Page:Our Indian Army.djvu/475

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OUR ANGLO-INDIAN ARMY.
451

charges; but Major Walker and a good many of his gallant comrades fell. The loss of the Burmese was appalling: they were driven from every part of their works into the jungle, leaving the ground behind them covered with dead and wounded, with all their guns, intrenching-tools, and a great number of small arms.

On the 6th of December Bundoola was employed in rallying his defeated troops, and on the 7th the Burmese made their last and grand attack on the great pagoda; but they were beaten, driven back, and forced into the jungle by the British bayonet. Our troops, worn out by seven days and nights of incessant fighting, or watching, could not pursue the flying enemy, who left in the trenches a great number of dead. During these seven fiery days the Burmese, in addition to a prodigious loss of lives, had lost every gun they possessed, and the entire matériel of their army.

Bundoola, whose army of 60,000 fighting-men was now reduced to less than half, was about to retire on Donobew, when he received numerous reinforcements, and immediately began to intrench and stockade himself at Kokeen, about four miles beyond the great pagoda, employing incendiaries at the same time to burn the invaders out of Rangoon, and destroy all their stores, powder-magazines, &c. On the 14th of December the town was fired in several places simultaneously; but the exertions of the garrison succeeded, after two hours, in stopping the progress of the flames, though not until half the place had been destroyed. On the following day the Burmese army was attacked by the British general, when fifteen hundred of the Anglo-Indian Army, under General Willoughby Cotton, and unaided by artillery, drove Bundoola and his mighty host from all their intrenchments and stockades at Kokeen, and strewed the position with dead and dying.

The remnant of the Burmese army having retreated upon Donobew, Sir Archibald Campbell resolved to advance up the country, at least as far as Prome, reducing