In the first phase of the campaign of 1852-53, the operations were chiefly confined to the capture of important towns near the mouths of the great rivers which, rising in the Himalayas, flow through the swamps and forests of Burma on their way to the Indian Ocean. The war-steamers forced their way up the streams and engaged the stockades and other defences on the banks; while the soldiers landed, stormed these works, and then, pushing forward into the jungle, carried the towns by assault. While the operations were confined to the immediate neighbourhood of rivers and navigable creeks no question of land transport arose, but when it became necessary to send columns of troops deep into the interior of the country, the innumerable difficulties of fighting in a pathless and tropical jungle at once made themselves felt. The ships could indeed bring stores to the point on the river from which the column struck inland; they could hold a base upon which the troops could fall back in case of need; but there the power of the navy ceased. The wants of the soldiers could only be supplied by bullock-carts or elephants, and the long lines of transport animals had to wind their way through a densely wooded country, admirably suited to the guerilla tactics of surprises and ambuscades. Like the Chinese, the Burmans though brave as individuals were undisciplined as soldiers, and as a rule preferred to fight behind ramparts to meeting their enemy in the field. In China the garrisons of the cities waited our attack behind high stone walls; in Burma the defenders of the towns manned huge timber stockades, in the building of which they were very skilful. A nation of woodsmen, with their sharp square-pointed swords they could hew down forest trees and run up timber barricades with extreme rapidity, and when time was allowed them they could produce really formidable fortifications, such as those awaiting the British at Rangoon. These consisted of a substantial rampart, fourteen or fifteen feet high, about twelve feet wide on the top, and revetted within and without by great teak logs placed vertically, with the lower ends sunk in the ground. The intervening space was filled with well-rammed earth. The logs of the outer revetment stretched up some six feet or more above the level of the parapet, every fourth or fifth log being cut some three feet shorter than the others to form loopholes and embrasures. There were many flanking towers; traverses protected the gates; the ditches were deep, often flooded with water, and protected by thick abattis. Guns, varying in calibre from 32-prs. to wall pieces and gingals, were mounted on the parapets. The infantry were armed with flint-lock muskets, many of them old weapons, worn out and sold as scrap iron by the British military authorities.
When the ships containing the Bengal contingent reached the mouth of the Rangoon river on April 2, 1852, Major-General H. Godwin, who was in command of the troops, sent a vessel under a flag of truce to inquire whether any answer had been received from the King of Ava to the letter containing the British demands for redress. The Burmese replied by firing on the flag of truce, and Godwin, not feeling strong enough to attack Rangoon until the Madras contingent had joined him, sailed for the capital of Tenasserim, Moulmein, at that time threatened by the garrison of the neighbouring Burmese city of Martaban. On the morning of the 5th of April the fleet opened fire upon Martaban, and under cover of the bombardment the right wing of the XVIIIth and part of the 80th landed; a storming party, led by the grenadier companies of these two regiments, scaled the wall, and in a short time the place was in our hands. Thanks to the diary of the late Colonel G. A. Elliot, then a subaltern in the Royal Irish, interesting particulars have been preserved of this little fight, in which the younger men in the regiment were in action for the first time. Under a heavy but badly directed fire the grenadiers dashed across the twenty yards of ground between the water’s edge and the main defence of the city, a thick wall fifteen feet high and about eight hundred yards in length. Here the enemy’s bullets began to take effect among the Royal Irish. Colonel Elliot writes that—
“Private Fergusson received three in his left arm, and died of his wounds,[150] John Donovan two in his left hand, Coleman one through his left arm. We ran up and got close under the wall in extended order; the General was seen to take off his hat and give a cheer, which our men returned and then quickly sprung up the wall, (which was overgrown with shrubs) and rushed upon the Burmese, who quickly retired to some jungle, whence they fired, though without much effect. While surmounting the wall one of our officers noticed a man in the regiment get on to the top and look intently into a large bush below him. Still gazing intently, he loosed a brick, flung it down into the bush, raised his musket and shot a Burmese who had been hiding there in cover. We then advanced, and joining part of the 80th, and one of our own companies, skirmished up one of the hills enclosed by the wall, driving the Burmese before us, and charging them whenever they appeared in numbers. The hill was very steep, and obstacles existed in the shape of felled trees with branches pointing downwards. At the top was a Pagoda, surrounded by a wall mounted with gingals, but as there was no resistance, the men rested here for an hour in the shade. We then moved down a lane which led towards the next hill; after advancing about two hundred yards we came to an open space where the bullets began to fly over our heads from the hill in front. The men halted, and Lieutenant-Colonel Reignolds, XVIIIth, who was acting Brigadier, halted for reinforcements: ... but as soon as the Burmese saw that we had stopped, they began shouting and challenging us to come on, and after a while they poured down the hill towards us. Colonel Reignolds now allowed the men to charge, and with a cheer they dashed forward. The enemy ran back to a wall on the top of the hill and began a badly aimed fire; Glesson, Grenadier Company was struck in the mouth. The enemy evacuated the hill.”
After clearing a third hill the detachment whose fortunes Elliot has described joined the main body, and as the enemy were completely routed all marched back to the beach. The casualties in this affair were eight wounded, seven of whom were men of the Royal Irish; but many soldiers were struck down by the sun, a warning, unhappily disregarded, against the folly of wearing in the tropics the same uniform as that in use in the United Kingdom. In the despatch describing the capture of Martaban the following officers of the regiment were mentioned, viz., Lieutenant-Colonel Reignolds; Captain A. N. Campbell, on whom devolved the command of the wing when Reignolds was ordered to act as Brigadier; and Captain A. Gillespie, grenadier company, who was the first man over the enemy’s fortifications.
Godwin had now secured the safety of Moulmein; and leaving a small garrison in Martaban, he returned with the greater part of his force to the Rangoon river, where the Madras contingent and reinforcements from Bengal awaited him. Among the latter was the left wing of the Royal Irish, who since its arrival had been employed with the Navy in destroying the stockades at the mouth of the river. On the 10th of April the fleet began to move up-stream, and next morning the steamers were in their appointed positions, ready to bombard the works which defended the landing-places giving access to Rangoon. The Burmese opened fire; the sailors replied with energy, and the cannonade continued till late in the day, when landing parties, among whom were detachments of the XVIIIth, stormed the stockades; and driving away the enemy, cleared the way for the disembarkation of the main body. Though General Godwin had served in the first expedition to Burma, his recollections of the topography of Rangoon would have been misleading had they not been supplemented by information supplied by a British trader, from whom he learned that since the war of 1824-26 part of the town had been abandoned and lay in ruins; a new quarter had sprung up, and the fortifications had been remodelled to meet the fresh conditions. Rangoon was now built in a rough square, with sides about three-quarters of a mile in length, surrounded by deep ditches, and walls sixteen feet high and eight feet thick. In the works was included the Shwe Dagon, turned into a citadel by the mounting of cannon upon the three tiers of huge terraces which support the foundations of this great pagoda. From the landing-places on the river to the gate in the southern wall is about a mile and a quarter; and the Burmese, remembering that in the first war we had marched by that road, concluded that the tactics of 1826 would be repeated in 1852, and concentrated the greater part of their artillery and about ten thousand troops on the southern section of the defences. Godwin, however, completely upset this scheme of defence by declining to attack where he was so obviously expected.
Early on the 12th of April the right column—composed of the XVIIIth, 51st, the 40th Bengal Native Infantry, two guns of the Madras Artillery, and a detachment of the Madras Sappers and Miners—landed, with a day’s cooked rations and sixty rounds of ammunition on their persons; by 7 A.M. they were advancing on an outwork, known as the “White House stockade,” which obstructed their path through the jungle. The field-guns, escorted by the grenadier and Light companies of the XVIIIth, shelled it till the 51st were ordered to the assault; the other companies of the regiment were following in support, when they were suddenly ordered to halt, and to crowd into the jungle to clear the track for the Madras Sappers and the parties of bluejackets and European soldiers who carried the scaling ladders, then urgently required at the front. Some of the Royal Irish had been detailed for this duty, which proved a dangerous one, as out of the four men of the regiment told off to the first ladder three were wounded. This delay threw the Royal Irish “out of the hunt,” and by the time they reached the stockade the 51st had stormed and occupied it. At this point General Godwin was forced to call a halt: five of the senior officers had been struck down by solar apoplexy, two of them fatally; many of the men lay on the ground senseless from sunstroke; all ranks were worn out by the overpowering heat, and he was forced to bivouac on the ground he had gained. From papers left by Colonel, then Lieutenant, C. Woodwright, XVIIIth, it appears that during the afternoon, while the Royal Irish were slaking their thirst at wells discovered in the jungle, a number of Burmese stalked the covering parties, surprised them by a heavy fire, and occupied a pagoda, from which they directed an annoying fusilade on the watering-place. While other portions of the regiment drove back the enemy’s skirmishers, Woodwright’s company was ordered to seize the pagoda: this was accomplished successfully, though with the loss of Colour-Sergeant Kelly and several men seriously wounded. Twice in the night the Burmese attempted to rush the bivouac of the Royal Irish, but were driven back by a few rounds of canister from light field-guns.
For more than forty hours General Godwin was unable to advance. His commissariat officers were very slow in issuing rations to replace the one-day’s supply carried by the troops; the gunners were equally slow in landing and transporting to the front the four 8-in. howitzers, on which he relied to make a breach in the defences of Rangoon; and it was not until 5 A.M. on the 14th that the column was again in motion. The XVIIIth and the 40th Bengal Native Infantry led, followed by the 51st and the 35th Madras Native Infantry; the 80th were in charge of the guns, and a Madras Native Infantry regiment kept up communication with the ships in the river. Working slowly through jungle so thick that paths had to be cut for the passage of the guns, Godwin avoided the enemy’s main stockades; but as his leading troops came within sight of the great pagoda, the guns on its terraces opened fire. Opposite the gate in the eastern wall, by which he proposed to force his way into Rangoon, the ground was so difficult that there was barely room for the XVIIIth and the 80th to form up in quarter columns, while they halted till the guns had made a practicable breach. The Burmese artillery played upon the easy target offered to them, and their skirmishers became so bold that five hundred muskets were required to keep them at a respectful distance from the main body of the infantry. The situation was becoming impossible when it was discovered that the gate had been opened, presumably to afford a safe retreat to the Burmese soldiers who were harassing our flanks. Godwin determined to assault forthwith, and placed Lieutenant-Colonel Coote in command of a storming party, composed of two companies of the Royal Irish, the wing of the 80th, and part of the 40th B.N.I. Under a galling fire, the column moved with great steadiness across a shallow valley, half a mile in width, and swept like a tidal wave over terrace after terrace until the Shwe Dagon was won. Then the Burmese broke and fled in panic, losing heavily in their retreat, especially at a point where part of the grenadier company of the Royal Irish fell upon them in flank with the bayonet, and in a short time Rangoon was in our hands. In the British land forces the casualties between the 11th and the 14th of April were a hundred and forty-five—two officers were killed and fourteen wounded; fifteen of the other ranks were killed, and a hundred and fourteen wounded. Nearly a third of these losses fell upon the Royal Irish: Lieutenant and Adjutant R. Doran, pierced by four bullets, fell mortally wounded at the foot of the pagoda;[151] Lieutenant-Colonel Coote, Captain W. T. Bruce, and Lieutenant G. A. Elliot were wounded; a sergeant and two privates were killed, a sergeant, a drummer, and thirty-seven privates wounded.[152] In his despatch General Godwin mentions four officers of the Royal Irish—Lieutenant-Colonel Reignolds, who was in temporary command of a brigade, Lieutenant-Colonel Coote, Captain G. F. S. Call (Brigade Major), and Captain J. J. Wood, who brought the regiment out of action.
For the next few months the XVIIIth lay sweltering at Rangoon, where General Godwin was obliged to await the arrival of reinforcements before undertaking further operations on a large scale. During this period of enforced inaction life was by no means agreeable: the heat was intense, the labour of hut-building severe, the duties heavy, and there was much sickness among the troops. Two small expeditions pushed out north and west—the first occupied the town of Pegu; the second captured the city of Bassein, important as commanding one of the three navigable mouths of the Irrawaddy. In neither of these enterprises did the Royal Irish play any part. Their only “outing” at this time seems to have been a two-days’ hunt after a Burmese official whom the General was anxious to take prisoner. After hard marching they had their quarry almost within their grasp, when he disappeared into the jungle, leaving in their hands a string of carts laden with his numerous wives. In August it became known that the King of Ava, by no means disheartened by the loss of Rangoon and the other towns we had wrested from him, was gathering large forces near Prome, two hundred miles up the Irrawaddy. After a flotilla of gunboats had destroyed the stockades on the banks of the river near that town, Godwin determined to occupy it, to serve as an advanced base in the movement upon Ava, which he awaited the permission of Government to begin. When the long-expected reinforcements began to arrive, the Royal Irish found themselves in a division commanded by Sir John Cheape. The first brigade was under Lieutenant-Colonel Reignolds, and consisted of the XVIIIth, and the 40th and 67th Native Infantry regiments. Two officers of the Royal Irish were on the staff: Captain G. F. S. Call was Brigade Major to Reignolds’ brigade, Captain W. T. Bruce was Assistant Adjutant-General to the first division. This organisation, however, appears to have been merely one on paper, for in September Godwin announced to the troops that he was about to resume active operations, and warned the XVIIIth, the 80th, and the 35th Madras Native Infantry to hold themselves in readiness to embark under command of Brigadier-General Reignolds. These regiments, with some Artillery and Sappers and Miners, disembarked with slight opposition at Prome on the 9th of October, and on marching a short way inland found that the Burmese had disappeared. In the landing there were a few casualties, none of them among the Royal Irish; but that night the young soldiers of the regiment had a stern lesson in outpost duty—one of their comrades, who allowed himself to be surprised on sentry, was killed, and his head sent as a trophy to the King of Ava. While troops were being gradually passed up the river to Prome, the Burmese attacked our garrison in Pegu, and a considerable force had to be sent to the rescue, but the XVIIIth was not employed either in the relief of Pegu, or in the operations of a column sent to clear the jungles round Martaban.
For many months it continued to form part of the garrison of Prome, which was invested by the Burmese, who surrounded the place with stockades, thrown up in the jungle, a mile or two beyond our outposts. In November three companies helped to destroy one of these works, whose defenders had been active in intercepting supplies brought in by friendly natives. Later in the month two companies under Brevet-Major Edwards were sent on a much longer expedition; they formed the British contingent in a small column sent to rid the districts of Khangheim and Padaung of the enemy. Crossing to the right bank they worked up-stream, and at first met with little opposition, though they were “sniped at” by night. “On one occasion the watering-place was surrounded by a small party, and several sepoys who had gone there to fill their drinking-vessels were killed or wounded. The column passed the spot where a few days before the Captain of a native regiment with a small body of his men was surprised by the Burmese, and the place where they were beheaded was still plainly discernible by the blood-stains on the stones. The heads of the Captain and two men had been sent to Ava; their bodies were left on the banks of the river till buried by the English.”[153] The senior officer of the column broke down in health; Edwards succeeded to the command; and from the Digest of Service it appears that after several successful skirmishes he drove the Burmese into a place called Tomah, where he hemmed them in until March, 1853, when reinforcements of all arms enabled him to storm their stockade, and capture their guns, stores, and bullock-carts. During a lull in these operations Major Edwards was sent on a difficult, but interesting piece of work—to lead a small column to the top of the Tonghoo pass over the Yo-Ma range of mountains between Burma and Aracan, and there take charge of a hundred and forty-eight elephants, sent from India by the Governor-General to reinforce the transport of the army. Edwards’ command was composed of a hundred of the XVIIIth under Major Borrow, the same number of the 80th, two hundred Sikhs, and a few Madras Sappers and Miners, with three thousand coolies to carry the supplies and drive the slaughter cattle. All went well till the column began to ascend the foothills of the main range, when the coolies, frightened at the steep, jungle-covered slopes, flung down their loads and deserted in a body. As the European troops could carry but a portion of the stores, they soon ran out of tea, biscuit, and spirits, and had to fall back upon beef-on-the-hoof, and for many days had nothing to eat but meat; to the Sikhs, whose religion debared them from animal food, a small quantity of grain was supplied. A day or two after this breakdown of the transport the guides confessed that they had lost their way, so Edwards decided to work upwards, along the course of the streams that furrowed the mountain-side. Slowly but sturdily the troops breasted the hills; by day they hacked paths through the jungle; by night they slept in clothing soaked in many fords and torrents. Yet such was the stamina of the Europeans that during the expedition not one fell ill, and they outmarched the Sikhs, who broke down and had to be left behind. After nineteen days of this tremendous strain Edwards reached the rendezvous; the elephants had not yet come up, but a large supply of rice had already arrived, and his troops, eager for vegetable food, pounced on it with delight. In a few days the elephants lumbered up the pass, loaded with commissariat stores of every kind, on which the men feasted, while the animals rested after their climb. Then the long column of men and beasts crashed downwards through the forest and reached Padaung, on the Irrawaddy, in less than a quarter of the time occupied in the upward march. Official thanks were given to all ranks when the convoy of elephants was handed over to the transport department, and a month’s extra batta was granted to those who had taken part in the expedition.
The account of the doings of the XVIIIth at the front must now be broken by Lord Wolseley’s description of his first meeting with the regiment of which he is now the honoured Colonel-in-Chief. As a callow subaltern in the 80th, quite new to the practical side of war, he found himself at Rangoon in charge of a piquet, composed in part of very young soldiers of the XVIIIth, who had been left at the base under command of Brevet-Lieutenant-Colonel Grattan. These youngsters were not yet disciplined; they had been greatly amused at the young officer’s attempts to march his detachment to its post, and three of them, carried away by their high spirits, took liberties and refused to number off in the way he ordered. Wolseley promptly made prisoners of the culprits, and next morning