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

by George Bruce

  Major Yates, 26th Madras Native Infantry, who was in command, turned his artillery on them, but was then attacked by Burmese troops from the surrounding jungle on the land side. His musketeers held these at bay while his guns forced the war-boats to sheer off. Meanwhile, the fire-boats had run aground at a bend in the river, where happily they burnt out. This first crisis ended with the re-appearance of the Teignmouth, which Captain Ryves, of HMS Sophie, had ordered to return immediately to its station. But for Major Yates the Kemmendine situation still remained dangerous; he had only 87 British troops and some 200 Sepoys with which to hold the fort, with naval help.

  During the afternoon the sun’s rays glittered on the gilt umbrellas of the commanders of five or six Burmese columns marching across the Dalla plain on the far side of the river in the direction of Rangoon. Opposite the town they began entrenching and setting up batteries with which to attack the naval vessels, while others built a stockade around the guns. Meantime for Yates, at Kemmendine, the situation was growing hotter; the Burmese had by now completely surrounded and isolated the stockade and were keeping up a persistent fire from the surrounding jungle.

  Later in the afternoon, Bundula’s strategy became clear. More columns of Burmese troops emerged from the forest about a mile in front of the eastern side of the Shwedagon Pagoda and with banners and flags flying took up positions along a line atop a woody ridge within gun-shot of Rangoon, extending to the river at Pozundaung Creek on the far side of it. ‘In the course of a few hours we thus found ourselves completely surrounded, with the narrow channel of the Rangoon river alone unoccupied in our rear, and with only the limited space within our lines that we could still call our own,’ noted Snodgrass. Bundula’s left stretched from Pozundaung to the Pagoda, his centre from the Pagoda to Kemmendine and his right on the far river bank at Dalla, from which the British had withdrawn. His plan was clearly to drive the navy from the river and having thus cut the army’s communications with the outer world, to overwhelm it or starve it into surrender. It was a clever plan, but all depended on the gunnery from Dalla, the fire-rafts and the war-boats.

  The Burmese troops between the Pagoda and Rangoon now began to dig themselves in so energetically that in two hours they had entirely disappeared, a parapet of earth only marking their whereabouts, except for the occasional gilt umbrella of a commander as he moved about inspecting progress. ‘By a distant observer,’ noted Snodgrass, ‘the hills, covered with mounds of earth, would have been taken for anything rather than the approaches of an attacking army; but to us who had watched the whole strange proceeding, it seemed the work of magic or enchantment.’

  It was a method of warfare, amazing to the British, that nearly a hundred years later was to dominate the fighting fronts in the most destructive war the world had ever known.

  But how effective were the Burmese entrenchments? During the afternoon of the 1st, Campbell decided to find out and ordered Major Sale with detachments of HM’s 13th and the 18th Madras Native Infantry to make a sudden raid on the busy enemy near the Pagoda. Sale easily broke through in a surprise attack, took the enemy in flank and drove them all from their cover with considerable losses. Loaded with enemy arms, he quickly retired before they were ready to counter-attack. He brought back valuable information about the trenches and the shelter from gunfire they gave.

  At Kemmendine, Major Yates and his force still held out, having driven off repeated enemy attacks. The defenders had been besieged and without rest for thirty-six hours and when darkness fell they hoped for a chance to sleep, but the Burmese favoured night attacks and around 8 p.m. in the darkness their resonant gongs sounded the assembly. Soon after, they emerged in great force from the pitch-black jungle to try to storm the stockade in the British way, by escalade. At the same time, flames of a flotilla of fire-rafts lit up the night, with which the Burmese hoped to drive off or destroy the ships and boats supporting Kemmendine by river. Partly, they succeeded; for once more the Teignmouth dropped down river.

  The flames helped Yates in the stockade to see his enemy, so that he was able to hold his fire until the Burmese were within some 30 yards. He then opened up with grape-shot and musketry and with a little difficulty again managed to drive them off. Seamen ran the fire-rafts aground; none of them did harm. The Burmese, it was noted, advanced when attacking more or less like an uncontrolled horde and hated to expose themselves to enemy shooting. By contrast, even the humblest British soldier or Sepoy understood that advance in formation with volley firing was necessary before any attempt to storm an objective.

  So that night too, Kemmendine held out, but daybreak revealed that under cover of darkness the Burmese had pushed forward their trenches amid the clumps of yellow bamboo to within 50 yards of the stockade, from where they were able to keep up a steady and accurate fire. Yates and his force were now hard-pressed indeed but fortunately the navy came to their rescue.

  Lieutenant Kellett, of HMS Arachne, arrived in the river abreast of Kemmendine in his ship’s pinnace, together with three row-boats loaded with seamen. Taking in the dangerous situation, he turned the pinnace guns on the enemy flanks and showered them with grape-shot at short range. The Burmese, who had then reached the stockade walls and were trying to escalade it, were shot down in large numbers and forced back to their trenches. Again Yates had survived.

  The Teignmouth returned from Rangoon, but came under fire from the guns of the enemy war-boats, which also attacked Lieutenant Kellett’s boats, while the Burmese renewed their all-out efforts to storm the stockade. In the afternoon, Yates and the defenders were once more hard-pressed, as masses of Burmese poured in their fire, both from the ground and from surrounding trees. Shelter within the stockade no longer existed and casualties began to weaken Yates’s force seriously.

  The bamboo and dry grass hut that sheltered Doveton and several other officers was riddled by the enemy’s shot, ‘and many of our native servants were so paralysed by fear, that for safety they were accustomed to jam themselves in amongst their masters’ bullock trunks, and continue immovable the greater part of the day, much to our inconvenience,’ he wrote.

  To be sure the missiles of our adversaries were sufficiently troublesome, and our lives were then held by a very precarious tenure. Musket-balls are no respectors either of things or persons, and proofs of this we now had every hour. In one instance, when washing my hands in the morning, a shot smashed an earthen jar containing water close to me; on another occasion, at night, a jingal-ball shattered a large glass table-shade (used in India to screen the candles from the wind) upon the mess-table of the 26th Regt, at the time (if I rightly remember) the officers were assembled at dinner.

  But these are trifles, and are merely recorded here to show the inconvenient interruptions to which we were liable, even at our most social hours. It was a beautiful and interesting sight to watch the course of the shells, which we frequently discharged at night from a small bomb-vessel anchored off the place; these passed over our heads like meteors or falling stars, and exploded in the enemy’s entrenchments, the effect of which, in the darkness, was very grand.

  Again, after dark on 2 December resonant voices of enemy gongs and drums summoned the Burmese to attack. Carrying scaling ladders they rushed the stockade in the darkness in still another resolute attempt to force an entry and overwhelm the scanty defenders. Once more they were beaten off; they rallied and tried again and during this second effort the flames of more fire-boats again lit up the struggle and enabled Yates to turn his guns with greater effect on them. Again they were driven back, this time with heavy losses. They tried a third time, but now they were less resolute, were easily driven off and for the time being they made no more night attacks, but instead merely harassed the defenders with constant musket fire.

  Shortly after dawn, the 18-gun Sophie anchored off Kemmendine to give what aid she could; and soon the truant Teignmouth returned, only to be set afire almost at once by another fire-raft, though it was put out after doing only little damage. Th
e skirmishing Burmese war-boatsmen had by now observed that their shot went farther than the guns on the small British gun-boats. They began to hit the sailors in them and make harder Kellett’s task of firing on the troops attacking Kemmendine from the flank, which the Burmese continued throughout 3 December.

  Kellett therefore assembled a flotilla of eight boats with some 80 seamen and several midshipmen and in the cool dawn of 4 December made a dash at the gilded war-boats, captured seven of them and drove off the rest up river. One of the war-boats taken, mounting a long 9-pounder on the bow, was 96 feet long with places for 76 oarsmen.[40]

  On the night of 4 December the Burmese attacked the Kemmendine stockade once more in a final effort to master it. Several times they were thrown back, until finally they gave up, having lost heart, realising perhaps that their own stockades, when held by the ‘wild foreigners’, were invulnerable. And from then on Kemmendine was in no real danger. The key stockade had survived the worst the Burmese could do.

  ‘The unyielding spirit of Major Yates and his steady troops, although exhausted with fatigue and want of rest, baffled every attempt on shore,’ reported General Campbell later, in a message to the Governor-General, ‘while Captain Ryves, with HM’s sloop Sophie, the H.C. cruiser Teignmouth and some flotilla and gun-boats, nobly maintained the long established fame of the British navy, in defending the passage of the river against the most furious assaults of the enemy’s war-boats, advancing under cover of the most tremendous fire-rafts which the unwearied exertions of British sailors could alone have conquered.’

  Campbell’s dispatches became famed for their ringing note of praise for his own operations, as if he had won victories outstanding in the annals of the British Empire. Probably he was right; it was no mean feat at that time to make war successfully against a bold enemy defending his own territory of disease-ridden swamp, forest and jungle, thus to add a new realm to the Empire.

  Meantime, between Rangoon and the Pagoda, Campbell had let the enemy deploy in force with as much stores as they could bring up, so that when he finally attacked them their loss would be all the greater. By daylight on the morning of 2 December they had completely entrenched themselves upon some high and open ground within musket-shot distance of the Pagoda’s north side. Several times British skirmishers dislodged them from positions which enabled their guns to enfilade the British line, or their musket shot to hit troops asleep in barracks.

  But the Burmese burrowed like moles, with unremitting energy, by the evening of 4 December being so near the Pagoda that they were able, Snodgrass noted, to keep up ‘a constant fire upon our barracks, saluting with a dozen muskets every one who showed his head above the ramparts, and, when nothing better could be done, expending both round and grape-shot in vain attempts to strike the British ensign, which proudly waved high upon their sacred temple.’

  They were near enough to Rangoon as well to fire an occasional gun at it, and from the opposite side of the river they poured an endless stream of fire against the ships. With the exception of one or two heavily armed ones, which fired back, they anchored as near as possible to Rangoon to lessen the chance of damage.

  On the evening of 4 December Campbell at last revealed his plan for a decisive counter-blow. Before dawn next day Captain Chads accordingly moved up Pozundaung Creek with the gun-flotilla and cannonaded the enemy’s left rear at daylight, while shortly afterwards 1,100 men under Major Sale, and 600 under Major Walker, attacked the Burmese centre and left respectively.

  Walker reached his objective first and here the Burmese, despite naval shelling, fought desperately. Walker and many men fell in the advance to the first entrenchment, but it was finally carried at bayonet point and the enemy routed. Sale’s column then reached the centre and quickly forced it, so that the entire Burmese left wing was scattered. The two British columns then drove the defenders from every part of their works into the jungle, leaving the ground behind them covered with dead and wounded, with all their guns, entrenching tools, and a great number of small arms. So quickly were the attacks delivered that the maximum surprise was achieved and the British had only small losses. Thirty guns, 300 jingals and 2,000 muskets were captured.

  The defeat must have been a tremendous shock to Bundula’s military pride, but far from giving up, he spent the next day, 6 December, rallying the defeated troops and using them to reinforce his line threatening the Great Pagoda, which was still within musket shot of the British positions. Campbell planned another heavy blow there next day and meantime to lull Bundula into a mistaken sense of security stopped all artillery fire and concealed his infantry, at the same time quietly reinforcing the position with heavy guns from the ships. Thus enticed, Bundula’s troops advanced their trenches nearer and nearer, until the British heard their loud defiant hurrahs.

  For some reason Campbell did not start his attack next day until 11.45 a.m., when the guns until noon hammered the Burmese trenches with a heavy cannonade, which the Burmese returned with light guns, jingals and muskets. Four columns of British troops then advanced, one left, one right, and two centre, the latter two descending the stairs from the Pagoda’s north gate. ‘It was not until a decided charge was made,’ Snodgrass noted, ‘and our troops actually in the trenches that the enemy finally gave way: their courage failed them at this extremity, and they were precipitately driven from their numerous works… into the thick forest in their rear…

  ‘Upon the ground the enemy left a great number of dead, who seemed generally, from their stout and athletic forms, to have been their best troops. Their bodies had each a charm of some description, in which the brave deceased had no doubt trusted for protection against all harm and every danger…’

  Bundula’s defeat was completed by an attack next day upon his gun batteries on the far bank of the river at Dalla. It was so dark a night that the British, rowed over by the sailors with muffled oars, landed unobserved. They then marched in strict silence through the clumps of rustling bamboo towards the Burmese and, surprising them, after a little desperate bayonet fighting drove them off and took the position again with all its guns and stores.

  Bundula, it seemed, had had enough, for that night, 7 December, he silently withdrew his troops from Kemmendine as well, taking with him almost all his dead, all his wounded and his equipment. ‘Save a dead body here and there, the embers of their last night’s fires,’ wrote Ensign Doveton, who had gone there from Rangoon, ‘and the appearance of the trees and shrubs that had been cruelly mutilated by our showers of shot, there was little of interest… for the foe had taken special care to leave behind nothing that we could possibly convert into a trophy…’

  Thus, in the course of a few days Bundula, who had promised King Bagyidaw that within a week he would have driven the rebel foreigners into the sea or have captured them, was humbled beyond Burmese belief. The myth of invincibility was shattered. Large-scale desertions followed while he was retreating north with the fear of the king’s anger large in his mind. How total was the Burmese collapse the British losses of only 30 killed and 220 wounded from 1 to 9 December are evidence. Burmese losses in the same period were estimated to be at least 5,000 men, though they were probably rather less.

  Campbell now believed that he had defeated Bundula finally and he was probably looking forward to a more or less unhindered march up the line of the Irrawaddy to King Bagyidaw’s Court at Ava. But he was gravely mistaken.

  On the evening of 12 December a Burmese deserter found his way into the British lines. Taken before Campbell, he swore that Bundula had received reinforcements during his retreat, which made him decide to try to retrieve his disgrace by another desperate effort. He had therefore returned to Kokeen, a village some four miles north of the Shwedagon, which a Burmese reserve corps had already begun to stockade along a high ridge commanding the road to Sanubyu.

  Also, the deserter assured Campbell, it was Bundula’s intention to attack the British on the morning of 14 December. They were determined to sacrifice their lives at the
dearest rate, ‘as they had nothing else to expect than to do so ignominiously by returning disgraced and defeated to the presence of their monarch…’[41]

  Campbell determined to take this information seriously and attack Bundula himself, at the right time. Meanwhile, the Burmese general, with a force of only about 25,000 men, began strengthening Kokeen’s stockades and fortifications with solid trunks of teak. Around it he had dug a broad deep ditch sown thickly with bamboo stakes, as sharp as knives.

  At the same time he embarked upon a stratagem to try to destroy all the military stores the British had accumulated in Rangoon. After his defeat, thousands of deserters and their families had entered the town, with British permission. Among them Bundula sent in his own fifth column, charged with this task. To mislead the British about his plans he caused a rumour to be spread that an envoy, a chief named Mounshoezar, had arrived at his headquarters from Ava with authority to negotiate peace. ‘Our situation became critical in the extreme,’ noted Snodgrass, who was always at Campbell’s elbow.

  Spies, assassins and incendiaries lurked in every corner of Rangoon; every native within our lines became an object of suspicion and the utmost vigilance of the troops, combined with the energy and decision of their commander, could alone have prevented our losing every advantage of our late successes, by the destruction of our stores and magazines… The inflammable materials of which the town was composed required but a single fire-brand to envelope [sic] our cantonments and everything they contained in a general conflagration; while the unseen enemy, lurking in the outskirts of the jungle, were held in constant readiness to rush in upon our lines during the confusion…

  These fears were justified. At midnight on 12 December fire broke out in several places at once in windward parts of the town. Helped by a high wind the flames swept through the thatch and bamboo houses with extraordinary violence until it looked as though they would reach the ammunition and stores depot in an adjoining area.