It was in Rangoon at this time that I made up my mind to disarm the whole province, Upper and Lower, rigorously, as soon as possible. I wrote to Lord Dufferin on September 30, 1887, as follows: "I am of opinion that the time has come for the complete disarming of the whole province, except perhaps on some exposed frontiers. The firearms in the hands of dacoits are evidently much fewer, but they continually replenish their stock by taking arms from villagers and Burman police. I would temper the measure in the Lower province by giving arms to selected Karens and Burmans, who should enrol themselves as special constables. As the Burmans hate nothing so much as signing any engagement to serve for a term, few of them would enrol themselves.
"I should fix the number of such special police myself, for each district."
The Baptist missionaries, I feared, would not look upon the scheme with favour. The loyalty of the Karens and the benefits of their organization under their missionaries, to whom the Government, as I have said on a former page, owes much, were not questioned. But it was not admissible that the Government of Burma should prefer one race more than another, and I had been warned by one of the missionaries themselves that Burman ill-will had been excited by the preference given to Karens in raising bodies of police auxiliaries during the disturbances.
By laying down conditions, fair and necessary in themselves, which men of the one race were likely to accept, but would be less acceptable to the other, as much discrimination was made between Karens and Burmans as was needful or decent.
[81]
In Upper Burma, Sir Charles Bernard had ordered the withdrawal of firearms from the villagers, soon after the annexation. It was not possible to carry it out effectually at that time. It was not until 1888 that I had arranged all the details and could put the orders fully into force. It is admitted generally to have been a beneficial measure, and to have helped very much to pacify the country and to put down dacoity. It is a pity that the disarmament of Lower Burma had not been enforced many years before. But no accumulation of facts are enough to destroy a prejudice, and for a long time my action was violently, I might say virulently, denounced in the Press and in Parliament.
The wisdom and necessity of this measure has come, I think, to be admitted by most people and was never doubted by my successors, who wisely disarmed the Chins at the cost of a serious rising and a hill campaign. The number of firearms taken from the villagers amounted in the years 1888 and 1889 to many thousands. Most of them were very antiquated and fit for a museum of ancient weapons. But they served the purpose of the Burman brigand, and not a few good men, British and Indian, died by them.
The Village Regulation was passed on October 28, 1887. It established on a legal basis the ancient and still existing constitution of Upper Burma. While emphasizing the responsibility of the village headman, it gave him sufficient powers and the support of the law. It also enacted the joint responsibility of the village in the case of certain crimes; the duty of all to resist the attacks of gangs of robbers and to take measures to protect their villages against such attacks. In the case of stolen cattle which were traced to a village, it placed on it the duty of carrying on the tracks or paying for the cattle. It gave the district officer power to remove from a village, and cause to reside elsewhere, persons who were aiding and abetting dacoits and criminals. This enactment, the genesis of which I have given in a former chapter, was framed in accordance with the old customary law and with the feelings of the people. It strengthened our hands more and gave us a tighter grip on the country than anything else could have[82] done. Without the military police no law could have done much. Without the Village Regulation, the military police would have been like a ship without a rudder.
When the open season of 1887-8 began, the administration was in a strong position to deal with the disorder still prevailing. It was prepared as it never had been before. There was the law enforcing village responsibility, and enabling the magistrate to deal summarily with the persons who were really the life of dacoity; those who, living an apparently honest life, were the intelligence and commissariat agents of the gangs. All the details of disarmament had not been settled, but every opportunity was taken of withdrawing arms, and in the case of dacoit leaders or their followers, or of rebel villages, the surrender of a certain number of firearms was made a condition of the grant of pardon. Lastly, the military police organization was complete, and the physical force needed to enforce the law was thus provided in a ready and convenient form.
The rains were over, and I anticipated that the dacoits would again become active. I also thought it probable that the inexperienced police would meet with some disasters.
The country now in the Thayetmyo district, frequented by Bo Swè, was quieter. He was a fugitive with a diminished following. Early in October we were cheered by the news of his destruction. The Viceroy wired his congratulations.
It may seem unworthy of the Government of a great country to rejoice at the death of a brigand whose influence did not extend over more than a few hundred square miles. It was not the man\'s death, but all that it meant. A sign of the coming end—slowly coming, it may be, but still the coming end—of a very weary struggle with a system of resistance which was costing us many good men and a lavish expenditure of money. Bo Swè was ridden down by a party of Colonel Clements\' Mounted Infantry belonging to the Lower Burma command. He and his men were surprised in a ravine, and many, including Bo Swè, killed.
There were still left the broken remnants of the leader\'s following. Active officers, with special powers and sufficient police, were placed in charge of the Northern subdivisions of the Thayetmyo district on both sides of the[83] river, and order was established before the end of 1887. But in Upper Burma the districts of the Southern Division remained in a very bad state. ?ktama was still master, especially in the valley of the M?n. I had not found the right men for Minbu, and the weakness of the civil administration was represented as an evil, not without reason, by the military commanders.
The following extract from a letter dated 1st of October, 1887, from the Commissioner of the Southern Division will give a better idea of the state of things than mere general phrases:—
"On 16th August, Po Saung, an informer, was caught and killed by Bo Cho\'s gang in Pagan.
"On 29th August, Yan Sin, a dacoit who had submitted, was caught and killed by Nga Kway in Pagan.
"On 5th September, at K?kkozu village in Pauk, the dacoits tried to catch the thugyi, but failed, and caught and murdered his wife.
"Su Gaung, a mounted police constable, was shot while carrying letters between Myingyan and Natogyi on 16th September.
"In Lindaung, Pagan district, the thugyi was murdered a month ago and Thade\'s gang on 10th September attempted to capture his son, but failed, and plundered the village.
"On 29th September, Nurtama in Minbu, which is the headquarters of the Kyabin Myo?k, was attacked. The Myo?k\'s and seven other houses were burned; no one was killed. The Myo?k lived here in fear of his life for some time. He sleeps at night at Sinbyugyun, on the other side of the Salin Creek, and if he sleeps at Nurtama he does not sleep in his own house, but in a little post which he has built. He has taken a guard of ten men from Sinbyugyun.
"On 24th September at Sagyun, in Myingyan district, Custance\'s interpreter and the thugyi of Wel?n were breakfasting in the village; they were attacked, and the interpreter killed, his head being nearly severed from his body. The thugyi escaped with a slight wound."
More than one attack was made on Yénangyaung, the village near the oil-wells, with the object of killing the Burman headman. The raiders did not secure him, but[84] they carried off his wife and daughter and set fire to a number of boats, loaded with oil. The military police (a few raw Punjabis without a British officer) were flurried and did nothing. These attacks made them nervous, and shortly afterwards, taking a forest officer, who was going down the river with a white umbrella[22] over his head, for a leader of rebels, they fired volleys at him until he and his crew had to get out of the boat and cling to the side of it. Fortunately the men shot badly and no one was hit. The forest officer complained loudly of the indignity he had suffered, which he thought was not within the letter of his bond. It was believed that the men who had made the attack on Yénangyaung had come from the right bank of the Irrawaddy River. There was a patrol launch on this part of the river, and it had called several times at Yénangyaung before the attack. We had not enough boats to patrol a long stretch of river effectually, and it was easy for the dacoits to watch the steamer as it went up or down and time their crossing. The Commissioner, therefore, collected the boats on the right bank and put them under guards until confidence was restored. The towns on the left bank below Pagan were reported to live in dread of attack.
Meanwhile trouble broke out in the Chindwin district, on the west of the river. Two leaders of revolt had appeared in this region. One was the Bayingan, or Viceroy, of the Myingun Prince whose name has already been mentioned. He was known to have left the Mandalay district with the object of raising a disturbance in the Chindwin. The other was a person called the Shwègyobyu Prince, who at the time of the annexation had been a vaccinator in the Government service in the Thayetmyo district. He must have been a man of considerable character and ambition, for when the war began he went up to the Chindwin country and established himself at Kanlè, in the difficult hills of............