Page 501 - INDIANNAVYV1

HISTORY OF THE INDIAN NAVY. 4 GO '

duplicity on the part of his envoys, at midnight on the 18th of
January, hostilities were recoiniuenced. Batteries were con-
structed before Mellowu, and heavy ordnance landed from the
flotilla; and, at eleven a.m., twenty-eight guns and mortal's
opened fire upon the enemy's works, which was continued for two
hours, by which time the troops intended for the assault were
embarked in the flotilla at a point above the chief stockades.
But, notwithstanding every exertion of the boats' crews, the cur-
rent carried Colonel Sale's* brigade, consisting of the 13th and
4<Sth Regiments, to its destined point of attack, before the
three other brigades could reach the opposite shore. Colonel
Sale was wounded in his boat, but, without waiting for the
arrival of the other columns, Major Frith, who succeeded to the
command, moved forward, and carried the formidable stockade
by escalade ; a second brigade cut up the flying foe, and the
other works were occupied without opposition. Prince
Memiaboo had fled as Colonel Sale's brigade moved to the
assault, but in his house was found the treaty of peace of the
3rd of January, which had never left Mellown, thus proving
that the negotiations were a mere blind. In the works were
captured seventy-six guns, ninety jingals, and a large amount
of arms and ammunition; also in the river eighteen war-boats,
fifty-nine other boats, and between two hundred and three
hundred canoes. Tlie British loss was only nine men, in-
cluding four in the flotilla, killed, and thirty-four, including
nine in the flotilla, wounded. The Commander-in-chief ex-
pressed his earnest thanks " to Captain Chads and every officer
and man of H.M.'s ships and the lion. Company's flotiUa."
On the 25th of January, 182(), the army left Mellown for
the final advance on the caj)ital, and, on the iiOth, one of the
gunboats struck, and bilged, upon a bar with only live feet of
water, over which the rest of the flotilla passed in safety. In
the meantime the King, terror-struck at the fall of Mellown,
sent Dr. Price, an American missionarv, and Assistant-Surgeon
Sandford, of the Royal Regiment, to o])('n negotiations for a
fresh treaty, and Sir Archibald Campbell agreed to halt al
Pagahm ^lew for twelve days ; but, upon tiie Sth of February,
when within a day's Uiarch of that place, he received certain
intelligence that the King had resolved to stake all upon one
pitched battle, and that an army of between sixteen thousand
and twenty thousand men, under a savage warrior, styled Nee-
Woon-Breen, or King of Hell, had taken post in that city to
bar his passage to the capital. On the Ibllowing day, the small
British army, which, owing to the absence of a brigade at
Toundwain, only numbered fom-teen hundred men, marched
* After tlie capture of 15assein when the recoiinnijisance up tlio river by tlie
H.C.S. ' Mereury,' showed thiit it wiis not iiiivii;!ihle, Colonel S<alo pioeeedeil lo
join the main unuy uudor Sir Archibald Campbell.