found in battery was due to the enemy
throwing them into the river and creek. The scene at the
forts was revolting in the extreme; dead and wounded horses,
guns, carriages, powder-cases, all being mingled in hideous
confusion, while dead and dying soldiers lay about the guns in
groups, bedabbled with blood, and rent and^ torn by the grape-
shot and shell. At the termination of the action. Sir James
Outran), with his staff, and Captains Rennie and Kemball, re
paired on board the 4 Assaye,' where prayers were offered up to
Almighty God in acknowledgment of the victory, by the Rev.
G. P^Badger, of the General's staff.
The Persian Army, thus beaten and dispersed with a loss,
according to their own confession, of three hundred killed,
including their most gallant leader, Agha Jhan Khan, General
of Division, amounted, says Sir James Outram, "to thirteen
thousand men of all arms, with thirty guns," and their defeat
was achieved by four steam-frigates, one steam-sloop, and two
sloops -of-war, the troops embarked in the transports numbering
four thousand eight hundred and eighty-six men, though, as
General Havelock says in one of his letters, " the gentle
men in blue had it all to themselves, and left us naught
to do."
The British loss was only ten killed and thirty wounded, of
whom only one. Lieutenant Harries, of the ' Semiramis,' was
an officer. That the casualties were so few, was owing to two
circumstances; one, a " happy thought" of Commander Ren-
nie's, that of placing round the bulwarks of the several vessels
trusses of pressed hay, in which the musket-balls of the Persian
matchlockmen lodged without injury to anyone; thus three
hundred bullets were found buried in the sides of the 'Ferooz,'
and vast numbers were shaken out of the hay-trusses; the second
was due to the fact that the elevation of the enemy's guns was
altered, and their arrangements unsettled at the last moment,
by the bold step of closing on the batteries, by which the loss
of the ships, engaging under a point-blank fire, at a range
varying between 60 and 300 yards, was greatly reduced.
The north battery mounted eighteen guns, and the south
fort, on the opposite bank of the Karoon, also commanding the
river, had eleven, while a small fort, between the north battery
and the town of Mohamra, mounted eight or ten guns ; the
entrenchment connecting this work with the north fort, was
crowded with men, who kept up a heavy fire throughout
the action, and the havoc wrought in their ranks by the 8-inch
shell, was plainly apparent in the broken arms and appoint
ments and the patches of blood in all directions. Besides the