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

by George Bruce

  Cotton had meantime moved slowly up the Hlaing and Panhlaing rivers, meeting hostile forces here and there, capturing a big stockade at Panhlaing village after a sharp encounter and reaching the junction with the Irrawaddy on 27 February. Here the heavier ships grounded in the shallows; the Diana and the gunboats had to be unloaded. While troops and navy were doing this, a fleet of Burmese war-boats attacked them, but were driven off, while two companies of the 89th Regiment landed and drove the enemy from an outpost, killing several of them and bringing in a prisoner. It was 5 March before the last of the fleet entered the Irrawaddy; the next day it took up a position about two miles below the white pagoda of Danubyu.

  That morning General Cotton and Captain Alexander together reconnoitred a succession of formidable stockades which began at the white pagoda and increased in strength up to the main work, a teak and bamboo stockade 17 feet high surrounding the town’s brick walls and linked to it by cross beams. It stretched 1,000 yards along the river bank and extended some 600 yards inland, forming a rough oblong. In front of it was a ditch 18 feet wide by 8 deep, in front of the ditch a tall bamboo fence, then a space of 18 feet sown with sharp spikes, another fence, an abatis then a final fence. The 40-foot-high river bank also formed a good defence and numerous garrison was seen behind these fortifications.

  At 1.30 p.m. Cotton sent with a flag of truce a summons to Bundula to surrender, giving an hour for reply. A polite refusal to agree to the terms came at half-past three and Cotton gave the order to attack.

  Campbell, during the last four days, had been waiting with growing anxiety for the sight of Cotton’s flotilla rounding the bend of the great 800-yards-wide river below Tharrawaw. He had reloaded his wagons from the supply boats on 1 March, but it was for the last time; henceforward he depended upon Cotton’s flotilla for provisions and ammunition, so without it the advance on to Prome was impossible. But his wagons carried supplies for fifteen days only; every day’s waiting bore heavily on them, which added to Campbell’s sense of frustration and increased his anxiety to advance.

  Early on 7 March the welcome sound of a heavy cannonade echoed up the river valley from the south, lasting until 2 p.m. when it ended. Later, Burmese peasants came in with welcome reports that Bundula had been totally defeated down at Danubyu. Joyfully, Campbell accepted them as true — could the outcome, he must have reasoned, have been otherwise, in view of his past victories? He saw an immediate advance to Prome as imperative now so as to occupy it before the arrival of Bundula’s defeated army, as well as to seize the cattle and rice said to be available there before the Burmese destroyed everything.

  Prudently, however, he waited one more day, then on 9 March, with reports arriving of Bundula’s hasty retreat, began his advance northwards once more, leaving a strong detachment behind to delay the retreating Burmese. For two days, past deserted and ruined villages he marched north through the jungle at the rate of about twelve miles a day, as far as the large town of U-au-deet, upon the right bank of the Irrawaddy. ‘We found it wholly deserted,’ noted Snodgrass, ‘and every article that could be of use to us carried away… The desertion of the towns and villages was obviously a systematical arrangement of the Burmhan chiefs… Here we heard for the first time, that the King had ordered a house to be built for himself at Prome; and had given out that if the English continued their audacious march upon his capital there he would in person meet them, and give them signal cause to repent such rash proceedings.’ If this caused laughter, the scorched earth policy did not, for no food whatever was to be had from the country and Campbell possessed on 11 March a mere ten days’ provisions.

  Soon after first light that day a messenger with a report from Cotton caught up with him. The attack on Danubyu had failed and without large reinforcements it could not be carried. Campbell’s and Cotton’s forces were now separated by a powerful Burmese army in the stronghold of Danubyu.

  Reconnaissance had shown General Cotton that he had not enough troops to sail up river and attack the main Danubyu stockade while at the same time maintaining communications with his depot at Panhlaing, upon which the success of the campaign depended. Sickness, and the several small detachments doing garrison duty, had decreased his British troops until there were only 600 out of the total of 750 ready for action. Moreover, Bundula’s gunners had greatly improved; the fire from his batteries was accurate and commanded the river. He needed a stronger, rather than a weaker force.

  Worse still, he had no choice but to land at the first of the stockades and then painstakingly attack them one by one. At sunrise on 7 March, some 500 British troops were landed a mile below the glimmering white pagoda and formed into two columns, supported by two 6-pounders and a rocket battery. ‘Both columns were led with the utmost steadiness,’ wrote Lieutenant John Marshall of the Royal Navy.

  As they advanced, the armed boats pulled in and cannonaded; while, at proper range, a steady fire was opened from the field-pieces and rocket-battery. This the enemy returned with a perseverance and spirit that had seldom been evinced by them; the gorges of the work attacked were narrow, and completely occupied by the gallant troops who were forcing an entrance, which, when made good, left the Burmese, who are reported to have been 3,000 strong, no alternative but a passage over their own formidable defences.

  They were overtaken in the last abatis, where they stood to fire, until closed upon by the troops inside, and checked by others who had run round outside in search of an entrance to the body of the work. The dead, the wounded, and the panic-struck, fell in one common heap, in and close upon the abatis; of the two latter, 280 were brought in prisoners; and the total loss of the enemy, in this affair, cannot be estimated at less than 430 men. The assailants had about 20 killed and wounded.

  Cotton gave his men a short rest then deployed for the attack on the next stockade, about 300 yards up river, bringing up for this purpose two more 6-pounders, four 5½-inch howitzers and more rockets. When these had cannonaded the enemy’s defences enough to soften them up, Captain Rose led 200 men to the assault. The Burmese at once opened volleys of destructive musketry, which made the columns swerve to the right of the point of attack and into a ditch filled with spikes, under fire.

  All who showed themselves were knocked down. Rose, wounded once already, tried by example to rally his men, but fell by a second shot. Captain Cannon took his place and was at once killed. Casualties among the men were also heavy. When five officers and about a hundred men were seen, through the smoke that swirled around the ditch, to have fallen, Cotton called off the attack and the bugles sounded the peremptory notes of the retreat.

  ‘Although I feel convinced that I could have carried the second work,’ Cotton reported to Campbell, ‘it would have been with a further loss, which would prevent an attempt on the main stockade, and I should have been either left in a position exposed to one of superior strength, or have to relinquish the post after carrying it at a great sacrifice.’ So at 2 a.m. on 8 March he reembarked his men, with all their guns and stores, and dropped down river to Youngyoun, ten miles below Danubyu, from where he had moved early on the 6th.

  This defeat was the price Campbell had paid for leaving the burden of attacking Danubyu entirely upon Cotton’s small force. He had no choice now but to fall back as quickly as possible, join Cotton before Danubyu and launch a second joint attack upon it.

  With what fury he began the march back can be imagined, especially because Danubyu was on the west bank of the Irrawaddy, while he was on the east bank and had therefore somehow to ferry his entire army, with artillery and cavalry, across 800 yards of rapid water, with nothing but a few small canoes. But timber there was in plenty, rafts were quickly made and after the troops had worked day and night, every man had been ferried across by the 17th, five days later. Two more days, however, were taken up with reloading the transport wagons and not until 21 March was Campbell marching south, amid tall elephant grass nearly twenty feet high, through which his prisoners had cut a path.

  Narro
wly escaping being engulfed by a grass fire’s flames on the 23rd, his troops marched another twelve miles next day to within four miles and easy sight of Danubyu’s main stockade, from whence a fleet of war-boats came out and cannonaded one of his reconnoitring parties. The tall masts of Cotton’s flotilla could be seen through the haze, near the horizon, lying at anchor in the 800-yards-wide river.

  By 25 March Campbell was ready for action. He advanced with the intention of surrounding the entire main stockade, but finding it more than half a mile long on the river front, instead took up a position with his left wing on the river and his right curved round towards the centre of the stockade’s western face, anchored on nothing more solid than an extensive bamboo thicket, whose long narrow leaves shone like bayonets.

  That day, 25 March 1825, was a Friday, the seventh day of the Waxing of the Moon of the Month of Tabaung in the Burmese calendar,[43] and moonset would have been about 10 p.m. Shortly before this hour the Burmese liked to launch night attacks so that if forced to retreat they could do so in the dark, and knowing this the British had thrown out a strong picquet line.

  Bundula had created a lookout tower in a giant tree within the stockade, with three heavy guns placed on high platforms at different levels. From it, he closely surveyed the British preparations and, noted Snodgrass, ‘everything about the stockade bespoke system and judgement in the chief, with order, confidence and regularity in the garrison.’

  Having seen from his perch in the tree the weakness of the British right flank, resting only on thin jungle, Bundula suddenly struck at this at about 9.30 p.m. The right flank picquet fired shots in warning then fell back to the main British position. Gongs beat, muskets fired and a full-throated roar came in unison from a large body of Burmese troops which had stalked from the rear of the main stockade and swept around to the northwest to outflank the British right.

  HM’s 38th and 26th Madras Light Infantry at once changed front to their right, knelt down to take better aim, and waiting until the charging Burmese were within thirty yards, knocked them down with heavy volleys in the glare from the flames of a hut the enemy had foolishly set alight. Gongs sounded again in the gloom, the enemy withdrew, then charged once more, but now the field artillery had come up to shower them with grape and cannister shot. Once again they retreated and again the gongs sounded for a fresh charge, but this time in vain. The regular and methodical volleys mowing down the foremost, the solid shot spinning through the column and the shriek and explosion of the rockets, were too deadly to be faced for long. The Burmese broke, fled and took refuge behind the walls of their fort. Soon all was quiet except for the nocturnal jungle sounds and the rest of the night passed without repetition of this desperate attack.

  Once more, both sides in the conflict had witnessed the great gulf between Bundula’s brilliant planning and his troops’ inability to press home an attack successfully by means of disciplined advance in formation. Equipment apart, this was the main difference between the two armies — military discipline and organisation. It would prove decisive.

  But Campbell had now to deal with the urgent problem of shortage of provisions and ammunition. Even on 10 March, Snodgrass reports, he was down to less than ten days’ rations; it was now the 26th and he was still isolated from Cotton’s force, with its abundant supplies. Presumably, he had put his troops on to half rations, for Bundula had seen to it that there was nothing left to eat in the countryside.

  Campbell therefore sent a small column of 300 men around the western face of Danubyu to force its way through the uncleared jungle with the help of three elephants and take a message to Cotton to come up next day, which they succeeded in doing. Their return being opposed by Bundula, the troops joined Cotton’s force and came up on board. Under heavy fire the flotilla approached the guns of the stockade in brilliant sunshine, led by the steamboat Diana. The navy’s gunboats and brigs returned the enemy fire with precision, while Campbell’s field artillery and howitzers in the camp at the same time assaulted the eastern ramparts and water batteries. Many of the Burmese guns were dismounted and their gunners killed. One British boat, holding the Madras European Regiment, was holed, but managed to reach the western bank without sinking.

  Bundula saw clearly enough the danger for him of the British force uniting and did his utmost to prevent it. Burmese sources tell of him maintaining discipline by personally beheading two gunners who ran away when the British shot began to hiss through the air, but he also encouraged his men by sighting guns on the river bank outside the stockade himself, under fierce fire. At the same time he organised a desperate sortie in force, for infantry, cavalry and seventeen caparisoned war elephants each carrying a number of troops armed with musket or jingal, suddenly assaulted Campbell’s weak right flank, with flags flying, gongs beating and the Invulnerables out in front dancing, singing and waving their weapons aloft. The moment was well chosen, for the flotilla had passed the stockade and was then busy anchoring and could give no help.

  Campbell, with foresight, had prepared for just such a situation. The horse artillery galloped forward in front of the camp and began a raking fire into the Burmese flank at about 500 yards’ range. It caused havoc, knocking down the enemy in swathes, leaving heaps of dead and wounded, but with great courage the mass still charged the British right flank. Campbell ordered the dragoons of the Bodyguard to charge and they wove through the cumbersome lines of elephants, which thundered on until their riders were shot off their backs, whereupon they turned about and ambled back into the stockade with ‘the greatest composure’. The entire Burmese force then realised the hopelessness of the task and retreated pell-mell into the fort. One can imagine the unfortunate Bundula’s feelings of despair as this last chance of keeping the enemy forces split up failed, and with it his main chance of defeating them.

  Campbell intended now to hammer Danubyu with his heaviest guns instead of trying to take it by storm, the preservation of his precious troops’ lives being his first concern. The last three days of March were therefore spent constructing batteries and landing heavy guns from the flotilla. On 1 April he ordered his mortars and rockets to open up.

  In salvoes the rockets hissed skyward and descended with ear-splitting combinations of explosions behind the enemy ramparts. These were lucky shots, for early nineteenth-century rockets had not been perfected and were at first not reliable. A salvo was fired when Campbell reconnoitred Danubyu on the day of his arrival; all of them exploded prematurely on the ground, shattering the tubes and scattering deadly fragments in all directions, but hurting no one. At Yandabo in February similar premature explosions occurred. Clumsy handling of these somewhat delicate weapons was the cause, and although the trouble was in due course largely overcome, defiant senior officers of the artillery nevertheless repudiated them and rockets were eventually discarded until more than 100 years later.

  But throughout 1 April 1825 these and the mortars went on with their work of destruction. Wisely, the Burmese took cover and did little to return the enemy fire, much to the surprise of everyone. At daylight next day it was the turn of the breaching batteries and for some time the 18-pounders smashed their missiles against the teak defences, but there was still utter silence behind the splintered ramparts. Suddenly, two Bengali seamen, prisoners of the Burmese, came running out shouting desperately, during a pause in the firing. Bundula himself, they said, had been killed the day before by a rocket. And when this occurred in the full view of all, the soldiers had refused to stay and fight under any other commander, even the dead general’s brother. During the night the entire garrison had fled silently into the jungle, leaving their arms and equipment behind them.

  It was a lucky outcome indeed. One fortunate shot with the rockets despised by orthodox gunners had thus removed Bundula from the entire conflict and delivered Danubyu into Campbell’s hands, together with huge supplies of grain, 130 guns and hundreds of other weapons.

  Bundula, it was afterwards learned, had been overwhelmed by the disgrace of h
is defeat before the Great Pagoda. Afterwards he had looked for death and at Danubyu had sternly refused to take shelter during the British bombardment, or even order his attendant to lower his gilded state umbrella. He was reported to have said: ‘If I die the enemy will attribute victory to that. They cannot say our soldiers were not brave.’ Bluntly he told his officers at Danubyu that he would conquer or die and set his men the example of courage until he fell.

  The news of Bundula’s defeat and the dispersal of his army burst upon King Bagyidaw and his court at Ava like a bombshell. Bagyidaw heard the news in silent amazement and the queen beat her breast and cried, ‘Ama! Ama!’ (Alas! Alas!). Everyone asked who could lead the armies against the British now that the invincible Bundula was dead.[44] Bagyidaw and his ministers feared that the enemy would advance at once on the capital. A ripple of fear ran through the court.

  Now the king began strongly to regret war with the British. He told John Christian, Portuguese chief of the palace artillery, who carried the king’s sword, that he was ‘in the predicament of a man who had got hold of a tiger by the tail, which it was neither safe to hold nor let go.’[45] He knew now that his troops were no match for the ‘white strangers’, and wished he had never started the war, but wounded pride and the palace astrologers’ continued predictions of victory nevertheless made him continue. Fresh hopes were roused, men were levied for a new army in all parts of the empire, the arsenals were kept busy day and night manufacturing gunpowder, repairing old weapons and making new ones.

  One of the king’s ministers, the Pakan-Woon, who had been imprisoned for suspected treason, sent a message to Bagyidaw that he would lead the army, conquer the British and recover all the territory that they had seized. So desperate was Bagyidaw that he accepted the offer, released the Pakan-Woon and restored him to former eminence. At this person’s suggestion, every soldier was to be given a generous sum at once. Against his better judgement the king agreed, but soon heard that the new general had kept most of this money for himself.