386

DECLARATION OF WAR.

[CHAP. and to send the Governor-General to Ava, bound in the golden fetters which he took with him. To the official letter no direct reply was vouchsafed from Ava, but the Governor of Pegu was directed to signify the "pleasure of the king of the white elephant, the lord of the seas and of the land, that no further communication should be sent to the golden feet, but that the Governor-General should state his case in a petition to Muha Bundoola, who was proceeding to Aracan with an army to settle every question." Lord Amherst, finding that every effort to maintain peace only rendered war more imminent, and that the Burmese were preparing to invade Bengal simultaneously on the north-east and the south-east, issued a declaration of war on the 24th February, 1824; and thus began the first Burmese war. At a subsequent period, when the Court of Directors became impatient under the boundless cost and dilatory prosecution of the war, they condemned the origin of it, as a dispute about a contemptible and uninhabited island, a mere sand-bank; and Lord Amherst deemed it necessary to draw up an elaborate defence of his proceedings; but the labour was altogether redundant. The war was universally acknowledged in India by the most experienced statesmen to be "not only just and necessary, but absolutely and positively unavoidable." "The clearest case," said Sir Charles Metcalfe, "of self-defence and violated territory." If it had been conducted with the energy and promptitude of the Mahratta war in the days of Lord Wellesley, or the more recent Mahratta and Pindaree war, both of which were brought to a successful issue, before the news of the first shot reached Leadenhall-street, there would have been little discussion as to its origin.

Arrangements of the campaign, 1824.

The Burmese were the most despicable enemy the British arms had ever encountered in the east. Their army was a miserable half-armed rabble, without discipline or courage. They had few muskets, and their swords and pikes were of a very inferior description. Their chief defence lay in the admirable skill and rapidity

XXIX.]

ARRANGEMENTS OF THE CAMPAIGN.

387

with which they constructed stockades, and which our commanders, with rare exceptions, committed the folly of endeavouring to carry by storm, instead of expelling the enemy by shells and rockets. A hoe and a spade was a more essential part of the equipment of a Burmese soldier than a musket or a sword. Each man as he advanced dug a hole in the ground deep enough to afford him shelter, from which he fired in security until he was unearthed by the impetuosity of the British troops. This information was acquired during the course of the war, but at the commencement of it the Government in Calcutta was profoundly ignorant of the national mode of warfare, of the military force and resources, the population and the geography of the country, or of the approaches to it from our own provinces. The Commander-in-chief, Sir Edward Paget, then in the north-west, asserted that any attempt to enter Burmah either through Cachar or Aracan, would end in disaster, inasmuch as the troops, instead of finding armies, fortresses, and cities, would meet with nothing but jungle, pestilence, and famine. The plan of the campaign was drawn up by Captain John Canning, who had traversed the country and visited the capital; and it was unhappily on his knowledge that the Government placed its sole dependence. He represented that the occupation of Rangoon, the great port of the Irawaddy, would paralyze the Burmese Government, and that the means of constructing a flotilla for navigating the river, as well as provisions and draught cattle, might be procured in and around that town in abundance. Though the river, like the Ganges, was an impetuous torrent during the rains, the south-west monsoon which prevailed at that season of the year, would, he affirmed, enable the expedition to stem the current and sail up to the capital. It was resolved, therefore, to land the expedition at Rangoon as the rains commenced. The plan was visionary and preposterous, as the military authorities in Calcutta, with their knowledge of the rivers of India, ought to have foreseen; and the adoption of it was the first and most fatal error of the campaign.

388

DISASTER AT RAMOO.

[CHAP. The expedition was collected in the spacious harbour of Port Cornwallis, in the largest of the Andaman islands, lying in the Bay of Bengal, about three hundred miles south of Rangoon. It consisted of about 11,000 European and native troops, the latter drawn exclusively from the Madras Presidency, and it was placed under the command of Sir Archibald Campbell, who had served with distinction under the Duke in Spain. The fleet of transports was convoyed by three vessels of war, and by the "Diana,” a little steamer recently built in Calcutta, and the first which ever floated in the waters of the east. The appearance of this vessel confounded the minds of the Burmese, among whom there was an ancient prediction current, that the kingdom would be invincible till a vessel moved up the Irawaddy without sails or oars.

Disaster at

1824,

While the expedition was in course of equipRamoo, May 17, ment, Bundoola entered Aracan for the invasion of Bengal with an army variously estimated at ten and twenty thousand men. The defence of the frontier had been left to a small and inadequate force stationed at Chittagong; and a weak detachment of about three hundred native infantry, with several hundred of the local levies and two guns, had been imprudently pushed forward under Captain Noton to hold a post on our extreme boundary, a hundred miles from the nearest support. The approach of Bundoola was well known in Calcutta, and the public authorities were repeatedly urged to reinforce the small body of troops which was to sustain the first shock of the Burmese, but the request was treated with indifference. The consequence was deplorable. The Burmese force advanced on the 17th May to Captain Noton's pickets, and the untrained men of the local corps fled. The little band of sepoys was completely surrounded, but they maintained the struggle gallantly for three days with little food or rest, and were then constrained to retreat, when they fell into irretrievable confusion. Captain Noton and five officers were killed, and three wounded. The detachment was annihilated, and the eastern districts of

XXIX.]

CAPTURE OF RANGOON.

389

Bengal were seized with a panic, which extended even to Calcutta. But a large force was sent in haste to the frontier, which effectually checked the advance of the enemy, and Bundoola was soon after recalled to oppose the British force at Rangoon.

Arrival of the expedition at

The expedition arrived off that town on the 11th May, to the inexpressible surprise of the Rangoon, 1824. Burmese, who had never dreamt that the English, whom they were about to expel from Bengal, would venture to attack them in their own territory. No preparations had been made to repel them, and the only defence of the town consisted in a quadrangular teak stockade, about twelve feet high, with a battery of indifferent guns, which were silenced by the first broadside from the "Liffey." Happily, the discharge was so opportune as also to rescue from destruction the Europeans resident in Rangoon, eleven in number, who had been seized and condemned to death on the approach of the fleet. Their arms had been bound behind as they were made to squat on the ground, and the executioner stood before them sharpening his weapon, when the shot from the frigate flew about the building, which the Burmese officers abandoned in great trepidation, and thus afforded the prisoners the means of escape. The troops landed without any opposition, but they found the town deserted. It appeared that the governor, seeing all resistance hopeless, had ordered the whole population, men, women, and children, to quit it, and retire to the jungles with all their provisions and flocks and herds. The mandate was implicitly obeyed, partly from a dread of the strangers, but more especially from the terror which the ferocity of their own Government inspired in all breasts. By this unexpected stroke of policy the whole plan of the campaign was defeated. Every hope of obtaining the means of advancing to the capital by water or by land was extinguished, and Sir Archibald was obliged to confine his efforts to the shelter of his troops during the six months of inaction to which they were doomed. One entire regiment was quar

390

SICKNESS AND MORTALITY OF THE TROOPS.

[CHAP. tered in the Dagon Pagoda, the pride of Rangoon, a magnificent edifice, which is justly admired for the lightness of its contour, the happy combination of its parts, and the vastness of its dimensions, and which serves to give us a very high opinion of the splendid Bouddist architecture with which India was once filled. The object of the Burmese commander was to isolate the British encampment and intercept all supplies, in which he completely succeeded, as well as to destroy the fleet with the fire rafts which the Burmese constructed with singular skill, but which was prevented by the vigilance of the British officers.

Sickness and mortality of the troops, 1824.

Within a week after the occupation of Rangoon, the rains set in with great violence; the country around became a swamp, and the miasma, combined with the sultry heat, brought fever and dysentery and death into the camp. The condition of this noble army was rendered the more deplorable by the want of wholesome food. There was no lack of cattle in the neighbourhood which would have amply supplied all its necessities, but the Government in Calcutta, by a stretch of folly unknown in India, had forbidden the commander to touch them lest he should wound the prejudices of the natives, and the European soldiers were allowed to perish that the cows might live. The troops were thus left to depend on the supplies brought from Calcutta, which was proverbial for the dishonesty of its cured provisions; the meat was found to be putrescent, and the maggoty biscuits crumbled under the touch. Owing to the culpable neglect of the public authorities in Calcutta, and more especially of the commissariat, the army at Rangoon was left for five months in this state of destitution after its exigences had been completely revealed. It was only through the prompt and indefatigable exertions of Sir Thomas Munro, the governor of Madras, in forwarding supplies that the army was not altogether annihilated. The unhealthiness of the season, and the unwholesomeness of the food soon filled the hospitals, and of the whole force