BOOKS.
DOVETON'S REMINISCENCES OF THE BURMESE WA.R.* THESE reminiscences of the Burmese War of 1824-26 originally appeared in the Asiatic Journal. They are now republished in a more accessible form, on account of the interest which may be supposed to attach to information connected with the country, its people, and their mode of warfare; and of these the volume will famish many natural yet striking sketches. The principal feature is in a great degree independent of time and place; its most interesting characteristic being its plain, unaffected, perhaps prosaic picture of actual war, as it is seen and felt by a sub- altern and novice. It is true that the modes are Oriental : the landscape has its Tropical scenery, its tremendous rains, and its un- healthy swamps ; while the enemy is called barbarous, and treated unceremoniously. But the essentials of war, stripped of its ro- mance, and so far as individuals are concerned of its heroics, are there. The reader not only sees war without its glare, and to a certain degree without its terrors to men who have got used to them, but he sees the first of everything. When, nearly thirty years ago, the then Ensign Doveton sailed to Rangoon, he had never been before in actual service, and everything was new : the first landing, the first supper, the first march, the first wounds, the first death; all evidently transcripts of the actual, and conveying, so far as words can convey, the same idea as if the reader were present. Mingled with these pictures of the everyday life of war are in- cidental glimpses of other and practically more important mat- ters. The minute attention which Nelson and Wellington paid to apparently trivial things, and the reputation such attention re- ceived, seem to civilians almost beneath notice, till their im- portance is practically impressed upon them. Yet it was evidently neglect of small matters, some of them not strictly belonging to the duties of a general considered as a mere soldier, and others perhaps deemed beneath him, that caused our delays and losses in the war. The time was badly chosen; • for we reached the low- lying Rangoon just at the beginning of the rainy season, when the whole place was a swamp. It was not the marsh miasmata, un- wholesome as that undoubtedly must have been, which caused the fearful loss, but bad provisions or the want of provisions. The biscuit was mouldy, the salt provisions were almost putrid ; and, bad as they were, there was notenough of them. No attempt had been made to supply substitutes for vegetables, in which the locality was deficient. The Itindoo Sepoys were consequently reduced to great straits, the Mahometans and Europeans afflicted by scurvy. When to these causes of constitutional depravation, were added a hot sun by day, a dank chill by night, and continual moisture for six months, there is little wonder that the men rapidly sunk under disease. They were of course obnoxious to attack from the cli- mate; and almost every attack was fatal, whether dysentery, fever, scurvy, wounds, (that ulcerated,) or latterly cholera. When it is considered that to the natural and artificial causes were added exposure, hardship, axrack, and the proverbial carelessness of British troops, it is less surprising that Captain Doveton's corps was reduced from 900 to 200 men than that any remained to em- bark for Madras.
In matters more directly relating to warfare, there was traceable a similar want of " headpiece " and ready resource. The first fail- ure arose from want of scaling-ladders : they could have been con- structed on the spot by the Pioneers, but the detachment retreated. Yet, strange to say, on a subsequent attack, when the stockade was much stronger both by nature and art than at Kimmendine, Captain Doveton thinks there were then no scaling-ladders either ; and failure must have ensued, but that the enemy did not wait for the last touch. Information was deficient throughout; both that kind of information which, falling under the head of geography, is disgraceful for a government and general officer to be ignorant of, and that special information which depends upon spies • this last, indeed, generally led the British into traps. Discipline, pluck, and lavish expenditure of money and life, gave us success at last, but only after a series of failures or mistakes that might have been fatal before a well-trained enemy. As a bygone affair, this would hardly have deserved remark, but there is too much reason to fear that the want of forethought and careful largeness of view on the part of our generals is still, except in the rare instance of such a man as Sir Charles Napier, prevalent in our army; and that the civil departments of our warlike service, from want of unity, from ineptitude, or corrupt influence' are as bad as they ever were during the worst period of the present century. The Caubul disaster, the Caffre war, the beginning of the present Burmese war, the per- Petual and but for consequences ridiculous break-down of Govern- ment steamers, argue badly for security or success in the probable future we are entering on. "Heads" of departments we have in
• Beminiecences of the Burmese War in 1824-5-6. By Captain F. B. Doveton, kte First Madras Fusiliers; an Eye-Witness. Published by Allen and Co.
plenty ; but when a combination is required in this country, no one seems employed to do the thinking, or to superintend the execution of what is planned as a whole. It is to be wished, rather than expected, that we may not smart some day for our bad arrange- ments.
The following extract will give an idea, on a small scale, of how everything in our service is left to chance, either without thought, or trusting for " somebody " to get through " somehow." At the same time, it exhibits some of the discomforts of war. " It was on the afternoon of the 26th that our detachment embarked, when, after passing Monkey Point, (so called from its being a favourite re- sort of the mimic tribe, which would here fearlessly come down to the wa- ter-side to solicit contributions from each boat that glided by,) we dropped down, when the ebb-tide was nearly spent, to the point of junction between the Rangoon and Pegue rivers, about three miles below the town ; and here we anchored till the first of flood-tide would enable us to ascend the latter river. :Upon this occasion I was in a flat-bottomed boat, the centre of which was thatched over, and this was allotted to the men ; whilst the officers, four in number, occupied the head of the boat, the only part of it that was decked. We were a large party, mustering, crew and all, seventy-five hands—a pretty good freight for an open boat. Nothing, indeed, could well exceed the discomfort and wretchedness we experienced the first night : the men slept literally piled one upon the other, like bales of cotton ; and the officers took a nap turn and turn about, there not being sufficient space for us all to lie down at the same time. It was night when the flotilla, escorted by se- veral men-of-war's boats, anchored at the point referred to, waiting the turn of the tide, which was still running down ; and here, I well remember, our boat for a short time was in an awkward dilemma, for we had no sooner dropped our anchor than we continued to drift down with the stream as fast as ever, and before we could bring the boat up we had fallen consider- ably astern of the flotilla ; and from our vicinity to the bank, which was in the occupation of the enemy, as well as from our isolated position, we cer- tainly began to feel somewhat nervous. At length, to our great relief, we got the anchor to hold, when we retired to rest without apprehension. The fact is, we were only furnished with the common wooden anchor used by the natives, which, having but one fluke, of course only held when this hap- pened to sink in the proper position. Some may be startled at the mention of a wooden anchor, but travellers see strange sights, and this kind of article is commonly seen to the Eastward. The material is, of course, very fine- grained, and consequently heavy ; I believe it is called ironwood. Our an- chor, in short, was simply a huge wooden hook—a very unsuitable protection for a boat containing, as ours did, seventy-five people."
The same boat expedition will furnish some examples of at- mospheric exposure and short commons.
"As we made our simple toilet, going through the process of combing, brushing, and washing in public, at the head of the vessel, we could occa- sionally exchange greetings with friends in the neighbouring boats. The dews, at the period referred to, in Burmah, are remarkably heavy, saturating everything with moisture during the night, and answering the purpose of heavy rain : such dews, perhaps, are unknown anywhere else. To these I was now exposed all night, in common, of course, with others, and to a scorching sun all day ; being, in fact, without shelter of any kind during the week we were on the expedition. At that time I slept in a woollen nightcap, which was so wet in the morning that I regularly wrung the water out of it. Such exposure, it may be well supposed, was very detri- mental to the health of all concerned ; and if there was any possibility of tracing one's ailments to their source, I have little doubt that the seeds of disease, and perhaps death, were sown in many a manly frame during this destructive exposure on the Pegue river. Our diet, too, was quite in keep- ing with everything else, for during this excursion my party had literally nothing to eat but a half-boiled ham and rice ; and this was our fare for breakfast, dinner, and supper, unaided even by a morsel of biscuit. Now, ham is a capital thing to give a zest to other food ; but when one is driven to feed upon it three times a day, the surfeited stomach turns from it almost with disgust, whilst the incessant thirst such food creates greatly aggravates the evil. At that time we made our tea (for there is no getting on without it) by boiling it in a saucepan, that being the only convenience we then had for preparing the infusion. This we drank a la Chinoise, without milk or sugar, and out of pewter mugs; for, be it known, we were most of us pro- vided with this article, which was made generally useful. Thus, for ex- ample, it would begin the day at the toilet, in the process of teeth-cleaning ; that duty performed, it would be transferred to the breakfast-table, (when- ever there happened to be one,) where it did the duty of a tea or coffee cup ; the mug would then be available for dinner, as a receptacle either for a pint of Hodgson's ale, or in the absence of this luxury, brandy and water."
That indifference to life which it is to be suspected war never fails to induce, especially in the actual combatants, (for the supe- rior officers, who merely order, may possibly escape,) is still more encouraged against a " barbarous " enemy—that is, an enemy we rate as beneath us. The following are instances, not from the rank and file.
"As our regiment advanced in line, one unlucky fellow got entangled in the bamboo hedge before alluded to, where C—, of ours, spitted him without ceremony, probably after receiving his fire. He had been kicked up like a hare from behind a bush or tuft of grass, (tufts of grass are of more luxuriant growth in Tropical countries than in our cold clime,) and having in his eagerness to escape missed the opening, he bolted into the thick part of the hedge, where C— sheathed his sword in him. I do not say, be at observed, that the man met his death unfairly in this instance, but I write it with sorrow, that human life was taken but too little account of by too many
amongst us during the operations in Ave. •
"Whilst wandering about to gratify our curiosity, some of us were at- tracted to a spot by the groans of a wounded man. Upon approaching it we found a remarkably handsome and well-made young Burman bleeding to death underneath some bushes, whither he had crawled for shelter. He was unusually fair-complexioned, and from his dress and other marks we had little doubt of his being a man of rank. He had, however, lost all conscious- ness, and was evidently past recovery : with a humane motive, an officer who witnessed the sufferings of the dying man, desired a soldier to despatch
him ; which he instantly did by firing a ball through his head. This sum- mary mode of disposing of a man as if he had been a horse, startled monot a little at the time; but, after all, under such circumstances, there Seems no good ground of objection against such an act, provided an executioner is forthcoming."
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