Spurred on, he is reunited with his much depleted regiment, the 6th Light Dragoons, and immediately charged with raising a new troop, for India beckons once again. But what begins as a relatively simple operation becomes a dark and dangerous march through the jungle as Hervey and his ill-equipped and inexperienced soldiers race to confront the Burmese war-boats massing on the borders…
The Burmese were not to be deterred. In 1822 they
reduced the kingdom of Assam and the principality of
Muneepore. The following year they demanded the
surrender of the island of Shaporooree in the estuary of
the Teek Naaf, which formed the boundary between
Chittagong and Arakan (incidentally, the Karnaphuli,
known more usually at this time as the Chittagong
river, follows a very different course today). The new
Governor-General, Lord Amherst, sent troops to dislodge
them, but also a letter to the King of Ava which
convinced the Burmese court that the British had no
stomach for a fight. The Burmese general and national
hero, Mahâ Bundoola, was despatched with a large
army to Arakan with orders to drive the British from
the whole of Bengal.
Lord Amherst found himself with
no alternative but to declare war on the king in
February 1824.
The commander-in-chief, Lieutenant-General Sir
Edward Paget, had profound misgivings about
offensive operations, for in Burma, he said, ‘we should
find nothing but jungle, pestilence and famine.’ He
therefore favoured a maritime and riverine strategy,
and accordingly a combined naval and military
expedition was assembled in the Andaman Islands
under command of another Peninsular veteran, Major-
General Archibald Campbell. To the inexpressible
surprise of the Burmese, the flotilla arrived off the great
port of Rangoon on 12 May. Thereafter, the
expeditionary force, ill-prepared in so many ways, was
to discover the truth of the commander-in-chief’s
foreboding . . .
Skinner’s Horse, the regiment of irregular cavalry
founded by James Skinner, the son of a Scotch officer
in the Honourable East India Company and a Rajput
woman of rank, is today second only to the President’s
Bodyguard in seniority in the army of India. Skinner’s
Horse wear the yellow kurta still, the colour chosen by
Colonel Skinner from Rajput legend. A Rajput prince,
riding out to fight, would vow that if he could not win
he would die. His men, accepting the commitment, put
saffron on their faces and a yellow cloak over their
armour. These were called the clothes of the dead, and
the warriors were known as the ‘Yellow Men’, who
would not return from battle unless victorious – they
were ‘sworn to die’.
In 2003 Skinner’s Horse, at one time better known to
the world, perhaps, as the 1st Bengal Lancers, marked
the bicentenary of their founding. The words given them by James Skinner rang out on parade that celebratory
day:
Himmat-I-Mardan! Madad-I-Khuda! –
The Bravery of Man!
By the Help of God!