474
HISTORY OF BRITISH RULE.
Bhartpur
taken,
1827.
predominance in the East, Arakan in Northern Burma becamean asylum for desperate European adventurers. With theirhelp, the Arakanese conquered Chittagong on the Bengal sea-board, and (under the name of the Maghs) became the terrorof the Gangetic delta. About 1750, a new Burmese dynastyarose, founded by Alaung-paya or Alompra, with its capital atAva. Alompra’s successors ruled Independent Burma until itsannexation to British India in 1886. 1
The dynasty of Alompra, after having subjugated all Burma ,and overrun (1800) Assam , which was then an independentkingdom , began a series of encroachments upon the British Districts. As they rejected all peaceful proposals with scorn,Lord Amherst was at last compelled to declare war in 1824.Little military glory could be gained by beating the Burmese ,who were formidable chiefly from the pestilential character oftheir country. One expedition with gunboats proceeded upthe Brahmaputra into Assam . Another marched, by landthrough Chittagong into Arakan, as the Bengal Sepoys refusedto go by sea. A third, and the strongest, sailed from Madrasdirect to the mouth of the Irawadi . The war was protractedover two years. After a loss to us of about 20,000 lives, chieflyfrom disease, and an expenditure of ^14,000,000, the King ofAva signed, in 1826, the treaty of Yandabu. By this heabandoned all claim to Assam , and ceded the Provinces otArakan and Tenasserim, already in the military occupation ofthe British . He retained the whole valley of the Irawadi ,down to the sea at Rangoon .
The capture of Bhartpur in Central India by Lord Comber-mere, in January 1827, wiped out the repulse which Lake hadreceived before that city in January 1805. A disputed succes-sion led to the British intervention. Artillery could makelittle impression upon the massive walls of mud. But at last abreach was effected by mining, and the city was taken bystorm, thus removing the popular notion throughout India thatit was impregnable—a notion which had threatened to becomea political danger.
The next Governor-General was Lord William Bentinck ,who had been Governor of Madras twenty years earlier, at thetime of the mutiny of Vellore (1806). His seven years’rule(from 1828 to 1835) is not signalized by any of those victoriesor extensions of territory by which chroniclers measure the
1 For the history of Burma , see the articles Burma , British , andBurma , Independent, in my Imperial Gazetteer of India.
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