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

by George Bruce

  Campbell was joined, according to plan, a few miles before Meaday on 18 December, by Cotton’s division, which brought with it more cholera. Next day, Campbell entered Meaday and perhaps for the first time realised how bitter and implacable was the determination of the Burmese chiefs to deny him everything the country had in abundance, from animals and food to friendly people and shelter. Dead and dying enemy soldiers covered the ground inside and outside the stockades, victims of wounds, disease and starvation: among them were villagers driven from their homes and smallholdings, and left to starve alone.

  Soldiers who had followed their chiefs’ example in flying from the advancing British, or those who had left their posts in search of food, perhaps, were found grimly crucified — tied hand and foot to a diagonal cross of bamboo, a splinter forced through their tongues to keep their mouths open and then left to the voracious attacks of ants, flies and the packs of dogs and vultures that growled and screamed in fights to glut themselves.

  In this nightmare atmosphere, with its appalling stench, the army spent the night, then at dawn next day marched on a few miles, but the Burmese dead had first to be removed from jungle clearings used as camping grounds, while patrols reported that for 50 miles ahead villages had been razed, people and cattle driven off, so that a once populous region had become a desert.

  On 20 December the supply of the essential beef for the British troops failed to arrive. Campbell therefore ordered them to rest where they were until the supply wagons came up and marched on himself with the vegetarian Sepoys of the Indian regiments. ‘Not a head of cattle, or indeed, a living thing, except the sick and dying stragglers from the Burmese army, was met with on the march,’ Snodgrass observed.

  We appeared to traverse a vast wilderness from which mankind had fled; and our little camp of two thousand men seemed but a speck in the desolate and dreary waste that surrounded it, calling forth at times, an irksome feeling which could be with difficulty repressed, at the situation of a handful of men in the heart of an extensive empire, pushing boldly forward to the capital, still 300 miles distant; in defiance of an enemy whose force still outnumbered ours in a tenfold ratio, and without a hope of further reinforcement from our distant ships and depots.

  On 27 December, when his column had doggedly marched forward another ten miles, envoys with a white flag of truce brought in letters telling of the arrival in Minhla nearby of negotiators sent by Bagyidaw with powers to conclude a peace treaty. But after two officers had held talks with them Campbell decided it was merely a ruse to gain time, so having been then joined by the flotilla, he broke off the talks and advanced to Patanago, facing Minhla, which lay on the river’s opposite, or western bank.

  The army had now marched 140 miles from Prome, and so effectually had the Burmese succeeded in laying waste the line of the advance that the British had not met one man or woman on their feet along the river’s normally thickly peopled banks; or been able to obtain one day’s meat from a country generally thick with cattle.

  Campbell would now have been asking himself with real anxiety if Bagyidaw intended to continue this policy beyond Ava, his capital, to the country’s most northerly boundaries. For if he were to do so British military victories would prove fruitless, the army’s supplies would eventually fail and his troops would face starvation. A grim and threatening prospect of defeat lay ahead.

  So he pressed on fast. Speedy reconnaissance of Minhla revealed a vast stockade about two miles long on the river front and half a mile in depth. A tall gilded pagoda rose up in the interior, later found to be a memorial to Bundula raised by the king. Burmese troops still worked on the defences, the muzzles of brass guns shone along the ramparts, while beneath them at anchor on the glassy brown water, lay a large fleet of war-canoes.

  Soon the flotilla arrived, and led by the steamboat Diana passed close by the enemy’s stockade — without a shot being fired against it. Then, surprisingly, two gilt war-canoes received the Diana with paddles raised in salute and escorted it to an anchorage a little higher up river, which commanded any likely Burmese retreat by water.

  Campbell took this courtesy as evidence of a Burmese wish to avoid more fighting. During the afternoon he agreed on a truce and arranged to start negotiating a treaty the next day. Peace, and the end of his anxieties, now seemed actually within grasp. It was a time for optimism. ‘I sincerely hope,’ he wrote on 31 December, ‘that this is the last military despatch I shall have to write upon the war in Ava.’

  The two sides met, next day, in a large vessel with shady awnings moored in mid-river between the two armies. The Kee Wunghi, prime minister; the Kolein Menghi, who was the king’s deputy, and a number of chiefs represented the Burmese. Campbell was accompanied by General Cotton, Commodore Brisbane, Snodgrass and other staff officers. ‘After the parties were seated in the boat,’ Snodgrass noted, ‘Kolein Menghi’s mouth continued for some time so full of pawn-leaves and betel-nut… as to prevent him from uttering a word distinctly, while the overflowing of the delicious juice ran in greenish-yellow streams down his chin, until checked and absorbed in the long tuft of hair which all Burmese chiefs wear as a mark of distinction.’

  The British terms had been given to the Burmese during the earlier treaty discussions at Prome. They included the cession of Arakan and Tenasserim provinces for ever, to the British Government; agreement by the King of Ava to renounce all right of interference with Assam, Cachar and Manipur, and to recognise the reinstatement of the former Rajah of Manipur if that chief desired it. Finally, the king was to pay to the British an indemnity of one crore of rupees, which amounted to the enormous sum of one million sterling.

  So the Burmese were to lose almost their entire sea coast, as well as to hand over a sum worth today about a hundred million sterling.

  These, and the treaty’s other demands and articles, urged the Burmese envoys into stubborn arguments, in which the Kolein Minghi, as the king’s deputy, played the leading part. At first his opposition to paying the indemnity was academic. ‘In war the expense is not all on one side,’ Snodgrass quotes him as arguing:

  We also have expended immense sums, leaving our treasury at the present moment drained and exhausted; it is evident, indeed, that our expenses must have greatly exceeded yours, as we have had to raise and appoint four or five new armies, one after another, and have had at all times since you came to the country, an immense multitude eating the public bread, and receiving the King’s money, a great part of whose revenue has been stopped; while you, by means of discipline, and good management, have never required a large force, nor had above a small body of men to pay and provide for.

  When told that every English soldier cost the Government nearly £200 before he reached his present situation and that every one of the many ships that came to Rangoon also cost an immense sum, he declared:

  I also have been a merchant, and engaged in extensive mercantile transactions, but none of my vessels ever cost anything like the sum you mention, but whether or not, it is cruel to exact a sum which we cannot pay; our forests contain fine trees, you may cut them down; we could, perhaps, with economy, in one year, give you a million baskets of rice; but we do not grow rupees, and have in no way the means of procuring such a sum as you require.

  King Bagyidaw’s deputy, an inflexible and tenacious negotiator, was still more eloquent over the issue of territory. ‘We are stingy of parting with Arakan, not for its value but because the honour of the nation is, in some measure, concerned in its retention,’ the industrious Snodgrass quotes him as saying:

  The people still look back with pride and exultation to its conquest, and they would regard its cession as robbing their forefathers, who achieved its subjugation, of their fame and glory. It has been for a long series of years in our possession; its native princes live in comfort and in honour at our capital, and its whole revenue scarcely suffices to discharge the expenses it incurs. Still, we would wish to keep the province, and would rather that you asked something in its room.

/>   With regard to Cassay, it is a barren desert, and of little use to us: our King sent troops into the country, at the request of the proper Rajah, who solicited protection, as a vassal, against a faction that was formed against him: our troops expelled the refractory chiefs from Munnipoore, and the Rajah now resides at Ava: he, and not Gumbheer Sing, is the legitimate Prince of Cassay; he prefers living at our court: but if you wish his country to be independent, he is the person who should be appointed king.[47]

  For three days the haggling went on, the Burmese envoys defending, no less than in war, the country’s territorial and monetary independence. Finally, they had no alternative but to accept the terms that were thrust upon them. Time to pay was the one concession they won. Campbell agreed that his army should at once retire to Rangoon upon payment of a quarter of the indemnity, or £250,000. Fifteen days were to be allowed for obtaining Bagyidaw’s ratification, the delivery of the money and the return of all prisoners. British troops would evacuate Burma, apart from the ceded areas, upon payment of the next instalment, which was to be within one hundred days.

  It was agreed, finally, that the king would sign a commercial treaty and should accept a British minister at Ava and send one himself to Calcutta, not to the court of St James, for which the Burmese argued forcefully, on the grounds that Calcutta was a mere dependency. Winning military domination first, the British thus extended the Empire by negotiation under the implied threat of further action.

  The period of grace was to end on 18 January and for the next two weeks fraternisation between the two sides brought a little relief to the barren lives of the invaders, who discovered to their surprise that far from being savages, the Burmese were in some respects more civilised than they were.

  Then came an anti-climax. It was seen that at night times especially the enemy worked hard at improving their defences, almost as if they knew that nothing conclusive would follow the agreement, except a renewal of war. On 17 January it appeared to Campbell that he had been tricked in the most barefaced way, for enemy envoys informed him that neither the ratification, nor the money or the prisoners had arrived from Ava. Instead, they offered to pay a lesser sum than the first instalment of £250,000, but only on condition that the British retired to Prome.

  Campbell refused this out of hand, but he proposed that if the Burmese army retired within 36 hours from Minhla towards Ava, the British would follow, without starting hostilities again, and directly the treaty arms were complied with the march upon Ava would be reversed.

  This very clever proposal having been promptly rejected, Campbell denounced the truce and let it be known that he would wage war again from midnight that day, 18 January 1826. He decided to make short work of the enemy this time. From dawn, every available gun, twenty-eight in all, hammered the enemy defences and afterwards the troops attacked from two sides.

  The enemy seemed now to have no stomach at all for fighting. Perhaps the truth had leaked out — that Bagyidaw’s treasury was now empty and he was finding it hard to raise the money to pay even this first instalment of the indemnity. At all events, in a very short time the British stormed the stockade with only forty casualties, driving the enemy out with severe loss and seizing all their guns and stores.

  Campbell felt that he had been fully justified in re-opening hostilities when it was reported to him that both the English and Burmese copies of the treaty were found in Prince Memiaboo’s house, in the same state as when signed and sealed at the final meeting on 3 January. The sum of 40,000 rupees (about £4,000) in the prince’s house was seized as prize money.

  Campbell had ordered a messenger to hurry after the retreating Burmese with the unratified treaty and a letter to the Kee Wungyi saying that in the hurry of their departure they had forgotten a document which his Government might now find more useful and acceptable. The Wungyi politely returned his thanks for it, but added that in their hurry they had also left behind a large sum of money, which they were sure the British general only waited an opportunity of returning.[48]

  Yet all the British present at the negotiations believed that the Burmese envoys were sincere in their wish to end the war there and then, by treaty. Perhaps they had overstepped their powers, or perhaps the king himself had second thoughts and had returned the documents unsigned. Later reports said Bagyidaw flew into a furious rage on hearing the British terms, wounded the messenger with a spear and sent down orders to fight another battle.

  A week later, with his men rested and a few hundred cattle driven in from the countryside, Campbell resumed the march on Ava through the barren countryside of the oil wells. On 31 January, six liberated British prisoners walked into his camp bringing messages from the Kee Wungyi pleading for the best peace terms that Campbell would grant. Campbell merely varied the old terms slightly and agreed not to pass a certain town before twelve days, so as to allow time for the money to come down from Ava.

  He then marched on with all speed and by 8 February was within a day’s march of Pagan, where he learned for certain that despite their pleas, the Burmese were preparing still another stand. Having sent two brigades to gather forage he was down to a mere 1,300 fighting men, but these, he decided, would have to suffice. After a march through jungle, where Burmese troops harried his men with constant hit-and-run attacks, the column emerged into open country and found facing them a surprise Burmese force of some 20,000 men, deployed in a crescent formation with the flanks set forward in prickly jungle that ran on each side of the road. They were commanded by a new general, the Na-wing Phuring, the self-styled Prince of Darkness, who had forsaken the stockade system for fighting in the open field, in front of the shining white and gold Loganunda Pagoda.

  Campbell at once instructed General Cotton to attack the left wing with HM’s 38th and 41st, supported by the 43rd Madras Native Infantry and two guns, while he attacked the right with the 13th Light Infantry, HM’s 89th, a small detachment of the Bodyguard and four guns. Campbell and his personal escort were surrounded all at once by a mass of enemy cavalry and in danger of being cut to pieces. The Bodyguard spurred their horses against the enemy, fell back until within range of the guns, then filed off so that these could check them until more troops came up and drove them from the field.

  The attacks on the enemy flanks then drove them back to a field-work, whence the British dislodged them by the bayonet. They tried to rally inside the walls and about the pagodas of Pagan and for five hours fought a losing battle until this last hope of King Bagyidaw was finally routed. The ‘Prince of Darkness’ escaped into the jungle and thence to Ava to beg for another chance against the rebel foreigners. He was ordered from the king’s presence, tortured and executed.

  On 13 February two British prisoners, now freed, arrived at Campbell’s HQ with the news that Bagyidaw had given in and accepted the terms, without bringing with them either the money or the ratified treaty, but asking on the king’s behalf if the British would accept part of the indemnity now and the rest when it had retired to Prome. Campbell refused and again began the march to Ava. Bagyidaw gave as his reasons for this that he believed that having got the first £230,000 the British would then refuse to leave. The truth was that his privy council couldn’t raise at once more than the fraction he offered, the equivalent of about £30,000, and finally the queen made a personal loan of £200,000 from her own resources.[49]

  Through a rich and peaceful country with the river banks thickly studded with temples, monasteries, pagodas and villages the army continued to advance, reaching Yandabo, 43 miles from Ava, before meeting two of Bagyidaw’s ministers of state bringing with them the money and the ratified treaty. It was finally signed by both sides once more on 24 February 1826, at Yandabo, the Burmese government agreeing at the same time to provide enough boats to transport most of the force back to Rangoon.

  On 7 March, Sir Archibald Campbell and the first contingent of troops embarked in boats for Rangoon and, proceeding in a leisurely way, arrived there about two weeks later. The rest of the army follo
wed in boats of various kinds and sizes and by the end of March the whole force had sailed for India, except for the detachment left to occupy Rangoon until payment of the second instalment of the indemnity. It was paid within the specified one hundred days, but six years passed before the balance was settled.

  Thus ended the First Burmese War. Only the navy and fighting troops, British and Indian, officers and men, saved it from becoming a disaster on the scale of the First Afghan War, some fifteen years later. General Campbell made mistakes, inevitably, under the circumstances, for mismanagement by Lord Amherst, Governor-General, and General Paget, the C-in-C in India, faced him with an appalling problem in terms of transport, provisions and climate.

  Had the king and his privy council continued their policy of laying waste the countryside and retreating north they would sooner or later have brought the British to their knees, starved of supplies, out of reach of naval help, because in the dry months of February, March and April the upper waters of the Irrawaddy subside into a stream that is barely navigable.

  Disease and bad food nearly put Campbell’s force out of action. Of the 3,500 British troops, exclusive of Sepoys and of officers, who originally landed in Rangoon, 150 only were killed owing to enemy action, compared with nearly 3,000 from disease and sickness. Of about 150 officers, 16 were killed in action and 45 died from disease. Of 1,004 British troops in Arakan, 595 died there, from cholera, malaria and dysentery, while of those who left not more than half were still alive after twelve months.[50] It was for the army beyond argument the most miserable, wretched and badly managed of all the wars to date that had made the British Empire. It cost 5 million pounds.

  On the other hand, the British had won control of the Bay of Bengal from Cape Cormorin to Tenasserim and had, with this increase in territory, laid the foundation for a still bigger increase at the expense of Burma. For having regard to the pride and ambition on both sides another Anglo-Burmese war soon became simply a matter of time.