It was in Rangoon at this time that I made up my mind to disarm the whole province, Upper and Lower, rigorously, as soon as possible. I wrote to Lord Dufferin on September 30, 1887, as follows: "I am of opinion that the time has come for the complete disarming of the whole province, except perhaps on some exposed frontiers. The firearms in the hands of dacoits are evidently much fewer, but they continually replenish their stock by taking arms from villagers and Burman police. I would temper the measure in the Lower province by giving arms to selected Karens and Burmans, who should enrol themselves as special constables. As the Burmans hate nothing so much as signing any engagement to serve for a term, few of them would enrol themselves.

"I should fix the number of such special police myself, for each district."

The Baptist missionaries, I feared, would not look upon the scheme with favour. The loyalty of the Karens and the benefits of their organization under their missionaries, to whom the Government, as I have said on a former page, owes much, were not questioned. But it was not admissible that the Government of Burma should prefer one race more than another, and I had been warned by one of the missionaries themselves that Burman ill-will had been excited by the preference given to Karens in raising bodies of police auxiliaries during the disturbances.

By laying down conditions, fair and necessary in themselves, which men of the one race were likely to accept, but would be less acceptable to the other, as much discrimination was made between Karens and Burmans as was needful or decent.

In Upper Burma, Sir Charles Bernard had ordered the withdrawal of firearms from the villagers, soon after the annexation. It was not possible to carry it out effectually at that time. It was not until 1888 that I had arranged all the details and could put the orders fully into force. It is admitted generally to have been a beneficial measure, and to have helped very much to pacify the country and to put down dacoity. It is a pity that the disarmament of Lower Burma had not been enforced many years before. But no accumulation of facts are enough to destroy a prejudice, and for a long time my action was violently, I might say virulently, denounced in the Press and in Parliament.

The wisdom and necessity of this measure has come, I think, to be admitted by most people and was never doubted by my successors, who wisely disarmed the Chins at the cost of a serious rising and a hill campaign. The number of firearms taken from the villagers amounted in the years 1888 and 1889 to many thousands. Most of them were very antiquated and fit for a museum of ancient weapons. But they served the purpose of the Burman brigand, and not a few good men, British and Indian, died by them.

The Village Regulation was passed on October 28, 1887. It established on a legal basis the ancient and still existing constitution of Upper Burma. While emphasizing the responsibility of the village headman, it gave him sufficient powers and the support of the law. It also enacted the joint responsibility of the village in the case of certain crimes; the duty of all to resist the attacks of gangs of robbers and to take measures to protect their villages against such attacks. In the case of stolen cattle which were traced to a village, it placed on it the duty of carrying on the tracks or paying for the cattle. It gave the district officer power to remove from a village, and cause to reside elsewhere, persons who were aiding and abetting dacoits and criminals. This enactment, the genesis of which I have given in a former chapter, was framed in accordance with the old customary law and with the feelings of the people. It strengthened our hands more and gave us a tighter grip on the country than anything else could have done. Without the military police no law could have done much. Without the Village Regulation, the military police would have been like a ship without a rudder.

When the open season of 1887-8 began, the administration was in a strong position to deal with the disorder still prevailing. It was prepared as it never had been before. There was the law enforcing village responsibility, and enabling the magistrate to deal summarily with the persons who were really the life of dacoity; those who, living an apparently honest life, were the intelligence and commissariat agents of the gangs. All the details of disarmament had not been settled, but every opportunity was taken of withdrawing arms, and in the case of dacoit leaders or their followers, or of rebel villages, the surrender of a certain number of firearms was made a condition of the grant of pardon. Lastly, the military police organization was complete, and the physical force needed to enforce the law was thus provided in a ready and convenient form.

The rains were over, and I anticipated that the dacoits would again become active. I also thought it probable that the inexperienced police would meet with some disasters.

The country now in the Thayetmyo district, frequented by Bo SwÈ, was quieter. He was a fugitive with a diminished following. Early in October we were cheered by the news of his destruction. The Viceroy wired his congratulations.

It may seem unworthy of the Government of a great country to rejoice at the death of a brigand whose influence did not extend over more than a few hundred square miles. It was not the man's death, but all that it meant. A sign of the coming end—slowly coming, it may be, but still the coming end—of a very weary struggle with a system of resistance which was costing us many good men and a lavish expenditure of money. Bo SwÈ was ridden down by a party of Colonel Clements' Mounted Infantry belonging to the Lower Burma command. He and his men were surprised in a ravine, and many, including Bo SwÈ, killed.

There were still left the broken remnants of the leader's following. Active officers, with special powers and sufficient police, were placed in charge of the Northern subdivisions of the Thayetmyo district on both sides of the river, and order was established before the end of 1887. But in Upper Burma the districts of the Southern Division remained in a very bad state. Ôktama was still master, especially in the valley of the MÔn. I had not found the right men for Minbu, and the weakness of the civil administration was represented as an evil, not without reason, by the military commanders.

The following extract from a letter dated 1st of October, 1887, from the Commissioner of the Southern Division will give a better idea of the state of things than mere general phrases:—

"On 16th August, Po Saung, an informer, was caught and killed by Bo Cho's gang in Pagan.

"On 29th August, Yan Sin, a dacoit who had submitted, was caught and killed by Nga Kway in Pagan.

"On 5th September, at KÔkkozu village in Pauk, the dacoits tried to catch the thugyi, but failed, and caught and murdered his wife.

"Su Gaung, a mounted police constable, was shot while carrying letters between Myingyan and Natogyi on 16th September.

"In Lindaung, Pagan district, the thugyi was murdered a month ago and Thade's gang on 10th September attempted to capture his son, but failed, and plundered the village.

"On 29th September, Nurtama in Minbu, which is the headquarters of the Kyabin MyoÔk, was attacked. The MyoÔk's and seven other houses were burned; no one was killed. The MyoÔk lived here in fear of his life for some time. He sleeps at night at Sinbyugyun, on the other side of the Salin Creek, and if he sleeps at Nurtama he does not sleep in his own house, but in a little post which he has built. He has taken a guard of ten men from Sinbyugyun.

"On 24th September at Sagyun, in Myingyan district, Custance's interpreter and the thugyi of WelÔn were breakfasting in the village; they were attacked, and the interpreter killed, his head being nearly severed from his body. The thugyi escaped with a slight wound."

More than one attack was made on YÉnangyaung, the village near the oil-wells, with the object of killing the Burman headman. The raiders did not secure him, but they carried off his wife and daughter and set fire to a number of boats, loaded with oil. The military police (a few raw Punjabis without a British officer) were flurried and did nothing. These attacks made them nervous, and shortly afterwards, taking a forest officer, who was going down the river with a white umbrella[22] over his head, for a leader of rebels, they fired volleys at him until he and his crew had to get out of the boat and cling to the side of it. Fortunately the men shot badly and no one was hit. The forest officer complained loudly of the indignity he had suffered, which he thought was not within the letter of his bond. It was believed that the men who had made the attack on YÉnangyaung had come from the right bank of the Irrawaddy River. There was a patrol launch on this part of the river, and it had called several times at YÉnangyaung before the attack. We had not enough boats to patrol a long stretch of river effectually, and it was easy for the dacoits to watch the steamer as it went up or down and time their crossing. The Commissioner, therefore, collected the boats on the right bank and put them under guards until confidence was restored. The towns on the left bank below Pagan were reported to live in dread of attack.

Meanwhile trouble broke out in the Chindwin district, on the west of the river. Two leaders of revolt had appeared in this region. One was the Bayingan, or Viceroy, of the Myingun Prince whose name has already been mentioned. He was known to have left the Mandalay district with the object of raising a disturbance in the Chindwin. The other was a person called the ShwÈgyobyu Prince, who at the time of the annexation had been a vaccinator in the Government service in the Thayetmyo district. He must have been a man of considerable character and ambition, for when the war began he went up to the Chindwin country and established himself at KanlÈ, in the difficult hills of the Pondaung range. He assumed, with what right is not known, the style and title of "Prince," and proceeded to enrol men to resist the foreigners.

While we were congratulating ourselves on the destruction of Bo SwÈ and his gang, news came down that Pagyi was up. As yet we had not been able to occupy this region. It was a country of hills and ravines, densely wooded and also very unhealthy. It had been impossible to find civil officers to administer it, or men, either soldiers or police, to occupy it. The people had always more or less managed their own affairs under their own headmen, and as a temporary makeshift we had endeavoured to continue this arrangement. One, Maung Po. O, had been appointed an honorary head constable, and had hitherto maintained order in the south-west corner of Pagyi, and Maung Tha Gyi, an influential headman, held a similar position in the north-west and had done well and had acted with loyalty. The villages under Maung Tha Gyi, a group of small hamlets of twenty to thirty houses each, lay in the thick scrub jungle on the spurs of the Pondaung range.

A leader named Bo Sawbwa, who was acting in the interests of the ShwÈgyobyu Prince and had fortified himself in the jungles south of Pagyi, attacked and carried off Po. O. At the same time Maung Tha Gyi suddenly threw off his allegiance to the British, collected men, and fortified a position near one of his villages. He was reported to be ready to join the ShwÈgyobyu Prince, who ever since his gang was dispersed in 1886 had been harboured by a circle of villages in the west of Pagyi.

On receipt of this intelligence every precaution was taken. Sir George White sent Colonel Symons to take command of the military operations, and I selected Mr. Carter as the best man to accompany him as a civil officer with magisterial powers.

Captain Raikes was Deputy Commissioner of the Chindwin district at the time. He was away on leave, and Mr. W. T. Morison,[23] of the Indian Civil Service, Bombay Presidency, was acting for him and was at AlÔn, the district headquarters on the left bank of the Chindwin River. Mr. W. T. Morison was a young officer of five or six years' service and had been in Burma a very short time. He was one of the young men, of whom there were not a few in Burma, who took instinctively to the work.

On the 2nd of October he crossed over to the disturbed tract and joined Lieutenant Plumer, who, with a detachment of the 2nd Hyderabad Contingent Infantry, was at Hlawga, a march west from the river.

Mr. Morison wrote at once to Maung Tha Gyi, ordering him to come in. Tha Gyi, who was at one of his villages, Chaungwa, about sixteen miles from Hlawga, sent an evasive reply and began to collect men and arms.

Mr. Morison decided to try to surprise him. On the morning of the 8th of October, Lieutenant Plumer and Mr. Morison, with twenty-one Mounted Infantry, from the military police battalion, and the Hyderabad Contingent, left Hlawga soon after midnight, and surprised Chaungwa at four o'clock in the morning, when it was still dark.

The village, when day broke, was found to be on the west bank of a deep ravine, at the bottom of which was the only cart-road. On the steep bank on which the village stood strong fortifications and entrenchments, commanding this cart-road, had been built; trees had been felled and thrown across, and the road covered with bamboo spikes. Our men were led by an excellent guide, who took them through the jungle across the ravine and up to one of the enemy's outposts.

Twenty-one men could not surround the village, but they rushed it, killing one only and capturing six. The leaders, who were found to have been the Bayingan and Maung Tha Gyi, escaped. Nine ponies tied near the house occupied by the former were taken, and in the house were found twenty royal battle standards, many arms, and much correspondence.

After a halt for rest, the main body, fifteen rifles with the prisoners and captured ponies, were sent off. Lieutenant Plumer and Mr. Morison, with a jemadar and six mounted military policemen and a Burmese interpreter, remained behind, hoping that some of the enemy would return and fall into their hands. The Burmans, however, were not so simple. After a short delay the two British officers and their men set out to follow the main body. The moment they reached the ravine a volley was fired from the perpendicular bank opposite the village. Maung Po Min, the interpreter, was shot in the leg, his pony killed, and Mr. Morison's hand was grazed by a bullet. Mr. Morison, who was well mounted, took Po Min up behind him, and they all scrambled up the western bank of the ravine, hoping to be able to see the dacoits and return their fire. A few volleys were fired at random, as the enemy could not be seen; and then, fearing further ambuscades, the small party took a jungle track, hoping it would lead round into the main road lower down. The village of Chaungwa is on the spurs of a low range of hills. The jungle is of the densest, and cut up in every direction by deep ravines, and they had no guide. The track was evidently taking them in a wrong direction. They resolved to leave it and make as nearly due east as they could.

The rest of the story can best be told in Mr. Morison's own words, taken from a letter to the Commissioner of the Central Division, dated Camp Kyadet, the 13th of October, 1887:—

"After about fifteen minutes the dacoits, who had followed us, opened fire on us from about 50 yards in the front, they being quite concealed. After one volley they would retire, allow us to go forward 200 yards, then go round in front and give us another volley. We had at each volley to dismount and try and return their fire as best we could. But from first to last the dacoits were invisible and under complete cover, and, knowing the jungle, had time to go ahead, lie in wait for us, and take aim. This continued for over an hour. Our horses were completely done out with going down and up the precipitous ravines, and the ravines became at last quite impassable for horses. So after a consultation we determined to leave our ponies and make our way east on foot. Shortly after leaving the ponies one of the men, Amir Mahomed, was shot dead in the head from one of the usual ambuscades. That the others of our party escaped appears a miracle to me. However, after about two hours, i.e., about 10 a.m., the firing ceased, and we managed, exhausted as we were, to get clear of the jungle by 2 p.m., going 200 yards at a time and then lying down to rest. We arrived at Mintainbin at 4 p.m. and Hlawga at 6. Our loss was thus one man killed and seven police ponies, with saddles and bridles, left.... The men behaved well throughout the affair."

If the ponies had not been left there would have been little chance of the men escaping from the jungle with their lives.

Unfortunately, the mass of the Bayingan's correspondence was in one of the saddle-bags abandoned with the ponies. Some of the documents saved were copies of notices to noted leaders in many districts of Upper Burma and the Shan States. The following is a translation of one of them:—

"I, the Bayingan Prince, brother of the Myingun Prince, write to the Chief Bo Nyo U and other Chiefs in Sagaing as follows. I have been to all Sawbwas, Bo GyÔks (Chief Bos), and other Bos of the north, south, and east, and have given orders and administered oaths which they have taken; they have promised to serve loyally, and we intend to drive the British from Kani and Pagyi and take AlÔn, ShwÈbo, Dabayen, &c., and go up to Mandalay in month of TazaungmÔn."

Careful inquiries showed that Maung Ba, the Bayingan Prince, arrived in Pagyi in the end of September and came to Maung Tha Gyi. Since his arrival he had been corresponding with the ShwÈgyobyu Prince and other Bos in this part, and had actually sent over to Yaw for assistance. He had friends in AlÔn and elsewhere. A letter from Kin Le Gyi (a maid-of-honour to Supayalat, who had since the war taken contracts for public works in Monywa and elsewhere, and had been trusted by the British officials) was found in the Prince's house, saying that she was going up to AlÔn to see how the troops were disposed and what all the officers were doing, and that she would write to him on her return. This is very characteristic of the Burman woman.

On the 12th of October Morison was back at Kyadet, in the south of Pagyi, where there was a military post, and consulted with Major Kennedy, commanding the 2nd Hyderabad Contingent Infantry, who arrived with a reinforcement of seventy rifles. They decided to telegraph for more troops. This request had been anticipated.

Unfortunately, Major Kennedy did not wait for the reinforcements. Hearing that the Bayingan and Tha Gyi had taken up a position at Chinbyit, about twenty miles from Kyadet, he left with a few Mounted Infantry. He was accompanied by Captain Beville, Assistant Commissioner, who had been posted to the district to enable Mr. Morison to return to his headquarters at AlÔn. The rebels, who were in strength and in a good position, stood, and both Major Kennedy and Captain Beville were killed. The rebels lost forty men, killed. The seventy rifles, under Lieutenant Plumer (2nd Hyderabad Contingent Infantry), came up in time to complete the defeat of the enemy.

It was reported at the time that the leaders had escaped. Afterwards it was found that Maung Tha Gyi and the Bayingan Prince had both been killed.[24] Nga Pyo, a notorious rebel and dacoit leader, was present, but did not expose himself, and lived until 1889, to be assassinated by a colleague. Whether the ShwÈgyobyu Prince was there is doubtful.

The action at Chinbyit cost us much. Lord Dufferin wrote: "It is too distressing to think that so slight an affair should have cost us the lives of two valuable officers." Their lives were not thrown away. The loss inflicted on the enemy was severe, and the death of the Bayingan prince put an end to a troublesome organization.