CHAPTER VI. THE ADMINISTRATION OF LORD AMHERST—THE BURMESE WAR, 1823 TO 1825. Mr. Adam acts as governorgeneral. Disturbed relations LORD HASTINGS was succeeded by Mr. Adam, the senior member of Council, who had uniformly opposed all his liberal measures, and who had assisted in, if not brought about, the ruin of Messrs. William Palmer & Co. Mr. Canning had been nominated to succeed the governor-general; but he preferred to remain in the English ministry, and of the two other Lord Amherst candidates, Lord William Bentinck, and Lord Amherst appointed. who had recently conducted an embassy to China, the choice fell upon Lord Amherst; but it was seven months before he arrived in India. During this period, the narrow, despotic mind of Mr. Adam found congenial employment in ruining Mr. Silk Buckingham, the editor of one of the Calcutta newspapers, by deporting him from India, and prohibiting the issue of his paper. This was the only event of moment by which the interregnum was rendered memorable, and by which it attained an unenviable notoriety. Mr. Adam died at sea, on his passage home, and thus escaped the retaliation of Mr. Buckingham before the English people, and Mr. Buckingham was subsequently silenced by an annuity. Lord Amherst reached Calcutta on August 1, 1823, and found the relations of the Government of India with the Burmese in an unsatisfactory and menacing position. During the administration of Lord Hastings, the Burmese, in 1818, had arrogantly demanded the cession of the whole of Eastern Bengal, and threatened to take it, if not given up. The governor-general, affecting to believe the letter a forgery, sent it back without comment; but it was not the less an authentic document. It proceeded out of the success which had attended the Burmese extension of their dominions, which, in 1822, had included Assam by conquest, and thus brought them, without any intervening power, to the frontiers of the British. Over the province of Assam the authority of the English had not been extended; and up to the date of its conquest, from a very early period, it had not only preserved its entire independence, but maintained its position against every attempt to subdue it by the Imperial viceroys of Bengal. Desirous as the Burmese were for war with occupy the English, affairs were brought to a crisis by a claim The Burmese Shahpooree. made by the Burmese governor of Assam to the island with Burmah. of Shahpooree, at the mouth of the Naaf river; and without attending to the governor-general's desire that the right to it should be decided by a mutual commission, forcibly occupied it by troops, which drove out the British detachment in charge, The island with some loss. The island was soon recovered, and a recovered. remonstrance addressed to the King of Ava; but this only produced a fresh ebullition of arrogance, and Máha Bundoola, the great Burmese general, was dispatched with an army, and a pair of golden fetters, to conquer Bengal, and send the governor-general, bound, to the 'golden feet' of the king. Difficulty of Remonstrance being useless, Lord Amherst, finding the Burmese general was preparing to invade Bengal on two points, Lord Amherst issued a declaration of war on February 24, 1824. In declares war. regard to funds for the war, the situation of Government was one of unexampled prosperity. There was a surplus of two millions sterling a year, and ten millions sterling were in reserve in the public treasuries; and there was no apprehension felt as to the conduct of the native troops in a foreign country, who, at Java, the Mauritius, and in Egypt, had already proved their devotion. The greatest difficulty was in selecting a attacking point for invasion. The eastern part of Bengal was a succession of forests, morasses, and deep unfordable streams; the climate was known to be most unhealthly, if not deadly, and the difficulty of transporting an army by land, with all its stores, was evidently insuperable. On the other hand, Captain Captain Canning, who had been employed as envoy to the Bur- Canning's mese court, suggested an attack by sea on Rangoon, to be followed by an advance up the river Irrawaddy; and this plan was ultimately carried out. Burmah. project. The Burmese had, in the meantime, been prompt in action. They nad sent 20,000 men, under Bundoola, to the frontier of Burmese Bengal, where they drove in and destroyed a light proceedings. detachment, under Captain Norton, on May 17; but their progress was checked by the advance of a regular force from Bengal. Meanwhile the army of invasion, consisting of 12,000 men, chiefly from Madras, had assembled at the Andaman Islands Rangoon under the command of Sir Archibald Campbell; and captured. on May 11 the town of Rangoon, at the mouth of the Irrawaddy, was occupied, almost without resistance. Advance, however, proved impossible; the heavy continuous rain prevented movement for six months, and the army had to lie inactive, suffering from short supplies of bad unwholesome rations, and the climate. Some employment was found in minor operations on the Tenasserim coast, when its capital, Martaban, was taken possession Martaban of; and also in the capture of stockades near Rangoon, captured. many of which were extremely strong, but in most instances ill defended. His defeat. On December 1, Bundoola, abandoning his attack on Bengal, arrived near Rangoon with an army of 60,000 men, and the campaign opened in earnest. He commenced his operations by stockading the whole of his front, which was effected with great skill and rapidity. On the 6th these stockades were attacked by a combined force of infantry and gunboats, and partly destroyed; but Bundoola retaliated on the 7th by an assault on the English position at the great pagoda, which was repulsed with heavy loss to his forces, and followed up by four columns, which broke through the Burmese stockades and breastworks, and drove their whole army from the field. On the 15th the capture of the strong stockaded position of Kokein followed, and Bundoola retreated to Donabew with his whole army. On the side of Arracan, two expeditions proved failures, not from opposition by the enemy, for none was experienced, and Colonel Richards, with an insignificant force, had occupied the capital of Assam; but the impossibility of conveying troops through forests and morasses had forced Colonel Shuldham and his army of 7,000 men to return, and General Morrison, who marched from Chittagong with 10,000 men, lost most of them by the pestilential fever of Arracan, and the survivors were recalled. These movements gave rise to a deplorable episode of the war, in the disaffection of three Sepoy regiments, the 26th, 47th, and 62nd, which were under orders for Assam, and the actual mutiny of the 47th. The Burmese war had become a terror to men who had fought through the campaigns in Central India. The climate of the country, the magical arts of the Burmese, and their supposed invincibility, had possessed the minds of the Sepoys with a weird dread; and there was some discontent also about carriage. On November 1, the 47th was ordered to parade in marching order, for inspection. Some of the men obeyed, but the rest refused to attend the parade. On the 2nd the order was repeated, and two of H.M.'s regiments, with a detachment of artillery, were sent to the station-Barrackpoor-to enforce its execution. The three native regiments were paraded, and a solemn warning was conveyed to the 47th, after which their native officers left them. They were ordered to ground their arms, but they received the word with defiant shouts, on which the artillery present opened fire. The Sepoys broke, and fled, and eleven men were killed. The mutiny of the 47th was thus summarily repressed; the 26th and 62nd were not noticed, but the number of the 47th was struck out of the list of the army. Bundoola attacks Rangoon, Difficulties in Assam. Mutiny of three Sepoy regiments. Irrawaddy. Assault on repulsed. After the failures in Bengal, there remained only the route by the Irrawaddy; and in February, Sir Archibald Camp- Advance by bell was prepared to advance, in three columns, of the river which the central, by land, was under his own command; the second in boats under Brigadier Cotton, and the third, under Colonel Sale, having been first sent to take Bassein, which was easily effected, returned to Rangoon. Brigadier Cotton, whose force only amounted to 600 men, attacked the famous stockaded position of Donabew on March 7; but it was defended by 12,000 of the flower of the Burmese army, under the renowned Bundoola in person, and the assault Donabew was repulsed. On hearing of this event, Sir Archibald Campbell, whose force was considerably in advance, returned; and during a bombardment of the position on April 3, Bundoola was killed by a shell, whereupon the whole Burmese Bundoola army retreated, leaving all their guns and stores, and the killed. position was occupied without resistance. No further The Burmese opposition was experienced, and on the 25th Prome, the capital of Lower Burmah, was occupied by the army, which took up quarters for the monsoon. Hence Sir Archibald Campbell gave it to be understood that he was empowered Proposals to negotiate for peace; and the Burmese, who had for peace. again assembled an army of 50,000 men, sent envoys to him for the purpose of negotiation. The terms proposed by the governorgeneral were, however, rejected by the king, and at the close of the rains the war was resumed. retreat. At this time Sir A. Campbell had not more than 5,000 men with him; but they were in high health, and the real value of the Burmese in war had been already tested. The first expedition against the enemy, an attack on the position of Wati- The war gaon, on November 15, was repulsed with a loss of 200 proceeds. men, and Brigadier MacDougall, who was in command. The enemy, as they had done at Rangoon, now gradually drew round Prome; and on December 1, Sir A. Campbell attacked Sir A. their stockades on the Nawain river, and carried them Campbell's in succession; and on January 19, the position of Mallown was similarly assaulted and captured, with a great number of guns, and much matériel of war. successes. The king peace. The king, now really alarmed, dispatched Dr. Price, an American missionary, from Ava, to ascertain terms of peace; but before an answer could be obtained, the sues for Burmese commander, Muring Phuring, had marched direct upon Prome, with 16,000 men-all that remained to him. Sir Archibald Campbell had only 1,300 men available, but he attacked the Burmese at once, on February 9, 1825, and drove defeated. The king's Sir A. Campbell. them ignominiously from the field. The defeated general carThe Burmese ried the news of his own loss to Ava, and begged for a new army; but he was beheaded the same evening, and the king set himself in earnest to obtain peace, sending Dr. Price and Mr. Jordan, American missionaries, with his deputation to own ministers, and a portion of the money before demanded, to Sir Archibald Campbell, who by this time had advanced to Yandaboo, within sixty miles of the capital. The terms of a treaty were soon arranged, and it was finally executed on February 24. By it the Burmese king ceded Tenasserim, Arracan, and Assam: and agreed to pay a million sterling, on account of the expenses of the war, of which twenty-five lacs-250,000l.—were forthwith delivered. An envoy from the governor-general was also to reside at Ava for the future. There was no doubt that this war had been mismanaged; but neither the country nor the climate, nor indeed the enemy, had been understood. The Burmese power and resources had been vastly overrated; and had the expedition been deferred to a proper season, when, as it did at last, it could have advanced at once by land, it would no doubt have carried all before it, and concluded a peace in one season. The war cost nearly 13,000,000l. sterling; but the provinces obtained have proved cheap at this cost, and are still improving. Assam produces tea equal to that of China, and the cultivation is fast increasing. Arracan is the most fertile rice district in India, and the Tenasserim coast boasts of the city and port of Moulmein, erst a small village, now an entrepôt for Eastern commerce, with a trade of nearly 1,000,000l. a year. The Court of Directors, who had hitherto been accustomed to value the issue of a war only by what it would yield, were astonished by the expenditure which had swept away all Lord Hastings's accumulations, and there was a loud cry for Lord Amherst's recal; but he was nevertheless suffered to remain. Treaty of Effects of the war. CHAPTER VII. THE ADMINISTRATION OF LORD AMHERST (concluded), opinion on the Burmese war. THE result of the English invasion of Burmah was watched with Native intense and extraordinary anxiety by all classes of the credulous and superstitious people of India; and to the strange magical acts of the Burmese, and their invinci |