BURMA II. 



101 



prevented him from putting them all to death 

 months airo. Suddenly (February, 1879) the 

 news of the disaster in Zoolooluud reuohed 

 Mundiiluy. Tlmt apparently decided him, and 

 u work of cold-blooded butchery began wliieh 

 will hardly tind a parallel in history. At first 

 thv massacre was carried on according to old 

 Burmese use. The victims were led out of 

 their cells in twos and threes, brought to pay 

 homage to the King, and then disposed of in 

 the ordiuary Buddhist fashion. Ihe head of 

 the victim was tied down to his ankles, and a 

 blow on the back of the neck from a heavy 

 club put him out of pain. But this soon 

 proved too mild a spectacle for Thebaw. The 

 Thongzai Prince, on being brought to do rev- 

 erence to his young brother, professed an ut- 

 ter scorn for what could be done to him, and 

 was flogged to death. The late King's eldest 

 son, the truculent Mokhaya Prince, who used 

 to look on all foreigners as so much dirt un- 

 der his feet, turned craven, and was taunted 

 and driven to madness before receiving the 

 blow which only half stunned him, when his 

 writhing body was thrown into the gigantic 

 trench dug to receive the victims. The massa- 

 cre was carried on in a leisurely fashion, ex- 

 tending over several days, fiendish ingenuity 

 being taxed to the utmost to devise fresh hor- 

 rors. Moung Oke who was Governor of Ran- 

 goon when it was captured by the British in 

 1856 had his nose and mouth filled with gun- 

 powder, a light was applied, and he was then 

 flung into the trench to be stifled by the bod- 

 ies of succeeding victims. The daughter of 

 the Nyoung Yan, a young girl of sixteen, was 

 handed over to eight soldiers of the Royal 

 Guard, to be pitched insensible into the same 

 heaving grave when they had gratified their 

 brutal lust. The wife of one prince far ad- 

 vanced in pregnancy was ripped up, and the 

 agonized husband was brought to see his wife 

 and child once more before he died. After 

 some days of this sort of thing, the execution- 

 ers got weary and hurried through their task. 

 Little children were put in blankets and swung 

 against the palace walls; women were battered 

 over the head, as being less trouble than tying 

 them up so as to get a blow at the neck. Al- 

 together about ninety persons are believed to 

 have been put to death in this way. No one 

 was allowed to leave the palace while the mas- 

 sacre was going on, but it seems certain that 

 Mr. Shaw, the British Resident, was inside the 

 palace walls within a very short time of its 

 commencement. He had been to a concert 

 given by one of the ministers. One object of 

 this pwai was to drown the cries of the vic- 

 tims. The remonstrance which Mr. Shaw, at 

 the instance of the British Government, ad- 

 dressed to the King, was received with the ut- 

 most contempt. The guard of thirty Sepoys 

 conceded to him arrived a short time after- 

 ward, but was not allowed to land for the day, 

 and the detachment for Mr. St. Barbe, at 

 Bhamo, was not allowed to disembark at all, 



though the gentleman was in Mandalay. A 

 letter from the special correspondent of the 

 " Daily News," dated Mandalay, April 27, as- 

 serted that the King was very much hated by 

 his own people, and that his subjects would 

 murder him were he to leave the Myo or 

 walled town. According to this correspon- 



liCIJMESE LADY ADD GENTLEMAN. 



dent, "the Nyoung Yan is the man they desire 

 for King. He was always good-natured and 

 jolly, and he is the image of his father, the 

 late King. Moreover, he is not without some 

 claim to military distinction. In the rebellion 

 of 1866 he commanded a division of his father's 

 army, and defeated the rebels in several en- 

 gagements. Had he been killed with the rest 

 of his brothers, they would have accepted the 

 situation ; but now that he is safe in Calcutta, 

 there is always a lingering hope that he may 

 appear and claim the throne his father intend- 

 ed for him." 



The Government of the Viceroy of India 

 watched the strange events passing in Man- 

 dalay with great anxiety. Reinforcements 

 nearly double the ordinary strength of the 

 garrisons in British Burmah were ordered to 

 the frontier. The Rangoon and Irrawaddy 

 State Railway, 161 miles long, and running 

 three trains daily each way, connects Rangoon 

 with Prome. There is a telegraph from Ran- 

 goon to Mandalay, but the line beyond the 

 British frontier, maintained by the Burmese 

 authorities and working irregularly, is now in- 

 terrupted. The extensive military preparations 

 made by the King caused great anxiety for the 

 safety of British residents and Europeans in 

 Mandalay. 



The British Resident at Mnndalay, Mr. 

 Shaw, died on June 15, 1879. Notwithstand- 

 ing the complications existing between Eng- 



