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

by George Bruce

  THE BURMA WARS

  1824-1886

  GEORGE BRUCE

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  1: WHO WANTS WAR?

  2: KINGS OF THE GOLDEN PALACE

  3: THE ‘WILD FOREIGNERS’ INVADE

  4: SET-BACK IN ARAKAN

  5: DISEASE THE WORST ENEMY

  6: MAHA BANDULA IN COMMAND

  7: VICTORY IN THE BALANCE

  8: BURMESE SILVER

  9: THE SECOND WAR

  10: THE THIRD WAR AND ANNEXATION

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  A NOTE TO THE READER

  The Golden Peacock shall be stricken,

  And the White Heron shall occupy its shady pool.

  But a sudden storm

  Will drive the White Heron away.

  ANCIENT BURMESE PROPHECY

  1: WHO WANTS WAR?

  King Bagyidaw’s court had assembled in a state of great expectancy in the Hall of Audience in the Burmese capital of Ava one morning early in January 1824. In this open pavilion where ten rows of gilded teak columns supported a series of seven vermilion roofs, the ministers, generals and officials in long robes of white or scarlet satin, embroidered with flowers of gold, squatted with shoeless feet hidden beneath them, as tradition demanded. All gazed at the shut doors that concealed the richly carved and gilded Lion Throne.

  The doors opened loudly. His Majesty entered at the foot of the steps leading up to the throne. He wore a crown of beaten gold richly studded with rubies and emeralds, shaped like a high conical cap topped by a spire like a pagoda. Huge golden wings spread out from his shoulders, a massive gold belt encircled at the waist a suit of gold chain mail.

  The very weight of gold, said to be more than sixty pounds, forced him, though a fairly young man, to grip a balustrade while slowly ascending the steps to the throne. At the top he turned to face his assembled ministers and generals, who prostrated themselves until their faces touched the floor, three times in succession.

  King Bagyidaw paused as if to take breath, then sat down heavily on an embroidered cushion on the throne and gazed intently at the court. His titles, chanted by four royal heralds, rang through the pavilion like cymbals:

  The King, despotick, of great Merit, of great Power, Lord of the countries Thonaphrondah, Tomp Devah and Camboja, Sovereign of the Kingdom of Burmars, the Kingdom of Siam and Hughen and the Kingdom of Cassay, Lord of the Mines of Rubies, Gold, Silver, Copper, Iron and Amber, Lord of the White Elephant, Red Elephant and Mottled Elephant, Lord of the Vital Golden Lance, of many Golden Palaces and of all those Kingdoms, Grandours and Wealth, whose Royal Person is descended of the Nation of the Sun…

  The titles rolled on. It was a momentous occasion, the significance of which, no doubt, all those present were keenly aware. For in consultation with his council of six wungyis — the ‘great burden bearers’, who formed the kingdom’s central administration — King Bagyidaw had decided that the long rivalry with the British on India’s eastern frontier must be ended by war.

  The edict had accordingly been pronounced and the assembly summoned so that the king could give his instructions to his great general Maha Bandula, though it is safe to say that the ambitious Bundula himself had prepared the plan. It ordered that while another Burmese force in the north attacked British India from Assam and Manipur, Bundula would lead his army to Arakan, march thence to Chittagong, attack and defeat the British, then march on to Calcutta and there take prisoner the Governor-General himself. To stress the importance with which the king regarded this, he provided Bundula with a pair of golden fetters, suitable for escorting this exalted personage as a prisoner back to the Court of Ava.

  The audience came to an end. Bagyidaw rose slowly under the weight of his regalia. The assembly again prostrated themselves and again thrice kissed the sacred ground upon which the Golden Majesty trod. Although England was then the world’s most powerful nation no one questioned his decision. Bagyidaw, as we shall see, was a despot who ruled by divine right. Like a moving statue in gold he now descended the steps from the Lion Throne and retired from the great hall.

  Later that day Bundula reviewed his 6,000 picked troops before the king and his court, with impressive ceremonial. He then ordered his commanders to stage the river crossing over the wide expanse of the Irrawaddy to Sagaing, the first stage of the journey. Henry Gouger, an English merchant, whose house was on the river bank and who up till then had not been arrested because he was a friend of the king, wrote a colourful account of the brilliant event. ‘A fleet of magnificent war-boats, many of them richly gilded, were in readiness to receive the troops at midday, who embarked in perfect order,’ he noted.[1]

  Each man was attired in a comfortable campaigning jacket of black cloth, thickly wadded and quilted with cotton, and was armed with a musket or spear and shield, as suited the corps to which he belonged. A profusion of flags, with gay devices, were unfurled to the breeze, martial music resounded, the Chiefs took their seats at the prows of the boats (the post of honour, as the stern is with us), and in the middle of each boat, a soldier, selected for his skill, danced a kind of hornpipe.

  When all was ready, the whole fleet, lining the bank for a considerable distance, dashed all at once across the river, nearly a mile wide; the loud song bursting from 6,000 lusty throats, while the stroke from thousands of oars and paddles kept time to the music. It was an exciting spectacle, one which, but for certain misgivings of its purport, I should have looked on with delight.

  On the far bank Bundula mounted his elephant, and followed by his commanders on caparisoned horses, his infantry and another body of elephants bearing guns and baggage, he began the march to the Aeng pass, to cross the mountains dividing Burma from Arakan. Few of the people knew, says Gouger, that he was setting forth to attack the British, in accord with the Golden Majesty’s orders. It was a well kept secret, just as were the Burmese army moves in the north, where on 18 January, they crossed the frontier at Manipur into British-Indian territory. Challenged near the town of Cachar, they declared that war between the two had started.[2]

  The antagonism that culminated in this disaster had begun forty hot and humid years earlier. In 1784, Bagyidaw’s grandfather, King Bodawpaya, had conquered the kingdom of Arakan, the coastal strip that ran along the eastern side of the Bay of Bengal. Thus, Burma acquired a common frontier with the British in Chittagong, an Indian province which the British then administered. Both Burmese and British were then expansionist powers; both too, suspected each other of coveting the other’s territory. In addition, the British believed that their enemy the French were allowed to operate their warships from Burmese ports. It was a potentially explosive situation.

  At first, border problems between the two powers were settled by negotiation, then in 1798 King Bodawpaya ordered 15,000 Arakanese to enlist in his army for war against Siam. Already, since their defeat, some 40,000 Arakanese had fled into British territory from the harsh rule of Bodawpaya’s generals. Now another 10,000 men and their families crossed the frontier in a desperate flight from military service against Siam. Deciding that they were political refugees, the British let them stay. It was a decision that was pregnant with the seeds of conflict.

  King Bodawpaya’s troops pursued them across the frontier into Chittagong, where a small British-Indian force stopped the Burmese and forced them to retire. It was at that time the policy to prevent local skirmishes from escalating into war. The last thing Lord Wellesley, Governor-General, wanted then was conflict with Burma. He was fighting the Mysore War for supremacy in southern India against Tippu Sahib, the Indian leader. Wellesley therefore sent Colonel Michael Symes
as envoy to the Court of Ava to establish friendlier relations with ‘the least practicable delay’.

  But to show that he was in earnest, Wellesley prudently ordered a suitable military force to be sent at once to Chittagong ‘as a necessary measure of precaution to provide against any sudden irruption of the Burmese forces…’ and to reinforce the representations of the British Government at the Court of Ava.[3]

  Symes was also ordered to offer King Bodawpaya the aid of a British force to secure the succession to the throne of the heir apparent, by opposing the efforts to succeed of a younger son who had Siamese support. Wellesley’s secret ambition, however, was to obtain a military foothold in Burma so as to make India’s eastern frontier secure against either French or Burmese attacks.

  ‘His Excellency considers it to be extremely desirable,’ Symes’s instructions stated, ‘that the Government of Ava should consent to subsidize permanently the British force, which may be furnished on this occasion, or even a larger portion of British troops, and His Excellency accordingly desires that… you will exert your endeavours for the attainment of that important object.’[4]

  But if Symes wanted to keep these plans secret he hardly went about it in the right way. He arrived in Rangoon in May 1802 with an outsize military escort of about a hundred men, designed to impress the Burmese, whereas it merely made them suspect British intentions. He then fired off a six-pounder gun at dawn and in the evening to publicise his mission. When the Burmese objected he thought he was being subjected to a policy of harassment. He said that the Burmese requested him ‘to discontinue firing the usual gun at daybreak and at eight at night, assigning a curious reason for the latter… It being a breach of law in a Burman to fire even a musquet at such untimely hours, the report of our gun created an alarm so general, as to endanger every pregnant woman in the city with miscarriage.’[5]

  But such difficulties paled before the obstacles he met at the Court of Ava, which he reached a few months later. The king first showed him discourtesy by sending minor officials to greet him. Through them, he next threatened to disarm Symes’s escort, at the same time intimating that a French mission which had just arrived would be given priority. Symes said that the Governor-General, who had recently defeated the French in India, would regard this as an insult and threatened to withdraw his mission. He was placated, but not for weeks could he explain his purpose in a letter to the king and later without discussion of it see him in public audience.[6]

  But the Burmese disliked the style and manners of the third-rate men who made up the French mission and soon they fell out of favour. Symes, who now paid strict regard to custom in such matters as, for example, removing his shoes before entering the royal palace, was then accorded attentions and hospitality. During his earlier mission Symes’s good reputation in this respect had been nearly spoilt over the affair of the goats. He had at his compound four nanny-goats, for their milk. The crown prince, the Engy Teekien, had among his collection of foreign animals nearby a flock of male goats.

  Attracted by the bleat of the females the male goats rushed the fence and broke in to the courtyard of Symes’s house and tried to mount the females. Symes ordered the guards to drive them away, which they tried to do by shouting at them, ‘but without any effect as the animals, some of which were very large had now become furious, and after fighting with each other began to rush through our houses’ — presumably in pursuit of the females.

  ‘I then desired the Burmese to make use of sticks,’ Symes reported, ‘but they refused, saying that they were “praws” or lords… and that no person dared offer injury to them. Having no alternative we armed our servants and the soldiers with large bamboos and drove them off. The Praws were severely beaten, while the Burmese lifted their eyes in surprise at our temerity.’ Fortunately, the guards kept silent about the incident, for had it reached the crown prince’s ears, the future of the mission would surely have been in doubt.

  Despite the good impression Symes had eventually managed in his second mission to make upon the Burmese court, he failed to win a treaty allowing a British military presence in Burma; the Burmese were naturally suspicious in the extreme of such a proposal and in any case the king was little disposed to put his name to any document, on the grounds that his liberty was thereby circumscribed. So in December 1802, Symes arranged for his departure, having prepared the ground for any policy his Government might wish to pursue. Of King Bodawpaya he wrote:

  He takes no notice… of the propositions which were laid before him by the Envoy of the Governor-General. It seems he will treat with no power on earth as an equal, but he graciously receives under his protection China, Ceylon, Assam and the British Empire in India. He will grant a boon, but will not make a treaty; and whatever he gives, it must be in the form of a mandate, issued in favour of a suppliant…

  For this remarkable soldier-diplomat it was time for action ‘I have quitted [sic] Ava with sufficient provocation to justify war,’ he went on. ‘At the same time… I am decidedly of the opinion that a paramount influence in the Government and administration of Ava, obtain it how we may, is now become indispensably necessary to the interest and security of the British possessions in the East.’[7]

  Symes was not so much nervous of Burmese attacks as of the French getting a military foothold in the country, and therefore being able to threaten India’s south-eastern frontiers. In any case, fears of an attack on India along the north-west frontier still haunted the British Government. Only four years before Symes’s mission, Napoleon had marched east as far as Egypt and Syria, with the promised aim of overthrowing British power in India — ‘marching into Asia, riding an elephant, a turban on my head and in my hand the new Koran that I would have composed to suit my needs.’ The Battle of the Nile, 1798, had ended those dreams, but in 1807 Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I made a strange rendezvous on a raft on the river Nieman at Tilsit and signed that dramatic reversal of alliances the Treaty of Tilsit. England was alarmed. Fears that the Corsican ogre’s armies might now enter Russia and thence follow earlier invaders down the dusty roads of Persia and Afghanistan to surge across the Punjab’s fertile plains into India became all too real.

  India’s eastern frontier therefore had to be made secure against both the Burmese and the French. The eastern provinces of Arakan, Chittagong, Assam and Cachar were the keys to this security. Symes’s successor as envoy, Captain Canning, a few years later in 1810, spelt out the details of the new British policy towards Burma at which the Colonel had hinted earlier. It was a startling reversal of Wellesley’s policy of ‘friendlier relations’. Referring to the repopulation of Arakan, Canning reported in 1810:

  A small force would … probably be sufficient to effect the conquest of it. The possession of Arakan offers considerable advantages to the British Government to which it seems destined by nature to belong, being a continuation of the plain that extends from Chittagong as far as Cape Negrais, and bounded on the East by the high range of mountains that anciently formed the boundary of the Burmese Empire. The Possession of this Province would place the entire extent of Coast from Cape Cormorin to Cape Negrais under the British power, and eventually exclude French ships of war from their favourite haunts of Ramree and Chedate. The British territory would at the same time be secured from all future attacks from the Burmahs by the impenetrable barrier of the Arakan Mountains which at a moment when our European enemies are endeavouring to excite that Nation against us, may be deemed a consideration of some importance.[8]

  For his part King Bodawpaya, eager to expand the empire consolidated by his illustrious father King Alompra, founder of the dynasty, hoped to acquire these provinces too. But for another few years the frontier problems were settled more or less amicably.

  Then in 1811 an Arakanese named Chin Payan crossed the Naaf river from British territory with about 15,000 Arakanese refugee troops, seized land which had formerly belonged to his father and went on to occupy nearly all of Arakan. He laid siege to the capital, which surrendered on
condition that the lives of the Burmese inhabitants should be spared. But the Arakanese had an old score to settle and, despite the promise, on entering the town massacred them and exultantly marched through the streets with their victims’ heads vengefully paraded on tall bamboo poles.

  King Bodawpaya and his wungyis were convinced that Chin Payan’s forces could hardly have been assembled and trained in Chittagong without British connivance. Captain Canning tried to calm them with the promise that the rebel and his followers ‘would not be allowed an asylum within the British territories’, but the Burmese were quick to retaliate. Two flotillas of troops in fast war canoes set sail, landed in Arakan, routed the rebels and regained control of the province. Chin Payan and many of his troops fled into the mountains. Eventually, despite British assurances to the Burmese that it would not be allowed, they made their way once more into Chittagong.

  In a tortuous sentence whose implications are nevertheless clear, the Governor-General, then Lord Minto, informed London on 23 January 1812: ‘Such of the natives of Arracan who had been established in the district of Chittagong as accompanied Kingberring, [Chin Payan] the magistrate has been directed to desire the commanding officer of the British troops to permit them to take refuge within the walls of our territories.’

  All the survivors of Chin Payan’s invading forces were included in this decision. Naturally, the Burmese saw it as a threat to their interests. The seeds of the Arakan problem now sprouted strongly in this over-heated political climate. A series of hostile moves by both Burmese and British followed. Burmese troops crossed the frontier into Chittagong once more, but retired when the British sent warships to Rangoon, ostensibly to embark, if necessary, Captain Canning and some British merchants. Chin Payan then invaded Arakan again in June 1812 but once more a Burmese force defeated him and again he withdrew into British territory. The Governor-General proclaimed a reward for his capture, but the Burmese doubted his good intentions. They asked Captain Canning whether, having offered the reward, Chin Payan would be surrendered to them if captured, but Canning told them he had no authority to discuss the point.