naval force, to subdue the maritime possessions of his Majesty to the eastward. The success of the expedition was complete: Tavoy surrendered; Mergui was taken by storm, and the people all along the coast of Tenasserim gladly placed themselves under British protection.
The "fortunate Lord of the White Elephants," finding that his inferior officers and ordinary soldiers could make no head against the invaders, sent his two brothers, the Prince of Toonghoo and the Prince of Sarrawaddy, with a whole host of astrologers and a corps of "Invulnerables," to direct the future operations of the war, with strict orders to block the channel of the river in our rear, that not one of the "wild foreigners," or "captive strangers," might escape the punishment that was about to overtake them. At last the astrologers, whose business it was to fix the lucky moments for attacking, told the Prince of Sarrawaddy that the stars had declared the time was come for a decisive action; and on the night of the 30th of August the King's Invulnerables promised to attack and carry the great Shoodagon pagoda, that the princes, and the sages, and pious men in their train might celebrate the usual annual festival in that sacred place.
Accordingly, at the hour of midnight the Invulnerables rushed in a compact body from the jungle under the pagoda, armed with swords and muskets. A small picket thrown out in our front retired in slow and steady order, skirmishing with the Invulnerables till they reached the flight of steps leading from the road up to the pagoda. The moon was gone down, and the night was so dark that the Burmese could only be distinguished by a few glimmering lanterns in their front; but their noise and clamour, their threats and imprecations upon the impious strangers, if they did not immediately evacuate the sacred temple, proved their number to be very great. In a dense column they rolled along the narrow pathway leading to the northern gate of the pagoda, wherein all seemed as silent as the grave. But hark! the muskets crash, the cannons roar along the ramparts of the British post,
