endeavoured to combine treachery within the British lines to force from without. Numbers of Burmese had now returned to Rangoon, and, among others, deserters from the Burman army. On the night of the 12th December, the cry of 'fire' resounded through the town, and the whole place was immediately in a blaze; the incendiaries had evidently placed the matches in various parts of the town; fortunately, the depôt of stores and ammunition was in a quarter that the fire did not reach; but half the town was destroyed. This determined Sir A. Campbell at once to march against Kokeen, though he could spare no more than fifteen hundred men for this desperate service, which was to attack a formidable fieldwork defended by at least twenty thousand men. Their minds, however, were firmly wound up to the trial. They had been too long accustomed to success to doubt its attainment, even on the present occasion; and, formidable as the place appeared, they well knew there was no retreating, and that no choice was left between victory and an honourable grave.' Having cleared a forest they had to march through, the enemy's sharpshooters began to annoy them in flank and rear, which determined them on an immediate attack.

'The signal gun was no sooner fired, than the troops with their scalingladders moved steadily forward; the enemy, apparently regarding the attempt as madness, continued for some time stamping and beating time together, with their hands upon their breasts, and their muskets at the shoulder, instead of attempting to check the assailants while yet at a sufficient distance from their works; and when at length they did open a fire, it proved all too late to save them from defeat: the troops had already reached the ditch, and were in a great measure protected from its effects. Brigadier-general Cotton's column experienced the greatest difficulty in reaching the interior of the stockade: they had several strong entrenchments to carry before they gained the main work; in doing which, four officers and a considerable number of men of the thirteenth regiment were killed, and many officers and men wounded.

The attack in front, uninterrupted by any outworks, instantly succeeded: the leading troops, entering by escalade, drove the Burmese from their ramparts at the point of the bayonet, and were speedily followed by their comrades from every corner of the work: the enemy no longer thought of resistance for any other object than the preservation of their lives, and the confused multitude, galled by continued volleys, retired in great disorder, through the few outlets in the rear, where, in crossing the narrow plain that led into the jungle, they were met by the Governor-general's body-guard of cavalry, by whose wellused sabres many perished. The interior of the stockade, as well as the ditch, were strewed with dead and dying, and many of the enemy, who found escape impossible, with the never-failing cunning and ingenuity of their nation, besmeared themselves with blood, and lay down under the dead bodies of their comrades, in the hope of escaping when

darkness

darkness set in: but they were mostly discovered, and made prisoners. Here ended the operations in front of Rangoon: the British troops returned, the same evening, to their cantonments, and the remnant of the Burmese army retreated finally upon Donoobew, leaving posts on the Lain and Panlang rivers, to harass and detain the British force in moving forward.'—pp. 125—127.

None of the enemy's troops appearing any longer before Rangoon, or our advance posts, on the 11th February the force equipped for the expedition against Donabew was put in motion. The land column, under the immediate command of Sir Archibald Campbell, consisted of thirteen hundred European infantry, a thousand sepoys, two squadrons of dragoons, a troop of horse-artillery, and a rocket troop; the marine column, under Brigadier-general Cotton, consisted of eight hundred European infantry, a small battalion of sepoys, and a powerful train of artillery; and these were embarked in a flotilla of sixty boats, each carrying one or two pieces of artillery, (twelve and twenty-four pound carronades,) and commanded by Captain Alexander, of the navy, escorted by the boats of the men-of-war lying at Rangoon, containing upwards of one hundred British seamen. The first column was to proceed parallel with the Lain, and the latter up the Panlang river, and, driving the enemy from his stockades at Panlang, to push on with all possible expedition to Donabew.

The march of the column under Sir Archibald Campbell was through a country almost wholly deserted; all the villages had been burnt down, and the inhabitants had either fled or been driven away; the wild hog and tiger alone seemed to have escaped the general persecution. Some wretched families of Rangoon were frequently found wandering in the woods in the last degree of misery and want. This column marched on till it reached Sarrawah, full thirty miles beyond Donabew. Here it remained inactive four days; on the fifth day, says Major Snodgrass, they heard the agreeable sound of a heavy cannonade at Donabew: they believed it to proceed from the marine division, and when it ceased, felt a strong conviction that Donabew had fallen. We do not exactly understand the grounds on which they were so easily convinced that a small corps, not exceeding one thousand men, had succeeded in capturing one of the strongest positions in the Burman empire, manned with fifteeen thousand veteran troops, under the command of its ablest and most-experienced general. Such, however, seems to be the case; and Sir Archibald Campbell, with his land column, very coolly continued his march towards Prome, though, his historian says, 'starvation stared us in our face at every step we had proceeded.' On the fourth day of their advance, however, that is to say, on the 11th March, official intelligence

ligence was received that our troops had failed in their attack upon the outworks of Donoobew.' Not one word more is said of this 'failure,' nor does the name of Captain Alexander, of the navy, who commanded, or at least accompanied, the flotilla, once appear in the operations of this marine column. We can, however, fill up some of these blanks from another source.

The fortress of Donabew consisted of three stockades; the largest, on the upper part of the stream, having a strong battery to the river side, and another looking downwards to defend the second stockade; and this second stockade, with the same kind of defences on the river, looking down upon and protecting the third and smallest stockade. It might have been supposed that the object of Brigadier-general Cotton would be to pass the whole fortress and take the enemy in flank, and thus render all his guns, in their present situation, useless; instead of which, he attacked the smallest stockade, and that lowest down the stream, first, which, after an obstinate resistance, was taken; he then proceeded to the second, where he met with the severest check that the European troops had received during the whole war. Three hundred of our men were killed and wounded; and the retreat was so precipitate that the wounded were not carried off. The whole flotilla retreated ten miles down the river, constantly assailed and tormented by the Burmese warboats. The next day most of the killed and wounded men, who had been left in the stockade, were crucified upon rafts, which were sent down the stream to remind the invaders of their illconcerted and injudicious attempt.

Here the flotilla lay waiting for the land column, under. Sir Archibald Campbell, from the 7th, the day of the unfortunate attack, till the 26th, when the latter appeared before Donabew, and commenced its attack at the point where the former ought to have done so. The flotilla now moved up the river to co-operate

with the General's column.

'At nine o'clock this morning, the flotilla was seen in full sail up the river; and they were no sooner observed than the garrison sortied in considerable force, infantry and cavalry, with seventeen war elephants, fully caparisoned, and carrying a proportion of armed men. This attack was, as usual, directed upon our right; and while the flotilla came up in full sail, under all the fire of the fort, the cavalry, covered by the horse-artillery, was ordered to charge the advancing monsters: the scene was novel and interesting; and although neither the elephants nor their riders can ever be very formidable in modern warfare, they stood the charge with a steadiness and courage those animals can be rarely brought to show. Their riders were mostly shot, and no sooner did the elephants feel themselves unrestrained by the hand of their drivers, than they walked back to the fort, with the greatest composure. The flotilla having passed the fort, with trifling

loss,

loss, anchored on our left. During the heavy cannonade that took place between the boats and the stockade, the Bandoola, who was superintending the practice of his artillery, gave his garrison a specimen of the discipline he meant to enforce in this last struggle to retrieve his lost character and reputation. A Burmese officer being killed while pointing a gun, by a shot from the flotilla, his comrades, instantly abandoning the dangerous post, could not be brought back to their duty by any remonstrances of their chiefs; when Bandoola, stepping down to the spot, instantly severed the heads of two of the delinquents from their bodies, and ordered them to be stuck up upon the spot, "pour encourager les autres.”—p. 170.

For five days the two contending armies remained nearly quiet; -the Burmese strengthening their works, and the British constructing batteries, and landing heavy ordnance. On the 1st April the mortar-batteries and rockets began their work of destruction. At day-light, on the 2d,

The breaching batteries opened, and almost immediately afterwards two Lascars, who had been prisoners in the fort, came running out, and informed us, that Bandoola had been killed the day before by a rocket; and that no entreaty of the other chiefs could prevail upon the garrison to remain, the whole having fled or dispersed, during the preceding night. The British line was, in consequence, immediately under arms, and the place taken possession of. Sufficient proof remained in the interior, of the hurry and confusion of the flight; not a gun was removed, and even the large depôt of grain which had been formed, remained uninjured-the dread of detection having prevented the enemy from putting the torch to what they well knew would be a most valuable acquisition to the British army. In the fort we found a number of wounded men, who all concurred in saying their general had been killed; and one poor fellow, with both his feet shot off, related the story so circumstantially, as to leave no doubt whatever of the fact it was as follows:-"I belonged to the household of Menghi Maha Bandoola, and my business was to beat the great drums that are hanging in the viranda of the Wongee's house. Yesterday morning, between the hours of nine and ten, while the chief's dinner was preparing, he went out to take his usual morning walk round the works, and arrived at his observatory, (that tower with a red ball upon it,) where, as there was no firing, he sat down upon a couch that was kept there for his use. While he was giving orders to some of his chiefs, the English began throwing bombs, and one of them falling close to the Wongee, burst, and killed him on the spot: his body was immediately carried away and burned to ashes; his death was soon known to every body in the stockade, and the soldiers refused to stay and fight under any other commander. The chiefs lost all influence and command over their men, every individual thinking only of providing for his own personal safety." But, even in a desultory and disorderly flight of this nature, the characteristic cunning and caution of the nation was conspicuous, effecting their retreat with such silence and circumspection,

as

as would have been a lesson to the best-disciplined army in Europe. The character of Maha Bandoola seems to have been a strange mixture of cruelty and generosity, talent with want of judgment, and a strong regard to personal safety, combined with great courage and resolution, which never failed him till death. The acts of barbarous cruelty he committed are too numerous to be related: stern and inflexible in all his decrees, he appears to have experienced a savage pleasure in witnessing the execution of his bloody mandates; even his own hand was ever ready to punish with death the slightest mark of want of zeal in those he had intrusted with commands, or the defence of any post. Still his immediate adherents are said to have been sincerely attached to him; uncontrolled license to plunder and extort from all who are unfortunate enough to meet Bandoola's men, may no doubt have reconciled them to their situation, and confirmed them much in their attachment to their leader.'-p. 173.

This victory may be considered to have decided the fate of the war. The road was now open to Prome: on our march to which, an elderly man came in as the bearer of a pacific communication from the chiefs of the Burman army. This old gentleman drank much too freely for a diplomatist; and in taking leave whispered in the General's ear, They are frightened out of their senses, and you may do what you please with them.' Το another communication, demanding that the city of Prome should not be occupied by British troops, it was answered, that the military occupation of that place could not be dispensed with.

On arriving at the ridge of hills which cover Prome to the southward, each hill was found to be fortified to the very summit; but the stockades were unoccupied; and the column, pushing on to the city, found it already in a blaze, which, with great exertion, was got under, but not until it had destroyed a great part of the town. It seems that, after setting fire to the place, and destroying everything that could be supposed to be of use to the invaders, they began their disgraceful flight, in the utmost confusion, headed by the Prince Surrawaddy, burning and laying waste the villages on their route, driving thousands of helpless, harmless people from their houses to the woods.

Our army were now established in comfortable winter-quarters at Prome; and in order to avail themselves of the resources of the country, a detachment was sent to take possession of Tonghoo, about forty miles east of Prome, and at one time the second city in the empire. Wherever a Burmese force had preceded the British column, desolation marked its track; even Russia,' says Major Snodgrass, 'in her memorable resistance to the armies of Napoleon, did not offer to the invading host such a continued scene of desolation: neither man nor beast escaped the retiring columns; and heaps of ashes, with groups of hungry, howling

dogs,