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

by George Bruce

  The sword is always hanging over the head of the soldier, and the slightest disposition to flight, or reluctance to advance, will infallibly bring it down upon him. But what above all tends to hold the Burmese soldiery to their duty is the dreadful execution that is done on the wives and children of those who desert. The arms and legs of these miserable victims are bound together with no more feeling than if they were brute beasts, and in this state they are shut up in cabins made of bamboo, and filled with combustible materials, which are then set on fire by means of a train of gunpowder.[12]

  While officers held the lives of ordinary soldiers and their families in their hands, the king in the same way held sway over his commanders. The least a defeated general could expect was loss of all his honours, dignities and status. More often he would lose his head.

  Discipline of this kind enforced a kind of desperate courage, but there seems to have been little discipline of a tactical kind. ‘It must not be imagined that battles in this country bear the slightest resemblance to those of Europe,’ wrote Father San Germano.

  They can never be said to engage in a regular battle, but merely to skirmish under the protection of trees or palisades; or else they approach the hostile town or army under the cover of a mound of earth, which they throw up as they advance. It may indeed sometimes happen that the two parties will meet in the open plain, but then a strange scene of confusion ensues, and each side, without any method or order, endeavours either to surround the other or to gain its rear and thus put it to flight.

  So much for the troops the British were soon to challenge. But whether or not they wanted to, the redcoats and Sepoys would be fighting a kind of total war against the Burmese and their entire way of life. So one must, however briefly, say something about this, as well as of the monarchy and social system — that which Lord Amherst had termed ‘the peculiar circumstances and character of the Burmese Government and people’.

  Father San Germano observed; ‘I suppose that there is not in the whole world a monarch so despotic as the Burmese Emperor.’

  He is considered by himself and others absolute lord of the lives, properties and personal services of his subjects; he exalts and depresses, confers and takes away honour and rank; and, without any process of law, can put to death not only criminals guilty of capital offences, but any individual who happens to incur his displeasure. It is here a perilous thing for a person to become distinguished for wealth and possessions; for the day may easily come when he will be charged with some supposed crime, and so put to death, in order that his property may be confiscated. Every subject is the Emperor’s born slave; and when he calls anyone his slave he thinks thereby to do him honour. Hence, also, he considers himself entitled to employ his subjects in any work or service, without salary or pay, and if he makes them any recompense, it is done, not from a sense of justice, but as an act of bounty.

  San Germano was referring to the two kings, Hsinbyishin and Bodawpaya, who had reigned immediately before Bagyidaw, but the Burmese monarchy was always absolute, with no check whatever upon its power. Bagyidaw was in this respect worse because he had inherited the mental instability of many of the descendants of his great-grandfather, Alompra. Furious, ungovernable rages possessed him which made all those around him fear for their lives.

  His chief queen, said to have no virtues to redeem her greed and viciousness, accounted for her low birth — her brother was a fish-hawker — with the story that she had been Bagyidaw’s queen in an earlier life, but having sinned in a minor degree had been punished — according to the Buddhist doctrine of Karma — by rebirth in a humble family. Bagyidaw believed this and soon fell entirely under her influence. He deposed his chief queen, who had borne his son, and made this concubine his chief queen instead. Bagyidaw seems to have been aware both of his own instability and of the bad influence the concubine queen possessed over him. It caused in him a kind of paranoia which worsened still more his relationships with his officials and courtiers and was to influence his conduct of the war.

  The king’s dominance was underlined by Burma’s rigid class system, of which the symbol was the umbrella. The king was the Lord of Umbrella Bearing Chiefs in this nation of umbrella bearing chiefs. For him the white umbrella was reserved and on state occasions his attendants held eight of them above him. They were elaborate umbrellas, about twelve feet high and six feet in diameter, with gold handles embellished with rubies, and crowned with a plume of gold.

  Umbrellas signified rank. The crown prince had eight, of a lesser variety. Officers of the rank of colonel and above carried gilt, or so-called golden umbrellas. Officials were allowed anything from six to one, of painted red cloth or silk, according to rank. To carry a white umbrella of any size was high treason and no Burmese who wished to go on living would dare to. Sometimes foreigners newly arrived in the country cheerfully walked out beneath one of the large white Victorian sunshades. They were quickly apprehended by the king’s police, but an expensive present to the right official normally bought their freedom.[13]

  Sumptuary laws sternly regulated Burma’s class system, just as they did in fourteenth-century England. The biggest gold buttons, diamonds, emeralds and rubies were reserved without question for the royal family, as were gold or silver brocaded silk waistcoats and velvet sandals. Stuff and style of dress depended both on rank and social class. Ordinary articles of everyday use were shaped and made according to the owner’s status, even drinking cups, betel boxes and the spittoons into which the scarlet juice of this drug was aimed. The king’s spittoons were made of gold decorated with precious stones; a merchant’s of ivory; a boatman’s of the plainest wood.

  One does not have to look far to find the source of this unquestioning veneration of royalty, this blind obedience which sanctioned even the continual wars which decimated Burmese manhood. It lay in a fairy story which was still alive in the nineteenth century, which was believed to be true and which dominated the king’s beliefs and actions.

  According to Hindu concepts which the Burmese borrowed centuries ago, the royal palace symbolised the universe’s very centre, believed to be at nearby Meinmo. The royal palace was therefore the home of the gods, around which, it was believed, the sun, moon and stars dutifully revolved.

  Divine status was thereby conferred upon the king solely by virtue of his occupation and possession of the palace. Possession was all important, for if the palace was seized and occupied by a rival prince or a foreign power, such as the British, the ruler was forthwith dethroned.

  It was to the occupant of the royal palace that the people gave their homage and loyalty. The king chose his guard from among soldiers carefully selected for their readiness to die to protect him in his palace from would-be usurpers. The conscript army too was charged with this role of maintaining the king’s divine authority by defending him from his enemies. The nation’s acceptance of the king’s divine right implied acceptance of his despotism and his harsh laws.

  But the people also gave their loyalty to the king in his role of Buddhism’s chief patron and defender, for this was held by the deeply religious Burmese people to be royalty’s main role. The king’s outward show of his dedication lay in the building of magnificent gilded pagodas, the support of Buddhist monasteries and his personal appearance in religious ceremonies. The injustice and abuse of power which the king’s despotic rule brought were identified in the popular mind with the government — the viceroys and the officials who ruled the provinces — rather than with the king.

  The word ‘golden’, so often used by people and officials when referring to the king, was a symbol of the veneration in which he was held. It was spoken only when referring to the king or the royal palace. Reports on events in the kingdom were said to reach the ‘golden eyes’. If it was good news it perfumed the ‘golden nose’ or delighted the ‘golden feet’.

  How civilised was Burma, with which the British were going to war? Anxiously debating how best to subdue this arrogant monarch, they thought of the Burmese
as heathen barbarians beyond the pale of Christendom, in the self-righteous way of Victorian England. In fact, just as in England then, an often brutal administration of the law marched hand-in-hand with a good measure of civilisation. Drama and the arts flourished in Burma. Music was very popular, played on flutes, pipes, cymbals and a complex percussion system. ‘In the recitation of poetry the language is exceedingly melodious,’ Symes noted. ‘Even the prose of common conversation appears to be measured and the concluding word of each sentence is lengthened by a musical cadence that marks the period…’

  Among both men and women there was a high rate of literacy, a monastery school catering for every village throughout the land, so that primary education was ahead of that prevailing in Britain. Universities were unknown, but the leading monastery schools offered advanced courses in religious studies and the Burmese classics, as well as secular subjects like court protocol, building construction, and engineering of a primitive kind. Western science was, of course, unknown.[14]

  Automatically, at the age of sixteen, a boy became a novitiate monk in the monastery of which his school was a part; he wore the yellow robe and his head was shaved. But only a small minority remained within the Buddhist monastic order. Most young men left it and got married before they were twenty.

  One of the effects of the Buddhist religion can be seen in the remarkable amount of freedom enjoyed by Burmese women, especially in an Oriental nation. They kept their own property and their own surnames when married, they were allowed to mix socially, to take part in business and commerce, although by way of contradiction their evidence in a law court was worth less than a man’s and had to be given outside the court.

  As a matter of routine a Burmese woman did her best to make herself sexually attractive, wearing a tightly fitting long skirt open in front so that she showed much of her right leg and thigh, sprinkling her bosom with sandalwood powder and when in full dress staining the palms of her hands and her fingernails scarlet.

  Burmese life in peacetime was gay, leisurely and uninhibited, an outcome of the people’s high spirits which even Buddhism’s pessimistic outlook failed to chill. There were pagoda feasts at frequent intervals, cock and buffalo fights, regattas on the rivers, with boat races between rival towns. Colonel Symes, despite being humiliated by Burmese officials, as of course were all foreign envoys, thought well of them. ‘They… have an undeniable claim to the character of a civilised and well instructed people,’ he noted.

  Their laws are wise and pregnant with sound morality. Their police is better regulated than in most European countries; their natural disposition is… hospitable to strangers; their manners are rather more expressive of manly candour, than courteous dissimulation; the gradations of rank and the respect due to station are maintained with a scrupulousness which never relaxes. A knowledge of letters is so widely diffused that there are no mechanics, few of the peasants or even of the common watermen… who cannot read and write… Unless the rage of civil discord be again excited, or some foreign power impose an alien yoke, the Burmans bid fair to be a prosperous… and enlightened people.[15]

  Symes clearly hoped that the Burmese would remain peacefully outside the range of John Company’s expansion in the east, but unfortunately, two decades later the British came to regard the coastal strips of Arakan and Tenasserim as vital to the maritime defence of India. And King Bagyidaw, eager to extend his dominions along his north-eastern frontier, had given the Governor-General the excuse he needed. Shut up in his feudal state, from which all news of what went on in the world was excluded, Bagyidaw knew little of the military power he was challenging. But he resented the presence of the British, and believed that the courage of his troops alone would be enough to bring victory. In a private talk about them with Mr Judson, an American missionary, he declared:

  What business have they to come in ships from so great a distance to dethrone kings and take possession of countries they have no right to? They continue to conquer and govern the black strangers with caste [the Hindus], who have puny frames and no courage. They have never yet fought with so strong and brave people as the Burmese, skilled in the use of sword and spear. If they once fight with us and we have an opportunity of manifesting our bravery, it will be an example to the black nations who are now slaves of the English, and encourage them to throw off the yoke.[16]

  King Bagyidaw’s view of the contest in terms of sword and spear underlines the sharp contrast between Burmese and British. A feudal state, an Oriental fairyland almost, whose king ruled by divine right, faced a nation rich in scientific knowledge, money and military organisation, in this respect the world’s strongest nation.

  Bagyidaw unfortunately had no inkling of the grave issues at stake — that he risked not merely military defeat, but the ultimate destruction of the Burmese social fabric, the economy and the traditional basis of the monarchy. There was nobody to tell him; and even had there been such a warning he could never have heeded it.

  So Bagyidaw’s kingdom faced real danger.

  Fortunately for him, the British, as we have seen, were totally ignorant of the problems of warfare in a tropical country of swamp and jungle like Burma. This ignorance would cause great losses in men and handicap them on all sides.

  The campaign would richly deserve its title of the worst managed of all the nineteenth-century colonial wars. So there was still hope for Bagyidaw.

  General Paget, the British C-in-C in India, finally decided that to attempt a campaign on land would be to invite defeat, having regard to climate and terrain. He advised the Governor-General that ‘the only effectual mode of punishing the insolence of this power is by maritime means; and the question then arises, how troops are to be created for the purpose of attacking the vulnerable parts of the coast.’[17]

  What exactly General Paget meant by his last phrase about troops is not altogether clear, since both the troops and the ships already existed. However, he advised the Governor-General that his objectives should be first, the expulsion of the Burmese from the territory they had recently annexed in Assam. Secondly, to despatch an expedition by sea to subdue the maritime provinces of Ava, and, if possible, penetrate to the capital by the line of the Irrawaddy river. Thirdly, to maintain a defensive attitude for the present on the Sylhet and Chittagong frontiers, merely strengthening the forces there so as to prevent any further incursions from the Burmese forces in Manipur and Arakan.[18]

  Nothing in the C-in-C’s guidance encouraged the GOC of the Burmese Expeditionary Force to get bogged down in a costly land campaign. But a series of errors were to lead to this.

  They began when Captain Canning, the former envoy in Rangoon, persuaded Lord Amherst, the Governor-General, that they had only to occupy Rangoon to frighten the king into asking for terms; and that in any case the oppressed Burmese people would welcome the invaders as liberators. And upon this optimistic appraisal it was decided that the main expedition should penetrate up the Irrawaddy river and attack the capital itself, a journey of nearly 600 miles. And that secondly, since it was to be a maritime expedition it should arrive in Burmese waters at the start of the rainy season when the Irrawaddy would quickly be at its deepest and present no navigational problems to the men-of-war and troop transports. As hopefully planned therefore, the campaign did not envisage land operations apart from the attack on Ava, which was on the river. And on this assumption the vital land transport for the army’s supplies, ammunition and baggage was never embarked.

  A quite formidable naval force under the command of Commodore Grant was assembled for the task. It was made up of the sloops-of-war Liffey, Larne, Slaney and Sophie; four of the East India Company’s warships; eighteen brigs, schooners and other small craft, a flotilla of 20 gun-brigs and 20 war-boats, each carrying a heavy gun; 40 troop transports and a small steam ship, the Diana, the first ever used in British naval warfare. Captain Frederick Marryat, later to become the popular Victorian writer of historical novels, was in command of the Larne.

  The total numb
er of fighting men first embarked at Calcutta and Madras in April 1824 was 10,644, of whom 4,759 were British troops.[19] The artillery included 42 guns — howitzers, heavy and light field guns and mortars. Naval strength in guns was over 200 pieces, large and small, altogether a formidable array. Under General Sir Archibald Campbell, GOC, Colonel McCreagh commanded the Bengal Division and Colonel Macbean the Madras Division of the Burmese Expeditionary Force, as it came to be known.

  Hopefully, General Campbell had actually allowed himself to be persuaded that the friendly Burmese would all too readily sell their British liberators beef cattle and fresh vegetables, so only enough salt pork and biscuit for the actual voyage across the Bay of Bengal was taken. It was a costly decision.

  The two fleets met at Port Cornwallis, Andaman Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, at the end of April. General Campbell wished to sail for Rangoon on 2 May, but now the first effects of bad planning stopped him; the Madras troop transports had barely four days’ supply of fresh water on board, in the tropical heat. It was another setback for the usually meticulous Campbell, for he was now obliged to postpone sailing until the navy had solved this problem for him. ‘This difficulty,’ he reported later, ‘was very speedily removed by Captain Marryat, whose indefatigable exertions in collecting… the scanty supply which the land springs afforded… enabled him, on the following day, to report the fleet ready for sea.’

  But just as it was getting under weigh, Commodore Grant’s HMS Liffey and several of the absent troop transports arrived on the scene. ‘Judging that some of them might also be in want of water,’ Campbell noted cheerfully ‘… and being desirous of making the necessary arrangements with Commodore Grant, relative to our future operations, I determined upon remaining in harbour one day longer. On the following morning [5 May] we put to sea, detaching a part of my force… against the island of Cheduba, and sending another detachment… against Negrais, proceeding myself with the main body for the Rangoon river, which we reached on the 10th, and anchored within the bar.’[20]