Had this expedition started but a few days earlier, the mischief that had been done would have been prevented, though that mischief was far less than it would have been had not the pirates been forced to beat a hasty retreat on receiving news that so powerful a force was out against them. They had attacked Matu, but that town was found to be too well prepared to be carried without considerable loss, and, their aim being not glory but to procure heads, captives, and plunder, with the least possible risk to themselves, they retreated in search of easier prey after sustaining a loss of ten killed, but not before they had taken a detached house in which they obtained seven heads and captured four girls. Palo they had plundered, and had there seized three girls;[[167]] they spared the place as being the main source of their salt supply. Two vessels trading to Singapore were captured, and the crew of one were all killed. Serikei proved too strong for them. A detachment had gone westward, and off Sambas they killed some Chinese fishermen and took their heads. At Sirhasan, one of the Natuna islands, they captured a trading vessel, and on their way back to join the main fleet attacked the Malays living at the mouth of Muaratebas, but were repulsed after a desperate fight. A trading prahu was there seized, the owner and five of the crew being killed. Coming across Abang Husin, a nephew of the Datu Temanggong, they killed him and his boat's crew of six, after a gallant defence.
A couple of days having been spent in destroying the captured bangkongs and securing prisoners, the expedition proceeded up the Saribas river. After some exciting episodes and hard work in cutting their way through innumerable trees, which had been felled across the river to impede their progress, the force reached Paku, which was taken and burnt for the second time. The expedition then proceeded up the Rejang, to punish the Sekrang Dayaks living in the Kanowit. Eighteen villages were destroyed, and the country laid waste for a hundred miles. This done, the Rajah returned to Kuching with the whole force, arriving there on August the 24th. With him came many Serikei people, who wished to escape from the tyranny of Sherip Masahor,[[168]] an infamous and intriguing half-bred Arab chief, who appears to have but lately settled in the Rejang as the Bruni governor, and who in the near future was to cause the Sarawak Government considerable trouble.
After the battle of Beting Maru, the well-inclined Malay and Dayak chiefs of the Sekrang were once more raised to power, and the Rajah built a fort at Sekrang, of which Sherip Matusain, who has been before mentioned as having taken a prominent part on the side of the Sarawak Malays in the rebellion against Bruni, was placed in charge. The fort was built to uphold the friendly and non-piratical party against the interior piratical tribes, to prevent the latter passing down to the sea, and as a position for the advancement of commerce. It was built entirely by Sekrang Malays and Dayaks under the supervision of Mr. Crookshank, and when Mr. Brereton[[169]] went there shortly afterwards to take charge, at the request of the natives that a European might be placed over them, he was entirely dependent on their goodwill, having no force of any sort, to support his authority.
The Saribas and the Sekrangs now submitted, the former too utterly broken to do further mischief by sea, and the latter frightened by the lesson that had been administered to their allies and themselves,[[170]] and by the establishment of a Government station in their district. Such was the effect of this chastisement that piracy was almost completely put an end to in these turbulent tribes; then had the land rest to recover, the waste places to revive, the towns to be rebuilt, and the population to increase. In but a very few years the bulk of these very tribes which had been the scourge of the country were reduced to peaceable and industrious citizens.
But trouble far-reaching, on which he had not calculated, was in store for the Rajah through this expedition. It came at a time when he was weakened in health from continuous exposure and the severe strain he had undergone, which had brought him near death's door, and it came from a quarter the least expected. He "had risked life, given money, and sacrificed health to effect a great object;"[[171]] and had made the coast from cape Datu to Marudu bay as safe as the English Channel to vessels of all flags and all sizes, and now he had to bear with the malicious tongues and persecutions of the humanity-mongers of England, who were first prompted to attack the Rajah by his discarded agent, Mr. Wise. This man was embittered against the Rajah for his refusal to sell Sarawak to a company; by being called to account for a loss he had caused the Rajah of some thousands of pounds; and by some unfavourable comments the Rajah had made on his actions, which had come to his knowledge owing to certain private letters of the Rajah not intended for his eyes having fallen into his hands. Wise had offered to make the Rajah "one of the richest commoners in England," and presumedly saw his way to becoming one too, but the Rajah preferred "the real interests of Sarawak and the plain dictates of duty to the golden baited hook."[[172]]
Cobden, Hume, Sidney Herbert, and afterwards Gladstone, as well as others of that faction, took up the cause of the pirates, and the Rajah and the naval officers who had been engaged since 1843 in suppressing the Saribas and Sekrangs were attacked with acrimony as butchers of peaceful and harmless natives—and all for the sake of extending the Sarawak raj. The Spectator and the Daily News bitterly assailed the Rajah, relying upon information supplied through the medium of a Singapore newspaper; and the Peace Society and the Aborigines Protection Society, laid on a false scent by those whom they should not have trusted, became scurrilous in their advocacy of cold-blooded murderers and pirates.
After having brought the "cruel butchery" of Beting Maru to the attention of the House of Commons on three occasions, Joseph Hume, on July 12, 1850, moved an address to her Majesty, bringing to the notice of the House "one of the most atrocious massacres that had ever taken place in his time." He supported the motion with glaring and wilful mis-statements, and brought disgraceful charges against the Rajah, whom he branded as "the promoter of deeds of bloodshed and cruelty." The Navy he charged with wholesale murder, and the poor victims of the massacre he described as a harmless and timid people.[[173]]
Cobden, who supported the motion, called the battle of Beting Maru a human battue, than which there was never anything more unprovoked. He could not do homage to the Rajah as a great philanthropist seeing that he had no other argument for the savages than extermination.
The Rajah was ably defended by Mr. Henry Drummond, who exposed Wise's conduct; and the motion was lost by a majority of 140 in a House of 198.
At Birmingham, Cobden asserted that the Rajah, "who had gone out to the Eastern Archipelago as a private adventurer, had seized upon a territory as large as Yorkshire, and then drove out the natives; and who, under the pretence that they were pirates, subsequently sent for our fleet and men to massacre them ... the atrocities perpetrated by Sir James Brooke in Borneo had been continually quoted in the Austrian newspapers as something which threw into the shade the horrible atrocities of Haynau himself."