Chapter Twenty Five.
February, 1836.
The Burmahs are decidedly a brave nation: the government being despotic, their rulers are cruel, but the people are not. I state this, as cowardice and cruelty usually go hand in hand. Good temper and generosity are the prominent features in their character—excellent materials to work upon in judicious hands. I witnessed acts of courage at the early part of the war, before the Burmahs found out how impossible it was to cope with our superior arms, which were most surprising, and which excited our admiration. They are peculiarly a warlike nation; indeed, they are fond of war. Every man is a soldier, and when ordered out to join the ranks, obeys without receiving any pay, providing his own arms. This fact, at once, establishes that they are inclined to war. Their aims generally consist of a double-handed sword, a weapon of great force, and very large spears; but every one will possess a musket if he can, and if it has not a lock, he will fire it with a match. It is in this point that the Burmahs are so deficient in aims: we used to consider it a very courageous act to venture to fire off a Burmese musket, they were in such a wretched condition: and to crown all, every man makes his own gunpowder. Now it may be easily imagined what stuff this must be; as, previous to an expected combat, each Burmah sits down and composes the article to the best of his knowledge and belief. The consequences are, that when these muskets do go off (and it is ten to one they do not), it is again ten to one that the bullet falls short, from the inefficacy of the powder. There is another singular fact, and one which proves that they have been used to muskets but a short time: it is, that they have no bullet-moulds or leaden bullets. All their bullets are of iron, hammered as round as they can hammer them at the forge; of course the windage produced by this imperfect shape, occasions it to deviate much from its intended direction.
The guns on their stockades and war-boats are equally defective from bad powder, and the hammered iron bullets. It is difficult to know where they could have collected such a curious assemblage. Sometimes you will fall in with a small brass piece of exquisite Spanish manufacture, at others you will find them of the strangest forms that can be conceived. I rather think they were purchased, or taken as a part of the duties on vessels trading to Rangoon. I recollect once at the first taking of a stockade, we knocked off the trunnions of an old iron gun, and left it there as useless. The Burmahs reoccupied the stockade, and we had to take it a second time, when we found that they had most ingeniously supplied the want of trunnions with iron hoops and rivets, and the gun was fired at us before we entered. At another time, we entered a stockade which had kept up a brisk fire for a few minutes, and to our surprise found that they had made wooden guns, very well bound and braced with iron hoops. Of course these guns would not fire more than two or three shots each, as the touch-holes became inflamed, and were soon so large as to render the guns unserviceable; but I mention these points, to prove the perseverance of these people, and the efforts they made in their own defence. After the first campaign it is true that they deserted, and the levies were made by force; but the reason of this, for I inquired into it, was not that they had any objection to fight, but that, fighting without pay, they wanted to go home and put the seed into the ground, as otherwise their wives and families would starve.
The Burmah war-boats are very splendid craft, pulling from eighty to one hundred oars; the Burmahs manage them very dexterously, and will pull them from seven to eight miles an hour. They have a war-boat dedicated to the Deity, which brought intelligence that saved the nation at the time of the war with the empire of Pegu, in a space of time so short, as almost to appear incredible.
As I before observed, the gun mounted on the boat’s bow is of little effect, but their spears are really formidable. At a night attack upon some of our vessels, anchored off a stockade which they wanted to regain, I had an evidence of the force with which they are thrown. The sides of the vessels were covered with them, sticking out like porcupine’s quills, and they had entered the plank with such force, that it required a very strong arm to pull them out again. We lost some men by them; the effect of a hundred spears hurtling through the air at the same time was singularly appalling to our men, who were not accustomed the sound, especially during the night. I heard several of the sailors observe afterwards that they “did not like that at all,” and I am sure they would have infinitely preferred to have been met with fire-arms. Some of these spears were sixteen feet long, with an iron head, sharp at both sides, weighing from twelve to fourteen pounds. I have seen bows and arrows in the possession of the Burmahs, but never have observed that they used them in their conflicts with us. They appeared to despise them. The system of warfare and defence pursued by these people, is undoubtedly excellent for the peculiarities of the country. Their stockades are usually built of any thick teak timber, or rather squared trees, which are much too strong to be penetrated by any other than battering cannon, and, in consequence, were invariably carried by escalade. Some of them are built of bamboos, running from a foot to two feet in diameter. These are equally strong, with the peculiarity that if you fire cannon at them the bamboos yield, admit the shot, and then close again. If these stockades are not close to the river side, they usually have a deep ditch round them, and are further protected by what was more serious to us than the escalading, which were abbatis of pointed bamboos, stuck in a slanting direction in the ground. The slight wounds made by these bamboos brought on lock-jaw, and too often terminated fatally. In the attacks upon us at Rangoon they made their approaches with some degree of military skill, throwing up trenches as they advanced. Their fire-rafts on such a rapid river were also formidable. They have wells of petroleum up the country: their rafts were very large, and on them, here and there, were placed old canoes filled with this inflammable matter. When on fire, it blazed as high as our maintop, throwing out flames, heat, and stink quite enough to drive any one away.
I have mentioned their mode of warfare and their deficiencies, to prove that if the Burmahs had been as well provided with every species of arms equal to our own, the country would not have been so soon subjugated as it was. Their system of defence was good, their bravery was undoubted, but they had no effective weapons. I strongly suspect that they will, now that they have been taught their inferiority, use every means to obtain them; and if so, they will really become a formidable nation. As one proof of their courage, I will mention, that at every stockade there is a look-out man, perched on a sort of pole, about ten feet or more clear of the upper part of the stockade, in a situation completely exposed. I have often observed these men, and it was not till the cannonade had fairly commenced on both sides, that they came down, and when they did, it was without hurry; indeed, I may say, in a most leisurely and indifferent manner. Of their invulnerables and their antics I have already spoken.
In countries governed despotically, life is not so much valued as it is in others. The very knowledge that it may be taken in a moment at the will of the rulers, renders even the cowardly comparatively indifferent. Having been accustomed from our earliest years to anticipate an event, when it actually arrives we meet it with composure and indifference. The lad in England who is brought up to thieving, and who is continually reminded by his parents, that he must be hung before he is twenty goes to the gallows when his turn comes with much sang froid. So it is in a despotic country, where the people witness the heads of their companions roll on the ground, and surmise how soon their own turn will come. I had more than one evidence of this during my stay. In one instance I wished to obtain information from a prisoner, but could extract none. He had been sitting between the carronades on deck for twenty-four hours, and some of the men or officers had given him a bowl of grog and a couple of cigars, with which he was busy when I interrogated him. As he professed ignorance, I told him that if he would not give me the desired information, I should take his head off; and I sent for the serjeant of marines, who appeared with two of his party, and with his drawn sword. We called him out from between the guns, but he begged through the interpreter to be allowed to finish his grog, to which I consented: when that was done, he was again ordered out, but requested leave to finish about an inch of cigar which remained in his mouth. To which I also acceded, not being in a particular hurry to do that which I never intended to do. During all this the man was perfectly composed, and did not show the least alarm at his approaching fate. As soon as the cigar was finished, he bound his long hair up afresh, and made preparation. I again asked him if he would tell, but he pleaded ignorance, and stepped forward, went down on his knees and took off the cloth from about his loins, which he spread on the deck to receive his head, and then putting his hands on the deck, held it in the position to be cut off. Not a muscle trembled, for I watched the man carefully. He was, of course, remanded, and the sailors were so pleased with him, that he went on shore with more grog and more tobacco than he had probably ever seen in his life.
The Burmahs have, however, a means of extracting information from spies, etcetera, which I never saw practised by them, although it was borrowed from them by us. It was in our own quarter-master-general’s office that I witnessed this species of torture, so simple in its operation, and apparently so dreadful in its effects. It consists in giving one single blow upon the region of the heart, so as to stop for some seconds the whole circulation. The way by which this is effected is as follows:— the man—the Burmahs are generally naked to the waist—is made to sit down on the floor; another man stands behind him, and leaning over him, takes a very exact aim with his sharp bent elbow at the precise spot over his heart, and then strikes a blow which, from its being propelled so very mechanically, descends with increased force.
The effect appears dreadful; the dark hue of the sufferer’s face turns to a deadly white; the perspiration bursts out from his forehead, and he trembles in every limb. I never witnessed such apparent agony. These blows repeated three or four times, will unman the most resolute, and they will call for death as a favour.