by George Bruce
In the moral climate of the place and time, this was reasonable, hardly an event to overshadow the Pakan-Woon’s future, but he then made two audacious and highly suspicious requests. First, that he should be allowed to take the Royal Bodyguard with him to battle: second, that Bagyidaw should leave the royal palace and go to the Mengoon Pagoda to pray and make offerings for military success. Both acts, if carried out, would effectively strip the king of power.
Bagyidaw easily saw through this clumsy scheme to make him leave the royal palace — occupation of which gave him his divine right as king — and also to strip him of his guard. He decided it was treason and ordered the Pakan-Woon to be seized, beaten through the city to the palace of execution and there trodden to death with elephants, which was done. Bagyidaw then transferred command of the new army to his brother the Prince of Tharrawaddy. About 70,000 strong, it was assembled at Meaday, forty miles north of Prome.
Meanwhile, Campbell had set his army in motion again, Cotton sailing up by the Irrawaddy towards the objective of Prome, while he himself rode at the head of the land column past the smoking ruins of villages and through the deserted countryside — for the Burmese, despite Bundula’s death, still followed his policy of denying their enemy everything.
Then one morning Campbell received a letter from two of the king’s advisers saying that Bagyidaw was ready to end the war by treaty. Campbell answered that he would be ready to negotiate after he had arrived in Prome. He received another letter saying that Prome should not be occupied, but that negotiations should be opened in the space of country between the Burmese and British armies. Campbell declared that the military occupation of Prome could not be dispensed with, and continued to advance. He finally entered it on 25 April, to find it mostly in flames behind a newly built line of defences and all the inhabitants driven into the jungle. The offer to negotiate, it seemed, had been simply a ruse to gain time.
Ava was still 200 miles north and to reach it before the rains came, in about two weeks, was impossible. Campbell therefore decided to put his army into quarters at Prome and the troops settled in as best they could. Soon the inhabitants began to return, houses were rebuilt, good relations were established between British and Burmese, civil magistrates were reinstated, with limitations on their authority; food appeared on the markets in abundance and the health of the troops was reasonably good. Only one man in seven died of dysentery, cholera or malaria during this period.
Campbell believed that after the rains he would at last be able to end the war quickly, either by military victory or by a treaty, on his own terms. During the long days and weeks of the monsoon when rain splashed down unceasingly from the low black clouds it was an encouragement for all.
8: BURMESE SILVER
Hopefully, in September, Campbell wrote to the Burmese command warning of the ‘ruinous consequences’ to the king of prolonging the war and urging them to listen to the lenient peace terms that he offered. In return, a mission from Ava arrived at Prome in due course to state the king’s own desire for peace and the two sides therefore agreed that negotiations should open on the plain of Neoun-ben-zeik half way between Prome and Meaday. The Burmese, it was later discovered, had expected the British to march inflexibly upon Ava and regarded the offer to negotiate as evidence of weakness, perhaps of sickness among the troops. It naturally stiffened their attitude to the negotiations.
An armistice was arranged. The Kee Wungyi, or prime minister, and his party, afterwards camped on the plain a mile away from Sir Archibald Campbell and his aides, each group escorted by 600 men, the Kee Wungyi’s rank not letting him move with a smaller escort. Both groups then left their camps at the same time and met at an equidistant conference house where, after much hand shaking, demonstrations of friendly feelings and Burmese inquiries after the British royal family’s health, the two parties sat down in chairs facing each other, and started talking.
But, Campbell’s Military Secretary, Snodgrass, noted, ‘it was too evident, from the very first, that the negotiations would lead to nothing.’ Campbell stated the British terms — they included cession of Arakan and Tenasserim plus an indemnity of a million sterling — together with a recital of the war’s causes. The Burmese listened, tried to persuade him to withdraw the main demands on the grounds that it might cost them their heads to tell Bagyidaw about them, and finally asked for another twenty days’ armistice so that His Majesty’s commands upon the issue might be received by them.
This Campbell granted; but within two or three days reports began to come in that Burmese army detachments had entered the neutral armistice zone burning, plundering and laying the country waste almost up to the gates of Prome, cutting off river-borne supplies for the army and threatened British communications with Rangoon and the sea.
Campbell sent strongly worded protests to the Kee Wungyi, who denied all knowledge of it. Finally, towards the end of the twenty days, he received a laconic answer to his terms: ‘If you wish for peace, you may go away; but if you ask either money or territory, no friendship can exist between us. This is Burmhan custom!’[46]
The entire Burmese army, obeying the king’s new commands to surround and attack the rebel strangers on all sides, then advanced upon Prome in three divisions. The one on the right, 15,000 men, crossed the Irrawaddy and moved forward so as to intercept British communication with their rear. The centre one, up to 30,000 strong and commanded personally by the Kee Wungyi, advanced down the east river bank, supported by a fleet of war-boats escorting the provision and supply vessels. More to the east, on the far side of a belt of forest, marched the left division, also 15,000 strong, commanded by Maha Nemiao, an old and experienced general lately arrived from the court with orders from Bagyidaw to direct the general operations of the army in what was thought to be a new style of warfare. How this was to be done when he was divided from the centre column by a forest barrier several miles thick, so that each column could be attacked separately without being able to aid the other, is hard to understand. But as well as these three corps, a reserve of 10,000 men occupied a strongly fortified position at Minhla; another force was ready to oppose any enemy advance from Arakan and still another in the region of old Pegu, threatened an attack on Rangoon.
Campbell’s hopes of a swift finish seemed dashed, for altogether it added up to a formidable threat, considerably stronger on the face of it than the power with which the British could counter it. At Prome, Campbell had only six weak British battalions, making 2,800 of all ranks; seven battalions of the Madras Native Infantry, about 3,000, besides a troop of the Governor-General’s Bodyguard and a strong force of foot and horse artillery. Rangoon was held merely by a garrison force of 3,000, mainly Sepoys; while at old Pegu were the 102nd Regiment and three Sepoy battalions. So that after garrisoning Prome, Campbell had a field force to meet the enemy north of it of some 3,000 men, just over half British. It was hardly enough.
Maha Nemiao, now putting into operation the new strategy which, it was hoped, would finally turn the tide against the British, advanced to Watty-goon, sixteen miles north-east of Prome, from where he threatened to cut Campbell’s links with the south. Campbell therefore, on 13 November, sent Colonel McDowall and three battalions of Madras Native Infantry to attack the enemy’s left flank while one battalion held them in front. But Maha Nemiao’s scouts had told him of the British moves. In sharp contrast to the usual Burmese stockade tactics, he didn’t wait to be attacked, but sent his troops out against the enemy and meeting them half way began a running fight through the jungle, aided by cavalry whenever open country intervened.
In this way he completely prevented the juncture of McDowall’s forces. Two battalions of them reached the Watty-goon stockade separately, but both failed in their attack. McDowall was shot dead while reconnoitring it; a retreat was ordered. One column had to fight off jungle attacks through almost the whole sixteen miles. Total losses amounted to 12 officers and 188 men killed or wounded.
A discouraging start for Campbell, it e
mboldened the veteran Nemiao, who now advanced upon the British at Prome, prudently stockading every mile as he moved, while bringing forward at the same time the centre and the right column on the far side of the river. Soon the British saw the centre column from Prome stockading the heights of the ridge of Napadi, five miles distant. ‘Every day now produced a change in the Burmese line, working incessantly, night and day,’ Snodgrass noted.
Each morning discovered to us some new work in front of where their advanced parties had been posted on the preceding evening. It seemed to be the intention of the veteran chief… not to risk his reputation, and perhaps his head, by any rash attempt which might lead to failure, but to push his approaches so near that a simultaneous and overwhelming rush might be made from all sides upon the British force… His astrologers had foretold that an approaching lunar eclipse would undoubtedly prove a favourable time for commencing his attack.
Eight thousand Shan troops from the hills of northern Burma who had not yet fought against the British and were expected to display some toughness had reinforced the Burmese army. They were encouraged by three young and beautiful Shan women of high social rank, prophetesses who, it was believed, possessed also the miraculous power of turning aside the enemy shot and shell. Attractive, in a sort of Amazonian dress, the three rode their ponies among the troops, predicting a speedy victory and urging them with vibrant voices to destroy the rebel strangers. Whether these women were part of the Burmese monarch’s apparatus of deception, or had some ancient anthropological meaning it is hard to say.
Campbell and his staff saw clearly that the two Burmese divisions on the east of the river were so far apart that they could not give each other any support. This was positively playing into his hands, for he could now overcome each separately. On 1 December, Commodore Sir James Brisbane opened a heavy cannonade upon the enemy’s western and centre columns, a feint to draw his attention while Campbell, leaving four regiments of Sepoys to hold Prome, formed two columns, one under his and the other under Cotton’s command, to attack Maha Nemiao’s division at Simbike. At the same time, as part of the feint, a force of Sepoys moved as if to attack the Kee Wungyi’s position at Napadi.
Cotton’s force marched straight along the road to Simbike; Campbell’s, after fording the Nawin river, moved as quietly as possible along its bank so as to attack from the rear and cut off retreat upon the Kee Wungyi’s division.
It was a complicated but clever plan and well executed, for the enemy picquets had been all withdrawn, probably sent in the direction of the harassed centre column, so that Nemiao’s position at Simbike was exposed to a sudden attack. Cotton reached it first, divided his force into two parties and assaulted two different points of the enemy stockades. The Shans, urged on by old Maha Nemiao himself — carried from point to point in a gilded palanquin — fought well until the British forced their way over the stockade ramparts and advanced in line upon them with destructive volleys. ‘Horses and men ran in wild confusion from side to side, trying to avoid the fatal fire,’ Snodgrass observed. ‘Groups were employed in breaking down and trying to force a passage through the defences, while the brave, who disdained to fly, still offered a feeble and ineffectual opposition to the advancing troops.’
Nemiao fell while still urging his men to stand their ground; his body, with sword and gold chain of office, was afterwards found among those of his attendants. One of the beautiful Shan fortune-tellers was found wounded in the breast and carried from the battleground to a nearby cottage, where in a short time she died. Campbell’s column met the Burmese and Shan troops running from the stockade through the jungle, where the horse artillery opened up on them. A shrapnel shell exploded above another of the Shan ladies while she was crossing the river on horseback; she fell into the water and was carried off by her attendants.
The Burmese left division had thus been routed, the commanding general killed.
Campbell decided to attack the Kee Wungyi’s centre column at dawn next day, to try and overwhelm it before he retreated. After allowing his troops two hours’ rest he marched them back to a bivouac near the ford of the river Nawin. This they reached after dark, tired out after nearly fourteen hours’ marching and fighting through jungle and forest in the stifling heat. During the night Campbell sent a message to Commodore Brisbane requesting him to be ready to move the flotilla forward to cannonade the enemy position at Napadi as soon as the troops moved out of the jungle to attack.
At dawn next day, 2 December, the long columns of redcoats were swallowed up by the ubiquitous jungle green after somehow having found the energy for another day’s fighting in far harder country. Campbell’s column took a jungle path which brought it out upon a dusty yellow plain below Napadi’s stockaded heights; Cotton’s tried to find a way through the forest behind Napadi to strike at the Burmese rear.
The Kee Wungyi, or his military advisers, had chosen what looked like an almost impregnable position. Ranges of hills rose in a bend of the Irrawaddy, the second commanding the first and the third the second, all lying between the river’s green verge and the dark forest behind the topmost range. Along the flat sandy beach lay the only road to the heights, but this was exposed to the fire of Burmese troops stockaded in nearby jungle. Campbell ordered six companies of HM’s 87th to make their way through the jungle, attack this stockade from the rear and drive out the enemy. And this, in a matter of two hours, they accomplished.
A line of masts could be seen in the distance as Commodore Brisbane sailed up river, cannonading both the Napadi heights and the Burmese positions on the western bank as well. As the echoes of the gunfire ceased rumbling along the heights Campbell began anxiously awaiting the sound of musketry which would signal Cotton’s attack from the rear and give the frontal assault up those steep brown ridges a fair chance of succeeding.
But it was not to be: Campbell the optimist was frustrated again. He waited anxiously for what seems to have been three or four hours for Cotton’s attack, then formed up his troops for the grim frontal assault alone, first ordering Colonel Elrington to take the 47th Foot and the 38th Madras Native Infantry through the jungle and make a diversionary attack upon the enemy’s left flank. Sound tactics often saved Campbell when optimism led him to venture too far.
Elrington luckily succeeded soon in getting through the jungle and diverting Burmese attention from their front. Campbell then gave the word, and HM’s 13th, 38th and 87th regiments slowly and deliberately began the uphill advance without returning a shot to the Burmese volleys and stormed the first two stockades at the base of the lowest hill. It was exhausting work, yet under a heavy fire in the burning heat they again marched steadily forward, conserving energy as best they could, clearing the stockades at the summit of the next range and finally routing the enemy on the third as well, thus mastering the entire position, some three miles in extent. The defeat of the enemy on the left bank of the Irrawaddy was now complete,’ Snodgrass noted. ‘Between 40 and 50 pieces of artillery were captured and the material of his army taken or destroyed: his loss, in killed and wounded, had been very severe; and by desertion alone he had lost at least a third of his men.’
During the assault, Commodore Brisbane and the naval flotilla captured 300 enemy boats, containing what seem to have been Burmese reserve stores of grain, shot, gunpowder and weapons.
After this feat of exceptional courage and endurance, which showed again that a feudal horde, even under the most favourable conditions, could not withstand the disciplined troops of an industrial power, the defeat of the third enemy division on the far side of the river was soon done. Campbell set up rocket and mortar batteries on an island within range of the enemy stockades, pounded them for two or three hours early on 5 December, then landed infantry higher up who attacked their left flank and rear. After their defeats on the far side, the Burmese put up a very weak resistance and were driven from both stockades with substantial losses.
These three actions were a turning point in the war. For the Burmese, who made
no more offensive movements and thereafter retreated northwards to link up with their reserves; and for the British, who now believed they saw victory for certain within their grasp.
But the implacable Campbell gave his army only two or three days’ rest; then deployed the weary troops for the march north towards the distant capital, once more in two divisions, Cotton with a track parallel to the river in communication with the flotilla; his own three days in advance and to the right. Enemy reserves under Prince Memiaboo were known to be at Meaday, sixty miles north on the Irrawaddy.
Campbell therefore intended to turn this and other enemy positions by a wide flanking movement, linking up with Cotton there. He also believed that Brigadier Morrison would come over the mountains from Arakan, and Richards too, from Assam, to join him, being unaware of the sad outcome of these two campaigns. So he was moving alone into the depths of this strange and unpredictable country.
Provisions for two months, mainly rice and biscuit in ox-drawn wagons, accompanied the six-mile-long procession of infantry in their torn and muddy red coats and barely recognisable white trousers. Heavy rains deluged the jungle paths on 11 and 12 December, officers and men stumbled forward through dripping 20-foot-high elephant grass, the ground became a yellow morass, wagons and artillery were bogged down, and soon exhausted or dead transport animals and their loads blocked the way. After a night spent in a dried-up river bed, the troops were again hit by cholera on 13 December, which killed quickly scores of both Sepoy and British before it abated.
Evidence of the enemy’s scorched earth policy was first seen at Seindoop, formerly a large town and then a heap of ashes, deserted but for starving cats and dogs.
