The Sun.
London, England, 1852-04-01 00:00:00

INDIA.

THE BURMESE WAR.
We have received dispatches in anticipation of the
Overland Mail, which left Bombay on the 4th of March.
The following is the letter of a correspondent:—
"Since the dispatch of my last letter preparations have
been made for prosecuting with the utmost promptitude
and vigour the war which now seems inevitable with
Burmab. It has been wisely determined to force the
Burmese to terms before the setting in of the monsoon,
and by the time this reaches England a ft4illa of more
than a dczen war-steamers, with 6,000 troops on board,
will be in the Burmese waters for the purpose.
" It will be remembered that Lord Dalhousie had not
reached Calcutta when the dispatches regarding Corn
modore Lambert's first affair with the stockades,arrived;
they wore consequently forwarded to him by express,
and the steamer Fire Queen was kept in readiness to
convey his further instructions concerning Burmese af-
fairs to the Commodore in the Irrawoddy—the Bengal
Government in the meantime taking only such steps as
were necessary for putting th© frontier provinces in a
posture of defence.

" The Fire Queen left the Sandheads with the
Governor-General's di:patches on the 28th of Jllllllry,
and reached the commodore off the Rangoon Rivtr on
the 30th. The commodore immrdiately intimated to
the Rangoon authorities that he should ascend the river
in his frigate ntxt morning as the bearer of a fresh
communication from the Governor-General. Notwith-
standing this intimation, the first stockade ho passed the
following day opened a heavy fire on the Fox, which
killed one of her crew. The frigate returned the fire,
but without stopping her course, silencing the enemy's
guns, and setting the stockade on fire. The next
stockade took warning by the fate of its neighbour ; it
opened a fire also, for the honour of the thing, but took
care to fire wide of the frigate; and the commodore
therefore passed by it without notice. Two other of the
stockades opened a fire on the steamer Tenasserim,
which followed the Fox a few hours after, and of which
they did not appear to be in equal dread. She returned
the fire of the first stockade with a few rounds of shot
and shell, and with eight or ten rockets ; the latter
set the work on fire, and it continued burning fur about
six hours.

" On arriving off the newly-erected fortifications which
now occupy the site of the late town of Rangoon, the
commodore sent an officer and interpreter to the Go-
vernor with Lord Dalhousie's letter. The terms offered
in this communication have occasioned general surprise
and some censure, on the ground that their extreme
moderation would prevent British subjects whose goods
have been confiscated and destroyed from obtaining any
compensation; and would also, by being attributed by
the Burmese to vroaknong, render an ultimate settlement
more difficult.

" Their substance was, that if the Burmese Governor
would apologise for his insult to our flag, and pay the
9001. previously demanded as compensation for losses
inflicted on two of the many British subjects who
have been pillaged at Rangoon, the Burmese ships
should be restored, and the blockade raised, and
an agent from the Indian Government sent
down. The reply was returned in the most insult•
ing manner imaginable, by a dirty labourer in an
equally dirty fishing canoe. The Burmese Governor
took no notice whatever of Lord Dalhousie's first two
demands. He refused to negotiate at all with the com-
modore, but said that he would talk over the subject
with any other agent the Indian Government sent down;
and be is said to have remarked that the blockade did
not inconvenience them at all. In answer to a letter the
commodore had sent him at the same time from himself,
io which he expressed his surprise at having been fired
at by the stockade while on his passage up the river (of
which the Viceroy had been previously advertised), in
a diplomatic capacity, as the bearer of an answer from
the Governor.tieneral to a letter from the King of Ava,
the Burmese Governor replied that he had given orders
to the stockades to fire into any vessel daring to pass
them without permission. The commodore rejoined,
chat he would utterly destroy by fire any stockade that
tired at his frigate on her passage down the river. This
threat had its effect, and the commodore returned to his
anchorage off the mouth of the river without molestation.
" The appearance of the banks of the river at Ran-
goon is described as entirely changed. Not a vestige
remains of the late town. Of the materials of its brick
and stone houses three large masonry torts have been
erected with most singular rapidity ;' they appear, it
is said, very strong, and evidently mount some heavy
guns.' The jungle and village near the great Dragon
Pagoda have been entirely cleared away, and the build
ing enclosed with a strong stockade. Other stockades
are everywhere being erected along the banks of the
river. The main wharf of the old town has been turned
into a battery of formidable appearance, but is said to
admit of being enfiladed. The new works altogether
mount 100 guns, and an officer of the Fox writes to one
of the Calcutta papers that Rangoon would now cost a
few the number of their mess before it was taken.'

" On receiving the Rangoon Viceroy's answer to their
last overtures, the Supreme Government are said to have
decided that all further negotiation was out of the
question. The Governor-General immediately ordered
A force consisting of her Majesty's 18th, the 40th Native
Infantry, with another native corps and a company of
European Artillery, to prepare for instant embarkation,
and some steamers and transports were hired for con-
veying these troops to Burmah.
ieladras was ordered to send ber Majesty's 51st,
two Native Regiments, and three companies of Euro-
pean Artillery; the whole force, about 6.000 strong,
will be under the command of General Godwin, who was
actively engaged in the former Burmese war. Major
Hugh Frazer goes as chief engineer. Orders were at
the same time sent by the Governor-General to the
Bombay Government to equip and dispatch without de-
lay all the war steamers they could spare, manned with
their full war complement, and ready for immediate no-
tion. The squadron was on its way to touch at Fort
it. George, and convey the Madras force thence to
Burmah. The Bombay Government immediately do-
aided on sending six steam-frigates—the Perez°, the
Moozuffer. the Sesostris, the Berenice, the Medusa,
and the Zenobia—the Semaramis, now in China, to
join, if required, in the river. The first four (three
of them as large as the Atlantic steamships) were
fully equipped and started from Bombay in four days
after the order had been received; the Zenobia, which
was hourly expected with the English mail of the 20th
of January, not having yet arrived, the Queen has
oeen sent off instead, and the Zenobia is only wait-
ing for the arrival of a detachment of artillery from
Nuggur to follow the other five. The squadron is to
embark the Madras force about the 12th of March,
and Rangoon will probably be in our hands about 10
or 15 days after.
" The general improvement that has taken place since
the last Burmese war in our military and naval re-
sources and appliances, and especially our improved posi-
tion as regards Burmah in particular, has been rendered
very apparent in the late preparations. In 1825 the
troops that were dispatched from Calcutta to Arracan
were no less than three months in reaching their destina-
tion; on the present occasion one steamship (the Pre-
cursor) took in a single trip,an equal number of troops
from Calcutta to Arracan in about seventy hours. Steam
nas in this instance reduced months to days; but this is
not all; close to Arracan is the Aeng Pass, now held by
a strong detachment of our troops, and from this pass it
is not forty miles to a point on the Irawaddy twice as
near to Ava as to Rangoon, and which it took in the last
war more than a year's campaign to reach from the lat-
ter basis of operations. The rising importance of Bom-
bay as the head-quarters of the Indian navy, and princi-
pal steam-port in the eastern seas, is not less remai kable.
In the last Burmese war it took nearly a month to pre-
pare a small sloop-of-war (the Hastings) for commission.
Now an order reaches us one day for all the steam-fri-
gates we can spare; three hours afterwards everything
Is arranged; next morning they are reported in such a
state of progress that they are in squadron-orders to be
off in three days; and in three days they are off.
" A month hence there will be, in all likelihood, a
fleet of at least eight large and five smaller class war-
steamers assembled in the Burmese waters, probably'
says the Bombay Times, ' the largest collection of that
formidable class of ships ever brought together for the
purpose of actual warfare.' If required, we could also
send hence the Ajadha, of 1,500 tons and 500-horse
power, and the Aebar, another powerful steam-frigate
(though in that case we should probably have to depend
on the Peninsular Company for the conveyance of our
mid-monthly mails), and two other first class steam-
frigates of 800 horse power each are now on the stocks
at Bombay. On the Ganges and Indus we have also
flotillas of river steamers and flats sufficient (if it were
considered worth while to use them) to convey the whole
Burmah field force from Rangoon to Ava in five or six
days (the distance is about 500 miles). The force
amounting to 6,000 men) that is about to start is consi-
derably larger than' any that Sir A. Campbell had at
his disposal at any time of the last war; and, if neces-
sary, it might be trebled from Bombay and Madras.
" I learn from private letters that the Governor-
General is still in hopes of avoiding anything more than
' a demonstration,' and that he expects the presencet in
their waters of a force so large and so rapidly collected
will frighten the Burmese into an immediate ace_ iea-
.e.
oence in his terms, and thereby save the expense and a
lay of a campaign. With any other natiomnessut
charesult would, under the circumstances, be al
cer-
tain ; but the history of thwehlaicsht,wasrf—tert
two years of
irrational obstinacy with
snal and incessant defeats, the
re-
fuse still
the terms offered them until.
continued
nbeerecci
alimatrep ab
l
always express-
was within forty miles of their
ing a desire to negotiate, yet
for erecting stockades
other object than to gain tinsel.the
nevereaPtt capital
so with any
circumstance of
and collecting troops, coupled with
demonstration,
be .
in the present case, ren-
their having courted a collision
ders it extremely improbablethaatmtehreey
monstration
in-
duced to submit to our term by
brigat the Bassein m
Serpent had destroyed
mouth of
" I omitted mentioning that
the Irrawaddy her Majesty's
some stockades which had openedfoar fire
a cruise in that
that the Commodore bad started
direction. bell's
force has returned to its canton-
" Sir C. Camp
meats at Peshawur, leaving
the Mormund frontier in a
more disturbed nod excited state than he found it.
..From the China papers it will be seen that the pro-
gross of the rebels is at length decided and unquestion-
able. Tien-teh's proclamations are now openly shown
in Canton, and bulletins of imaginary victories gained
by the Imperial troops are no longer put forth by the
Canton authorities. The Governor- General (Seu) of
the Canton province is besieged by the rebels in one of
his own towns, and the remnant of the Imperial forces
have lately been signally defeated. The only hope of
the Mantchoo dynasty lies in the chance of dissension
arising among the rebel leaders, an event by no means
improbable.
e sir S. Gray, the aged Commander-in-Chief of the
Bombay army, has had a stroke of paralysis, and returns
to England by to-day's mail; his illness was not unex.
pected. Lie had come out to a tropical olinaate la his