ton, and who informed him that the enemy had been repulsed, the preceding night, in an attack upon the British camp.
On the morning of the 27th, the Diana, with one mortar-boat, four gun-vessels, and a number of flats, &c. in tow, the latter carrying provisions and breaching guns recently arrived from Panlang, pushed past the enemy’s works, and formed a junction with the land column, then vigorously employed in digging trenches, and throwing up batteries for guns and mortars. The flotilla was no sooner observed in motion than the garrison of Donoobew sortied in considerable force, infantry and cavalry, with seventeen war-elephants, fully caparisoned, and carrying a proportion of armed men. This attack was, as usual, directed upon the right of the line; and while the flotilla came up in full sail under all the fire of the enemy’s works, “the British cavalry, covered by the horse-artillery, was ordered to charge the advancing monsters: the scene was novel and interesting; and although neither the elephants nor their riders can ever be very formidable in modern warfare, they stood the charge with a steadiness and courage these animals can be rarely brought to show. Their riders were mostly shot; and no sooner did the elephants feel themselves unrestrained, than they walked back to the fort with the greatest composure. During the heavy cannonade that took place between the flotilla and the stockade, Maha Bandoola, who was superintending the practice of his artillery, gave his garrison a specimen of the discipline he meant to enforce, in this last struggle to retrieve his lost character and reputation. A Burmese officer being killed while pointing a gun, by a shot from the flotilla, his comrades, instantly abandoning the dangerous post, could not be brought back to their duty by any remonstrances of their chief; when Bandoola, stepping down to the spot, instantly severed the heads of two of the delinquents from their bodies, and ordered them to be stuck up upon the spot, ‘pour encourager les autres.[1]” In forcing the passage past Donoobew, the flotilla, although exposed to a very heavy fire
- ↑ Snodgrass, 171, et seq.
