The Burma Wars: 1824-1886 (Conflicts of Empire)

by George Bruce

  The actions were successful, but Kemmendine itself, where the Burmese troops were believed to be concentrated, still menaced the British. Around their lines at Rangoon the reinforced Burmese forces had been during the two weeks after the invasion gradually closing in and entrenching. From there or from the dense jungle that grew close to the outposts they launched continuous harassing attacks, firing upon picquets, cutting off stragglers, creating constant alarm by day and night, thus wearing down the British through sleeplessness and fatigue. Towards the end of May they had stockaded themselves in the jungle within musket-shot of the outposts there.

  Deliberately, Campbell allowed them to come near, so that he could attack them without the risk of a long march through the jungle. On 27 May he decided that the time was ripe for a little action and on the next day he personally led out a force of 250 British and the same number of Sepoys, with a howitzer and a 6-pounder field gun to punish the enemy and to find out their main situation and strength.

  Campbell, who refused to lower his head even when the enemy fire was at its worst, led the force out along the narrow path through the dense jungle in a deluge of rain which soaked the muskets’ priming so that they could not be fired. The men fixed bayonets, however, and charged the nearest stockade built across the pathway by which they advanced, with its flanks stretching into the jungle on each side. Fortunately, it was not yet finished; and the enemy merely fired off a few shots then retreated into the jungle.

  The column continued along the narrow, winding jungle pathway, here and there passing half-finished stockades, hastily abandoned, showing that a British sortie was wholly unexpected. After seven miles through swamp and jungle in the wet the artillerymen were too exhausted to manhandle the two guns any further. Campbell ordered the Sepoys to mount guard over them, pressed on with the 250 British troops and after another two miles stumbling and splashing through the dense yellow thickets, they emerged into the plain of Joazoang, a stretch of green paddy fields several inches under water. About a mile ahead stood two villages, behind which hung a cloud of smoke. Burmese troops were now seen forming up near the villages, commanded by officers on horseback, for the defence of the narrow passage between the jungle on the left and a creek on the right.

  Rain went on falling in torrents, but seeing action ahead the soldiers marched on in good spirits, splashing knee-deep through the green rice fields.

  Barely 100 paces from the villages they were met by a burst of musket fire from two cleverly camouflaged stockades, which their rain-soaked gunpowder prevented them from answering, so Campbell quickly gave the order for one company to hold the plain in reserve and the three others to make a bayonet charge. The troops stumbled ahead as rapidly as possible through the thick muddy water and in unison attacked the first stockade, which was barely eight feet high.

  Quickly, they scaled it and attacked the enemy with the bayonet. The conflict, the first of many such, was fierce and merciless. Driven from the ramparts the defenders soon became a mob, owing to their great numbers, which was restricted by two narrow exits. The volleys of musketry poured in on them made them desperate, until with spear or musket couched and their heads lowered to a butting position, they blindly charged upon the British bayonets, continuing to fight until long after hope of success or escape had gone.

  Campbell ordered his men out, leaving two or three hundred enemy dead or wounded in heaps on the ground, then forming the men as if on parade he ordered a charge upon the second stockade and after a longer, sharper struggle dislodged the enemy from this too. The enemy’s main force, seeing the British drawn up on the plain between the two stockades now began to charge Campbell’s reserve company, which they heavily outnumbered, until they were checked by the sight of the victorious troops emerging from the second stockade to attack their own flank. They then turned about and quickly disappeared into the jungle.

  Pursuit was impossible, too risky. Campbell waited an hour for them to re-appear, then having collected his killed and wounded, which were few, he formed up his men and marched them slowly back, having counted more than 400 enemy dead. His men hardly seemed a British army force on their return, so torn and muddy were their uniforms.

  Dress regulations were largely ignored in Burma. ‘On such occasions as the one referred to, officers and men frequently marched barefooted, with their pantaloons tucked up to their knees,’ Ensign Doveton noted.

  Many officers were reduced to the necessity of carrying their own knapsacks, when by death or otherwise they had been deprived of servants who could not now be replaced. When troops are on active service in the East, great licence is permitted in the way of costume; in fact, the Regulations could not very well be enforced where there are no army tailors to supply deficiencies.

  On such a barbarous and distant service as that in question, it may well be imagined we were soon a most motley group, and would have contrasted rather strangely with the Foot Guards at St James’s. My own corps ran riot very much in this particular, our colonel not being over strict as to dress. Many wore trowsers made of a coarse blue calico, used for lining tents (this was my favourite material); others wore white, and some tartan; in fact, every one suited his own taste, and all the colours of the rainbow were soon seen in the ranks, uniform being now, as applied to dress, quite a misnomer.

  There were times when Falstaff himself might have been ashamed of us. Amongst the officers there was great diversity of taste as to head-dress, some wearing the high oil-skin shako, others foraging caps of various shapes.

  Two facts were clear from this first encounter of importance in the Rangoon area. First, that British troops, with their disciplined volleys and charges, their habit of exposing themselves to enemy fire, were more than a match for the relatively untrained Burmese, even when heavily outnumbered. Second, that the Burmese stockade fortifications had exits at the rear too narrow for great bodies of troops to leave quickly, so that when driven from the ramparts the Burmese became huddled together in a mass around them, an easy target for attacking troops.

  It was clear too that Campbell was an opportunist general, over-inclined to take chances, for had either of the stockades been a little higher and had he failed to take them so easily, and then been attacked in the rear by the main Burmese force, his troops could well have been annihilated and he himself taken prisoner. As it was, the risk to his men’s health by a march of nearly twenty miles in the monsoon had been considerable. But the Commander-in-Chief, General Paget, and the Governor-General, the somewhat futile Lord Amherst, were more to blame in this respect, for having put Campbell in a position where owing to bad planning he had to take risks unnecessarily.

  As for Campbell himself, he had no illusions now as to the determination of his enemy, or of the reinforcements, skill and luck he would need to win a campaign, which had opened so badly for him.

  Every act of the enemy evinces a most marked determination [he complained in a wordy dispatch of 1 June 1824] of carrying hostility to the very last extremity; approaching our posts day and night, under cover of impervious and uncombustible jungle, constructing stockades and redoubts on every road and pathway, even within musket-shot of our sentries; and from their hidden fastnesses, carrying on a most barbarous and harassing warfare; firing upon our sentries at all hours of the day and night, and lurking on the outskirts of the jungle for the purpose of carrying off any unlucky wretch whom chance may throw in their way.

  At the same time, he never relaxed pressure upon the enemy. The day following the attack upon the two stockades, Brigadier-General Macbean with two regiments and some howitzers marched out to the same place to try to bring the Burmese force to battle, but all he found were the deserted stockades. The next day, Major Piper and the light company of the 38th dislodged the enemy from a stockade in the jungle near the Shwedagon Pagoda, while Colonel Godwin found the enemy had abandoned the fort of Siriam, on the far side of the Pegu river. The navy, meantime, in lightning raids up river had captured some sixty large barges which could b
e used for transporting troops.

  Campbell saw Kemmendine, the village two miles up river, as his next objective; while Captain Marryat, who had succeeded to the command of the naval force on the departure of Commodore Grant, who was sick, called for its capture because the enemy could use it as a depot from which to float dangerous fire rafts down river.

  Reconnaissance had shown that the Burmese had built one unusually big main stockade and several other elaborate ones there, and on 2 June Campbell was informed that they had already assembled in great force ready to attack the British lines. He therefore decided to attack first the next day.

  5: DISEASE THE WORST ENEMY

  Campbell made his plan of attack in haste and, as he later reported, there were ‘one or two mistakes’. Early on 3 June two columns of redcoats under Colonels Hodgson and Smith wound their way through the variegated greens of the jungle, with the object of attacking the great stockade at Kemmendine at noon; the third column under Major Frith placed itself across the enemy’s way of retreat.

  Campbell himself this time took the less strenuous river route on board the cruiser Mercury with three companies of the 41st Regiment, the cruiser Thetis and several row-boats. The force was equipped with everything needful — except scaling ladders and a planned firing programme by the navy. The scaling ladders Campbell cannot have forgotten; once again he had decided to take a risk.

  At 7 a.m. the cruisers anchored abreast of the river frontage of the big stockade and began firing on it, while the troops of the 41st landed and burnt the village and the encampment. Five hours later, at noon, the two land columns, 1,600 strong, joined forces near the main stockade and opened fire with two howitzers and a rocket mortar. The mortar exploded prematurely and blew an ammunition bearer to pieces, while the howitzers did little damage to the stockade’s solid teak beams.

  It was an unlucky start and heralded further misfortunes. When the flank companies of the 102nd Regiment advanced through thick jungle towards the stockade they were assailed by regular volleys of musket fire from behind and a shower of bullets whistling through the foliage. At first, believing that an enemy force had infiltrated, they turned about and fired back. The truth dawned that their comrades at the rear were firing upon them; officers ordered them to lie flat on the ground while runners were sent back to stop the shooting.

  They then advanced upon the stockade, teak beams fifteen feet high held by a strong enemy force. Having scaled the first fences and ditches with which it was fronted, they clambered upon each other’s shoulders under a hail of enemy fire in a brave attempt to take it by storm, but they were shot down by the score. Their officers finally called a retreat to save the loss of more lives.

  Shells from the flotilla on the river then began to fall among them. ‘Grape and round shot rattled about,’ noted Ensign Doveton, that enthusiastic young officer of the Madras Europeans.

  They swept through the underwood and cut away the huge branches of the trees overhead in a truly terrific manner… Several men fell, and this, as we soon found, from our own guns! For it seemed the water column had come up just as we were drawing off and, from some misconception or other, the shot that was intended for the foe was now scattering our ranks…

  The cries of the wounded, the shoutings of men who had lost their way, the furious gallop of horses, the bodies of the fallen scattered on all sides, the whistling of the musket and the rushing of the cannon balls, the stunning report of the artillery and the savage yell of triumph from the enemy, altogether formed a combination of sights and sounds that will not readily be forgotten…

  About 120 men and several officers were killed that morning through British and enemy action. Crestfallen, begrimed with mud, blood and gunpowder, the force returned to Rangoon just before sunset, having accomplished only the heartening of the enemy. Apparently, Campbell himself had ordered the naval cannonade which hit the British, for a report by Captain Ryves, commanding the Thetis, stated that ‘all orders to the cruisers and flotilla proceeded from him’.

  In the light of this and the absence of the vital scaling ladders too, Campbell’s report to General Paget, the Commander-in-Chief in India, makes strange reading. ‘In the course of the morning, the two columns coming down from the great Dagon Pagoda met close to the stockade… and an effort was made to enter it, which I have no doubt would have succeeded but for the occurrence of some mistakes; and as the attack was never persevered in, I do not much regret the results, as they will tend to lull our crafty foe into a security that may soon prove fatal to him…’

  But Campbell had learnt his lesson. Henceforth, Doveton noted, no troops marched against a stockade without plenty of scaling ladders, and careful co-ordination of naval gunfire, during these first combined operations in the East the army and navy had undertaken.

  Very sharp were the Burmese in exploiting their defeat of the British attack on Kemmendine. On 5 June two messengers from the enemy camp requested passports for two high-ranking officers to confer with General Campbell. The request was granted and during the afternoon gilded war-boats landed the two envoys, both dressed with colour and elegance in the Burmese court style. Major Snodgrass, Campbell’s Military Secretary, who was there, noted that they entered the house and sat down with all the ease and familiarity of old friends, without constraint or fear, paying compliments to Campbell and commenting on what they saw with freedom and good humour. ‘Why are you come here with ships and soldiers?’ demanded the elder of the two, dressed in a long scarlet robe with a red handkerchief tied round his head, and professing at the same time the friendly disposition of the Burmese government towards the British. The war’s causes were once again recited by the invaders, and it was urged that a free and frank discussion with King Bagyidaw’s representatives could alone avert the disaster with which their country was threatened.[31]

  Delay in the conduct of the war then became the envoys’ theme, requested so that they could confer with another official of higher rank some distance up river. They were told clearly that the time for this was past and that having landed an army the British intended to fight the war until the king sent envoys authorised to enact a treaty. The elder chief coolly went on chewing his betel-nut at this rejection of their proposals, while the younger man tried hard to hide his chagrin.

  Their visit had clearly been planned to gain time while bigger forces were assembled; yet they agreed to take back with them a declaration of the British terms for peace and, observed Snodgrass, ‘so that they might take their departure with a better grace, expressed their intention of repeating their visit in a few days for the purpose of opening a direct communication between the British general and the Burmese ministers.’[32] They were conducted politely to their boats, whose oarsmen wore conical Chinese hats and pulled off singing in chorus, ‘Oh, what a happy king have we!’

  To press home the point about fighting the war, as well as to put an end to Kemmendine as a depot from which fire-boats were launched at the British shipping, no time was lost in attacking it for the second time. Campbell’s losses, through sickness as well as battle, had by now been made good by the arrival of part of the 89th Regiment and two more battalions of Native Infantry from Madras.

  This time he planned a much heavier attack, though perhaps not in a very rational manner. ‘It was my intention not to lose a man if it could be avoided,’ he reported in a dispatch[33] to the C-in-C in India. ‘The country, season and roads rendered the undertaking extremely arduous but not beyond the inexhaustible spirit of such soldiers as I command.’

  Some 3,000 of them were destined for the assault, with plenty of scaling ladders, four 18-pounder guns, four mortars and some lighter field guns, accompanied on the river by two cruisers, six small gunboats and six row-boats. Long before dawn on 10 June, the clatter of arms and artillery and the tramp of troops on the march warned the defenders of Kemmendine and the intervening stockades of the British approach.

  Unfortunately, there were neither horses, oxen nor elephants to haul the
huge 18-pounders with which Campbell hoped to batter down the enemy stockades. His British troops, stronger and heavier than the Sepoys, were given the onerous task. Two or three regiments of infantry were harnessed to the guns and the best part of the day was spent in dragging the artillery to the point of attack through mud and mire along the villainous jungle pathways.

  The chief road between Rangoon and Kemmendine ran parallel to and within a short distance of the river, bordered on the right by a dense forest and on the left by open patches of green paddy fields varied by swamp overgrown with low shrubs and grey brushwood. After about two miles, at the top of a gently sloping hill, when the men hauling the guns were staggering with fatigue, they were greeted by a rattle of musket fire from a stockade almost entirely hidden, fourteen feet high and covered on both flanks by jungle. In front it was protected by abatis, fences and palisades driven diagonally into the ground. The Burmese garrison on the ramparts hailed the British approach with loud cheering.

  It was then 9 a.m., six exhausting hours after the start. Campbell ordered up two of the 18-pounders, which with ear-splitting detonations for half an hour hurled shots against the teak and bamboo rampart to make a big enough gap. Campbell then ordered men of the Madras Europeans and the 41st Regiment to charge, while parties of the 13th and 38th attacked in the rear by escalade.

  The Burmese within fought hard but could not face the disciplined volleys and bayonet work. In less than half an hour the stockade was carried, two officers and 30 men being killed or wounded, while 150 Burmese dead were counted. Many even small wounds in this climate proved mortal. Lieutenant Robertson, a broad and tall Highlander with bushy auburn whiskers, who often entertained his fellow officers with Scottish songs, received a musket ball in the thigh, breaking his thigh bone. The break was set, but he died soon of gangrene, the scourge of the field hospitals, against which amputation, which brought new perils, was the only hope.