“A large draft joined from England, about three hundred strong, together with the women and children. This caused a little stir, but it was a short-lived happiness: they went down almost as fast as we could provide coffins for them. We pitched tents and moved our camp daily about the island, but it was no use—cholera and fever still continued. The men began to drink to drown dull care; the officers off the sick list were constantly on Court-Martial duty, and the Colonel received an official letter from Headquarters drawing his attention to the number of Courts-Martial for drunkenness, and directing him to parade the regiment and reprimand the men for their conduct, which was alleged to be the principal cause of the severe mortality. As Staff Officer and adjutant of the regiment I was ordered to read this letter to the men, which I began to do, but I must acknowledge I fairly broke down and had to hand it to another officer to finish. I felt so keenly how our gallant poor fellows were being sacrificed, after their long, hard services, to a climate no one could live in, and how they bore it!”
In April 1844, after a hundred and thirty-six officers and men had fallen victims to the climate of Kulangsu,[144] the regiment was reunited at Chusan. The next station was Hong Kong, where the ordinary routine of garrison life in the East was suddenly broken by an urgent and wholly unexpected call to arms. The people of Canton, always overbearing and offensive towards Europeans, had recently insulted and ill-treated British subjects, and their Mandarins had refused to make redress for the outrages. The British Plenipotentiary, Sir John Davis, was a believer in the saying “A word and a blow, and the blow first,” and he determined to teach the mob of Canton a lesson they would not soon forget. During the night of the 1st of April, 1847, the Royal Irish, under Lieutenant-Colonel Cowper, with 23 officers and 509 other ranks, and the 42nd regiment of Madras Native Infantry, 399 strong, were packed into a couple of small men-of-war and an armed steamer. Early on the following morning the flotilla was off the entrance to the Canton river; the troops were landed, and driving the Chinese artillerymen from the batteries, spiked the guns. The works higher up the stream were then treated in the same way, but not without vigorous opposition from the enemy, whose aim, however, was much distracted by the steady fire of a party of the Royal Irish, described in the despatches as the “acting gunners of the XVIIIth, who replied to the batteries in a style which would have done credit to experienced artillerymen.” As soon as the ships were off Canton the soldiers occupied the “factories”; placed them in a state of defence, and made plans for storming the town. The Royal Irish were looking forward to winning much glory (and much prize money too!) in the capture of Canton, when the Mandarins, greatly perturbed by Sir John Davis’s prompt reprisals, hastily made full atonement for their misdeeds, and the expedition returned to Hong Kong. They had done a good week’s work: 879 guns, many of great calibre, had been spiked, much ammunition destroyed, and a greatly needed lesson given to the Canton roughs—and all without the loss of a soldier, bluejacket, or marine.
General D’Aguilar, who was in command, mentioned in his despatch the following officers of the regiment, viz., Lieutenant-Colonel Cowper; Captain J. Bruce, A.A.G.; Captain Clark Kennedy, Acting A.Q.M.; Captain J. W. Graves; Captain A. N. Campbell, and Lieutenant E. W. Sargent, Acting A.D.C.
Before the troops left Canton the British merchants asked for an officer to train their newly formed Volunteer corps. Captain J. W. Graves was selected, and with part of the Light company spent two months in “the factories,” where between drilling his civilian recruits, drawing up plans for the defence of the settlement against a sudden rush, and eating the good dinners to which the merchants invited him, his time was fully occupied. Soon after this detachment rejoined headquarters the regiment was warned to prepare to sail for India, and on November 20, 1847, embarked for Bengal on the transport ship Balcarres. Major W. F. Dillon was in command; with him were 24 officers, 42 sergeants, 15 drummers, and 595 rank and file, and when he arrived at Fort William on January 10, 1848, he found awaiting him drafts from England amounting to 7 officers, 1 drummer, and 334 rank and file. Thus the XVIIIth began its tour of duty in India with a total strength of one thousand and eighteen of all ranks.
[CHAPTER VI.]
1848-1854.
THE SECOND WAR WITH BURMA.
When the XVIIIth Royal Irish regiment arrived in India the Sikh War appeared to be over, and all chance of winning fresh laurels seemed relegated to the distant future. Further troubles, however, broke out in the Punjab, and for a time the regiment had every hope of again seeing active service under Sir Hugh Gough, as it was ordered up country and incorporated in the “Army of Reserve” on its arrival at Umballa in March, 1849. But Gough’s victory at Goozerat[145] had finally crushed the power of our gallant foes; the “Army of Reserve” was not called upon to take the field, and the Royal Irish remained at Umballa till the end of 1849, when they marched to Meerut, where a draft of two hundred and twenty recruits from home awaited them. The two flank companies did not accompany headquarters, as in November they had been sent on an important and interesting duty: they formed the European portion of the escort selected to guard the Marquis of Dalhousie, Governor-General of India, in his progress from Rurki to Lahore, the capital of the great province just added to the British dominions. This detachment of the XVIIIth was commanded by Captain C. A. Edwards, who in a statement prepared for this history mentions that as it was feared fanatics would attempt to murder the Governor-General in his sleep, four picked men of the Royal Irish at night patrolled the space between the inner and outer walls of Lord Dalhousie’s tent. These sentries appear to have been abnormally ceremonious in their manners, for the Governor-General, while warmly praising their incessant vigilance, said that he had only one fault to find with them—they would salute him when he was in his dressing-gown! It is not clear whether Edwards’ party were present at the historic scene of Dhuleep Singh’s deposition at Lahore, but they acted nominally as guard of honour, but virtually as escort to this important prisoner on his journey to Meerut. In the cold weather of 1850 the regiment was ordered back to Calcutta; from Allahabad the journey was by river, in flats towed by small steamers. On its arrival it was quartered in Fort William, where, when all outlying detachments had been collected, Colonel Reignolds had under his command a magnificent regiment of eleven hundred and five officers and men. As it was generally understood that the Royal Irish would be ordered home in a few months, many officers obtained leave of absence and started for England under the firm impression that for some time there would be no more fighting in the East.[146] But the truth of the saying “You never know your luck” has seldom been better illustrated than in the case of the XVIIIth at the beginning of 1852, when the regiment found itself hurried off to take part in an expedition to Burma.
The causes of this war, the second which the Burmese had forced upon us in the course of thirty years, were almost identical with those which had brought about the conflict with China, described in the [preceding chapter]. Persistent disregard of treaties and systematic oppression of European traders had culminated in maltreatment of British subjects so flagrant that our Government was compelled to seek redress by arms; and in each theatre of war the prestige of Britain was re-established by the combined efforts of both branches of the Service. The dissensions between England and the King of Ava, as the ruler of Burma was officially described, were brought to a climax by the misconduct of one of his lieutenants, the governor of Rangoon, who wantonly imprisoned the master of a British ship, and exposed him in the stocks to the gibes and insults of an Eastern rabble. When a squadron demanded reparation for this outrage the Burmese temporised, but soon so clearly showed they did not mean to mend their ways that the commodore seized a Burmese ship-of-war and blockaded the port of Rangoon. The truculent governor retaliated by confiscating the property of all British subjects within his reach; and the sailors thereupon towed their prize to sea under a heavy fire from the stockades on the banks of the Rangoon river. When this news reached Calcutta the Indian Government at once ordered a combined naval and military expedition[147] to rendezvous at the mouth of the branch of the Irrawaddy on which Rangoon stands, and on January 19, 1852, Lieutenant-Colonel Reignolds with the headquarters and right wing of the regiment (444 all told) embarked at Calcutta, followed in a few weeks by Lieutenant-Colonel C. J. Coote with the left wing, 518 strong.[148] This was not the first time that the sails of a great British expedition had whitened Burmese waters. In 1824, the King of Ava had invaded the territories of the East India Company, an act of unprovoked aggression punished by the capture of Rangoon, and followed by a long series of operations, in which a very large number of the British troops perished of disease before the Burmese sued for peace, and ceded to us the provinces of Aracan and Tenasserim, long narrow strips of territory washed respectively by the waters of the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. Rangoon was restored to the King of Ava, and with it two hundred miles of coast-line that lay like a wedge between our new dominions.[149]