Soon after this encounter, the camp was thrown into an unusual state of excitement. The Commissioner was cool and collected as usual, but news of an important and possibly disagreeable nature had evidently just reached him.
At any rate, a number of padded elephants, heavily laden with armed Europeans and Sepoys, were at once ordered to the front, and went off in hot haste. Without being aware of it at the time, we were within a day’s march of a large stockade, the capture of which was the main object of the Expedition. For a few hours the camp was plunged in profound silence; the remaining troops being kept under cover, ready at a moment’s notice for any emergency.
And so we remained until the shadows of the trees began to lengthen considerably, when one of the troopers galloped up with a despatch, from which it appeared that, as our force appeared in sight, the Burmese had fled for their lives, leaving only a few decrepid old men and women, some pariah-dogs, and a number of cooking utensils. Thus was extracted this thorn from the Commissioner’s side without a shot having been fired. He out-Cæsar’d Cæsar, for he came and conquered without even seeing! Those who were not needed to garrison the place returned to camp that evening, while other elephants went with provisions, &c., for the new occupants.
From this it would appear that the Burmese were totally ignorant of our approach until we were within a day’s march of their stronghold, and then in all probability only by the merest accident.
Some woodcutter in the vicinity may have spied us out that morning and, seeing so many laden elephants and armed men, conveyed a very exaggerated report of our strength. On the backs of these pachyderms must be large guns; at all events he fancied he saw them, and reported them.
He must any way have piled on the agony, else the enemy would scarcely have evacuated a position already strong by nature, and rendered still more so by art, without striking so much as a blow.
Such conduct indeed could only be accounted for on the supposition that they imagined us in possession of large cannon; the range and power of our guns may have been known to some of them, and, having already profited by the lessons of hard experience, they were by no means anxious for further instruction.
The evacuation was described as one of the most disorderly, precipitate, sauve qui peut affairs which it is possible to imagine. They melted away on the principle of “The devil take the hindmost,” and they certainly left very little for his satanic majesty.
Some allowance must, however, be made for their behaviour. To their intense bewilderment they were about to be attacked in the rear, a direction from which they least expected it; and, while still cogitating over the unwelcome intelligence, they suddenly behold a herd of elephants bearing down upon their stockade as fast as they could be urged along, each teeming with redcoats armed cap-à-pie. A belt of forest moreover hid our force till close at hand, when its sudden appearance created a “panic.”
All doubt and uncertainty were now at an end, and the sole remaining impediment to the peace of the province had now been removed by a bold strategy, in which were displayed some of the finest qualities of the human mind—true courage, self-reliance, ability to act on one’s own convictions, and far-seeing perspicuity.