Page:Our Indian Army.djvu/468

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444
OUR ANGLO-INDIAN ARMY.

approach to the principal work, and thus all protecting each other. Fourteen pieces of artillery were silenced by the fire from the shipping, conducted by Captain Marryatt; and at the end of an hour the signal of "breach practicable" being made from the mainmast-head, the troops destined for the assault entered the boats. They consisted of a detail of the 3rd, 10th, and 17th Native Infantry, commanded by Major Wahab, under whom they made immediately for the breach. Lieutenant-Colonel Godwin, of H.M. 41st, with two hundred and sixty men of his own regiment, and one company of the Madras European regiment, pushed ashore at a little distance above, and entered the work by escalade. The first stockade was carried with comparatively small loss. Colonel Godwin then re-embarked to attack the second stockade, which was also carried, and the third was evacuated by the enemy. The operations of the land column, under McBean, were equally successful. Though destitute of guns, surrounded by stockades the extent or strength of which he had no means of ascertaining, and with only a comparatively trifling force, he trusted to the courage of his men, who were all from H.M. 13th, 38th, and 89th regiments, and carried seven stockades in succession by escalade, within the space of half an hour, and without firing a shot, all being done with the bayonet. Thus in one day the Anglo-Indian Army captured ten stockades, mounting thirty pieces of artillery, and garrisoned by numbers incomparably superior to those by whom they were assailed. The enemy lost from eight hundred to a thousand men, their commander-in-chief, and three other men of distinction.

The monsoon rains were now at their height; the adjacent country was almost wholly under water, nothing was to be obtained from it, and the sickness of our troops increased to an alarming extent. Still, however, an expedition, consisting of H.M. 89th regiment and the 7th Madras Native Infantry, under the command of Colonel Miles, was detached from Rangoon, with a considerable