When Hastings left his office, which he had held for nine years, he was succeeded by Lord Amherst, who reached Calcutta in August 1823, and held the Governor-generalship till 1828. During that period the dominions of England received a still further accession, and the difficulty of putting a stop to a course of conquest once begun was shown. At the same time that Clive had laid the foundation of the English Empire, a man of the name of Alompra had established a great empire on the other side of the Ganges. He had succeeded in bringing into one the kingdoms of Siam, Pegu, Ava, and Aracan. By degrees the two empires of Burmah and of India had become conterminous. The Burmese had been rendered so confident by their successes that they had demanded of Lord Hastings the surrender of Chittagong, Dacca, and other places, as having been originally dependencies of Aracan; their demand had of course been absolutely disregarded, but they were now proceeding to conquer Cashar, a district in North-Eastern Bengal, the rajah of which applied for help to the English. A further act of encroachment on their part brought on a war; they seized, on the coast of Chittagong, a little island in the possession of a small British outpost. No satisfaction could be obtained, and in March 1824 war became inevitable, much against the will, and somewhat to the surprise, of The Burmese War. Lord Amherst, who had intended to be peaceful. The attack of the English was made upon Rangoon at the mouth of the Irawaddi. It was easily occupied, but the Burmese were a warlike race, and being strengthened in their wish for resistance by successes on the Bengal frontier refused to come to terms. Again and again the great pagoda of Rangoon, which had become the English citadel, was assaulted. In December a final unsuccessful attack was made under the command of Maha Bundoola, who had distinguished himself in the north. From May to February the fighting about Rangoon had continued, the chief difficulty met with being the skill of the enemy in the defence of stockades. Then, at last, Sir Archibald Campbell found it possible to advance up the Irawaddi towards Prome. In April he reached that place and found it deserted. There the English remained during the rainy season. In November hostilities were renewed, and the English gradually forced their way up to within forty-five miles of Ava, the capital. There at length, in February 1826, a treaty was concluded by which the Burmese ceded Assam, Aracan, and the country south of Martiban along the coast. They also gave up their claims upon the English provinces, paid a large sum of money, and established friendly relations between the courts, to be kept up by an interchange of ambassadors.

Capture of Bhurtpore.

The occupation of England in a foreign war had given rise to hopes among the princes of India that an opportunity had come for reasserting their freedom. But all such thoughts were dashed to the ground by the capture and destruction of the fortress of Bhurtpore, hitherto considered impregnable. At the beginning of 1825 a disputed succession had occurred. The expelled Prince was under British protection; it remained to be seen how far it now availed him. Lord Amherst was at first inclined to non-intervention, but the army was in the hands of Lord Combermere, an old Peninsula officer, not likely to shrink before difficulties. He at once undertook to reduce the stronghold. Having demanded the dismissal of women and children, which was refused, he proceeded to bombard the town. After two months of siege, the assault was given, and in two hours the town was secured; the fortress was then razed to the ground, and the rightful prince reinstated, and the great movement against the English which had been dreaded by many thinking men in India thus at once checked. The Indian Empire had now reached the limits which were not increased for many years. The subsequent conquests of the Punjaub and Sinde have set a natural and geographical boundary to it, which, it may be hoped, will prevent the necessity of those wars of conquest, which were really wars of defence, to which it owes its present gigantic dimensions.

INDEX

CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY

FOOTNOTES: