Release and Triumph (1825 - 1826)

C H A P T E R X X I

Release and Triumph

[ 1825—1826]

T Amarapura they once more were separated. Adoniram was

taken to the house of the Amarapura governor and thence to the hall of justice in Ava. Nancy, with the children and the faithful Koo-chi], procured a boat and went down-river. She reached her own house on the riverbank before dark. In the morning she saw her old friend the City Governor, who had just been elevated to the rank of Wungyi. He told her that Adoniram was considered still in prison, but only while certain necessary orders were being prepared. He was to go to the Burmese camp at Maloun, to translate and help deal with the British.

Early the next morning, November 7, 1825, she saw the Wungyi again. just that moment, he said, Adoniram had been given twenty ticals for expenses — about ten dollars — and was to go immediately aboard a boat for Maloun. But the Wungyi had arranged for him to stop a few minutes at Nancy’s house, which was directly on his way. Nancy hurried home, hastily got together some food and clothing, and went with Adoniram to the boat. For sleeping, all she could provide was a mattress, a pillow and a blanket. Everything else had been looted.

But any annoyance was minor compared to Adoniram’s pleasure at learning that his Burmese translation of the New Testament was now safe in the house. The day he had been taken to Oung~pen~la, one of the jailers had stripped the cover off the hard pillow which contained it. Then the pillow itself, which looked like a useless roll of hard cotton, he threw away. Some hours later the faithful Maung Ing, searching for some relic of Adoniram to cherish, had found the uncovered pillow and had taken it home.

Consoled by this news Adoniram took his place in the tiny boat —too small to lie at full length—and made the three-day trip downriver to Maloun. He had one servant. For supplies, he had the twenty ticals and a bag of mildewed refuse rice supplied by the government. The nights were cold and damp. He arrived at the Burmese camp almost disabled with fever.

Here he was placed under guard in a bamboo hut on the glaring white sand of the broad river beach. His fever grew worse. He was ordered to go to the Burmese commander, the Kyi-Wungyi. When he pleaded that he could not move, his guards, thinking he was shamming, threatened him. But the reality of his illness was only too evident, and, leaving him in the hut on the sand, they brought him papers every hour or so for translation. He tried to make sense of them, but gradually he lost consciousness. For a day or two he lay in delirium. At times he had a vague idea that a shaven-crowned, yellow-robed Burmese priest was with him. Other times he thought he was being taken from the prison at Oung-pen-la to be burned alive. When the fever broke and he returned to consciousness, he found himself in an enclosure made by hanging a mat from the outside eaves of a cookhouse.

He was still too weak to move; but he found his mind more clear and active than at any time since before the war. As he read and explained the papers brought to him in increasing numbers, he began to study the Burmese leaders carefully.

He could see plainly that they must get used to the idea of giving up territory and paying indemnity. But in doing so they must come to think of him as a friend, or he would be lost. They were in mortal terror of the British. But they had not the slightest conception of official negotiations or statements. A paragraph of gossip in a Calcutta newspaper carried exactly the same weight as a formal proposal from Sir Archibald Campbell. Insofar as negotiations were concerned, they simply believed that obviously the conqueror would keep what he got.

Adoniram finally began to give a regular course of inStruction in the nature of agreements and contracts between civilized nations. His lectures generated personal admiration for him but little confidence in the British. The Burmese officers would exclaim “Ah, that is noble! That is as it should be!” Then they would shake their heads and add, “But the teacher dreams. He has a ceICStial Spirit and he thinks himself in the land of the celestial beings.” But as evidence of their great esteem for him and their recognition that he was a true friend of Burma, they gave him another blanket (or rather, a cotton rug) large enough to cover a six-year-old child. This he attached to his own blanket with slivers of bamboo, to double its thickness in the center. Henceforth, with the aid of a good deal of contortion to stay under the double part, he managed to keep fairly warm at night.

All this time the Burmese emissaries were meeting the British in a boat moored in the middle of the river. Eventually a treaty was actually signed by both parties. The terms included giving up Arakan, Tenasserim, Assam, Manipur, and one crore of rupees—about a million British pounds sterling. The British granted a fifteen days’ armistice for the treaty to be carried to Ava and ratified by the king.

At the end of the fifteen days nothing had been heard from the Burmese. The British realized that their antagonists once again had been playing for time. They began to advance on Maloun.

Adoniram had served his purpose. On December 17, on five minutes’ notice, he was loaded in a boat and taken upriver to Ava. When the British stormed the stockade and took the camp they found the original treaty. It had never been transmitted to Ava at all. But as the king would undoubtedly have sliced off the head of anyone rash enough to present it, perhaps no one could be blamed too much.

But of all this Adoniram knew nothing. He knew only that he would soon see Nancy. He disembarked on the riverbank late at night on December 29, and was led directly past his own house. He could see a feeble light inside, but in spite of his entreaties his guards refused to let him enter it even for a moment. They were not unsympathetic, but their orders were positive. Instead, they took him to the courthouse, where he was kept in an outbuilding until morning. From there, pending his early return to Oung-pen-la, he was moved, after a brief examination, to a shed.

Herc, after a day without food, he was found in the evening by Maung Ing, who had heard of Adoniram’s return from the servant who had accompanied him downriver. Nancy, said Maung Ing, had already told him to go to the friendly governor of the North Gate to see whether Adoniram could not be spared a return to Oung-pen-la. Little Maria was well, too, Nancy had said. Adoniram must not worry.

Adoniram was so relieved to see Maung Ing that he did not realize until after he had gone that there had been something oddly evasive in Maung Ing’s words. Two or three times Adoniram had directly asked Maung Ing whether Nancy was well. Maung Ing had replied either that Nancy had given him instructions about applying to the governor of the North Gate, or that Maria was well. Maung Ing’s tone had been so reassuring that he had felt no anxiety at the time, but now, the recollection of this unusual indirectness made him uneasy.

The governor of the North Gate acted promptly. That same night he presented a petition to the highest court for Adoniram’s release, offering himself as security. In the morning the old official summoned the prisoner to his house to be given the news. After thanking him profusely, Adoniram hurried to his own house. It was December 31, 1825.

When Adoniram entered the open door the first thing he saw was a fat Burmese woman squatting beside a pan of coals. She was holding a baby on her knees, a baby so very thin and dirty that it never oc'curred to him it might be Maria. He hurried into the bedroom. “Across the foot of the bed, as though she had fallen there, lay a human object that, at the first glance, was scarcely more recognizable than his child. The face was of ghastly paleness, the features sharp, and the whole form shrunken almost to the last degree of emaciation. The glossy black curls had all been shorn from the finely shaped head, which was now covered by a close-fitting cotton cap, of the coarsest and... not the cleanest kind.”

As he leaned over the motionless figure he could hardly credit his eyes. But yes, it was Nancy. Was she dead? His breath on her cheek must have fanned some remaining vitality, for she opened her eyes. She was still alive, just barely alive.

Deathly ill though she still was, Nancy had passed the real crisis fully a month before. Her health had declined steadily after Adoniram had gone downriver. After about two weeks she had been attacked by the dreaded spotted fever, cerebral spinal meningitis. She recognized the disease and was certain it would be fatal. Luckily, the same day a Burmese wet nurse offered to come in and nurse Maria. Soon Nancy lost consciousness. She had been in a raging fever for at leaSt two weeks when Price arrived. Just out of the Oung-pen-la prison for another translating task, he had managed to secure permission to see her. Price was sure she had only a few hours to live, but as a last resort he ordered her hair shaved and blisters applied to her head and feet. The Burmese neighbors who came to her said, “She is dead. If the king of angels should come in, he could not recover her.” But somehow she lived. After nearly a week, she began to return to consciousness. The loyal Koo-chi] persuaded her to drink a little wine and water. Slowly she improved. Before Adoniram’s return, she had been able to ask that a watch be kept for him; but she could not yet sit up. Thus it was that he found her.

When she could be moved, Adoniram took her from the river house to the house of the governor of the North Gate, where he had been invited to live. They would have had to move out of the river house in any case, for early in the new year 1826 the British began pressing up the Irrawaddy. All Ava fell into panic. Until now the court had always believed that one way or another the British would be driven out of Burma -— by new armies and leaders summoned from somewhere, by uprising in their other territories, by disease, by treachery, by trickery, or perhaps by sheer boredom. But the British advanced remorsclessly.

Adoniram and Price were called to the courthouse for consultation every day. Two recently captured British officers, a Dr. Sandford and a Lieutenant Bennett, were also consulted. But although all four were treated as oracles, they could convince the Court but of one thing: the treaty signed at Maloun (the king knew about it now) had provided for an indemnity of a crore of rupees, a million British pounds sterling. On payment of this the English agreed to withdraw their forces and leave Burma to the Burmans, except for the coastal provinces. But the Burmese court could not believe the British would keep their promise. As Gouger wrote, “Such an unheard-of thing as conquering a country and then restoring it was incredible! Measuring British faith and honor by their own standard, they concluded the intention was first to iInpoverish them, and then to march on the Capital.”

Eventually the government concluded that the two captured Englishmen might be used to induce Sir Archibald Campbell to yield easier terms. Adoniram was selected to go with one of them to the English headquarters. Of all missions, this was the one Adoniram feared most. The slightest suspicion of his good faith, and he and his family could lose their heads. Price, however, wanted to go. Adoniram managed to convince officialdom that Price could do the job as well as he.

A complicated security system was set up. Price was to go with Dr. Sandford. Adoniram would be hostage for Price. Lieutenant Bennett would be hostage for Dr. Sandford. The king generously gave each of them a hundred ticals for expenses. Dr. Sandford promptly sent Gouger twenty-five of his through Gouger’s baker, who was now, as Gouger expressed it, flying “backward and forward between Ava and Oung—pen-la with the rapidity of a weaver’s shuttle.” 1

Late in January Price and Sandford set off down the river with a Burmese official. Meanwhile, true to its principle of trusting nobody, the government went on with furious efforts to fortify the city. Nancy noted:

Men and beasts were at work night and day, making new stockades, and strengthening old ones, and whatever buildings were in their way were immediately torn down. Our house, with all that surrounded it, was levelled to the ground, and our beautiful little compound turned into a road and a place for the erection of cannon. All articles of value were conveyed out of town, and safely deposited in some other place.

When news came that Price’s and Sandford’s boat was on its way upriver, thousands of Ava’s inhabitants anxiously lined the bank. The court were thunderstruck to see Dr. Sandford return when there had been nothing to stop his breaking his parole and staying

1 Knowing his maSter, the baker spent some of the money for what he knew Gouger had most coveted for two years—a cup of attack. Gouger was still smacking his lips over it thirty-five years later: “Oh! who can tell the comfort a daily glass of strong waters adminiSters to a frame ready to sink with exhaustion? It is indescribable.” with his own forces. Sandford merely said it was nothing very surprising. Sir Archibald would have made him return even if he had not wanted to, since that was his agreement. Such behavior was the established custom of Europe. The court still could not under- Stand it, but for the first time they began to believe these crazy British might actually be so foolish as to keep their word, even with all Burma defenseless for the taking.

Price gave the British answer to the seated members of the government at the Hlut-dau. The palace gates were crowded with watchers.

“The general and commissioners,” he said, “will make no alteration in their terms, except that the indemnity may be paid at four different times. The first quarter must be paid within twelve days, or the army will continue their march. In addition, the prisoners in the hands of the Burmese must be given up immediately.”

Also, the British commander had specifically commissioned Price to demand Adoniram, Nancy and little Maria; but of these three the king fumed: “They are not English, they are my people. They shall not go.” He had learned the value of Adoniram’s services. As to the territory, the Burmese government agreed to give that up. It could be taken back later when the English had gone away. But the money, the crore of rupees! Surely there must be some way to get rid of the English without paying all of it! Perhaps they could be given just a taste of the first installment, enough to make them think they would get the rest soon. Then they might go away. Or perhaps another army could still be raised.

Price and Adoniram told the king, the queen and the court plainly that the English would never make peace on any other terms. It would be useless to go down to them again without the money. Some of the officials said to the two missionaries: “Probably you are on the side of the English. You did not try to make them take less. If you do not agree, your families will suffer for it.”

At this time there was one general, Layar-thoo-yah, who still thought he could defeat the English. They had not yet quite reached the ancient capital of Pagan, down the river. He could fortify it, make it impregnable, and from here sally out and drive them away. Rather than give up so much money from the Royal Treasury, the king and queen agreed to let him try. He was dubbed “Lord of the

Setting Sun.” Some fifteen thousand new troops were raised by an advance payment of a hundred and fifty ticals to each man. The men of this new army, named “The Retainers of the King’s Glory,” went down to Pagan and strengthened the city, spending their sudden wealth on the way for fine clothing. The British attacked them with nine hundred men. They broke and ran. Layar-thoo-yah appeared before the king and asked for new troops.

The king was infuriated. His commander had delayed the negotiations and irritated the British commander. The Lord of the Setting Sun was “hurled from the palace, and beat all the way to the courthouse—where he was stripped of his rich apparel, bound with cords, and made to kneel and bow towards the palace. He was then delivered into the hands of the executioners, who, by their cruel treatment, put an end to his existence, before they reached the place of execution.” Immediately afterwards the king had it announced that Layar-thoo-yah was executed because he had violated the royal command not to fight the English.

That same night Price was sent down again with some captured British, with instructions to persuade the enemy to accept about a quarter of the first installment. In a few days he returned. The British general was very angry, he reported, and refused even to talk with Dr. Price. He was now within a few days’ march of Ava and ready to move on the city.

Even with this news the king might have temporized, but the queen asserted her old dominance and decreed that the money must be raised at once. The palace was in an uproar. Gold and silver vases, pitchers, dishes— all were melted down. The king and queen themselves took charge of the weighing. Silver bars were carried from the Royal Treasury to boats. By the following evening the entire first installment was loaded and ready to go down the river.

But the sight of so much silver changed the royal mind again. How did they know the British would stop after receiving it? They would send down a quarter of it, as before. Then, if the British stopped, they would promise the rest.

At this moment some of the officials thought of Adoniram, who was walking on the streets observing what was going on. They sent out men who took him by the arm and told him he must go aboard at once with the Wungyi and Wundauk, who were empowered to make peace. A few more British officers, and, to Adoniram’s delight, Henry Gouger and the Armenian Arakeel had just been released from Oung-pen-la and were going down at the same time.

Sir Archibald Campbell reacted exactly as Adoniram had expected. He refused even to accept the quarter of the first installment. He refused to stop his march but was willing to advance slowly until the money arrived. He promised Adoniram he would halt and make peace if the complete installment reached him before he reached Ava. Furthermore, he authorized Adoniram to round up all the foreigners in the vicinity of Ava, and ask them, in the presence of government, whether they wished to remain or go. If they wished to go, they must be delivered to the British at once or there would be no peace.

Adoniram delivered this news to the king on his return to Ava about midnight. The Wungyi and Wundauk gloomily confirmed his words. Adoniram had all the foreigners—including those left at Oung-pen-la—rounded up and the question asked. Those who wanted to stay —poor old Rodgers, so long committed to Burmese service, was among them—were set free.

Once more some of the officials wanted Adoniram to stay. “You will not leave us; you will become a great man if you will remain.” Adoniram, thinking of the future of the mission, did not want to refuse point-blank. Diplomatically, he said his wife had said she wanted to go, and of course he must follow her.

The prisoners and silver—the complete first installment, this time—soon set off down the river in six or eight golden boats. Adoniram, Nancy and little Maria, Maung Ing, the wet nurse and Koo-chil were in one. Their friend, the governor of the North Gate, came down to the waterside to see them off.

It was a cool, moonlit evening. Maria slept in Adoniram’s arms. All their worldly possessions were with them in the boat. About midnight, at the Burmese camp below, they were detained for about two hours. The Wungyi and some of the officers had insisted the Judsons should wait while Price went ahead with the treasure, to make sure the British would accept it and stop where they were. But Adoniram insisted on going on. Reluctantly the Wungyi consented; he could ill afford to antagonize the American teacher now.

Once more the boat floated down the quiet Irrawaddy under the light of the brilliant moon. Adoniram and Nancy looked at each Other with quiet satisfaction. He was thin and haggard, in appearance an old man. Nancy was emaciated and pale, almost wraithlike, as she leaned back on the cushions. Her hands were so thin they were almost translucent. Little Maria too looked weazened and old, her baby face pinched, her arms and legs like little sticks. But she slept quietly. All three were ragged as scarecrows.

At the same time these two, who had come so far from peaceful Bradford and gone through so much, tonight were utterly peaceful and happy. They were free at last. Heaven, they thought, must feel something like this.

In the morning they saw the masts of the steamboat Diana, that mysterious, magical craft which had done much to make the Burmese think the British were invincible. Here Nancy and Maria were taken on board, while Adoniram continued a few miles down to Yandabo to see Sir Archibald Campbell. From now on, Nancy was treated like royalty. The night before, she and Adoniram had believed they were experiencing a foretaste of heaven. Now, to the British, she seemed an authentic angel.

The next day both Adoniram and Nancy went to General Campbell’s headquarters. He had a tent with a veranda, by far the largest in the camp, pitched for them next to his own, and they dined with him at his own table. In Nancy’s words he treated them “with the kindness of a father.” She wrote to Elnathan, “I presume to say, that no persons on earth were ever happier, than we were during the fortnight we passed at the English camp.”

Meanwhile the first few days were occupied with the peace treaty known to history as the Treaty of Yandabo. Henry Gouger, resplendent in clothing given him by Sir Archibald’s son John, helped Adoniram frame the final details. At its conclusion, General Campbell decided to give a state dinner for the Burmese commissioners.

He wanted to impress them with British pomp, and the job was done well. Every flag and banner that could be found was flown in a blaze of color. Gold and crimson cloth and hangings were displayed everywhere to awe the somewhat reluctant guests.

The dinner hour was announced by a regimental band in full regalia. Solemnly the whole company assembled in couples, the Burmese commissioners following suit as well as they could, and marched to the long dinner table. General Campbell, in his dressiest full-dress uniform, saved for just such an occasion, walked alone in front of the rest.

As he came Opposite the Judsons’ tent, next to his own, the music stOpped and the procession halted. Wonderingly the Burmese craned their necks to see what would happen next. The British (and Adoniram), having some idea, kept their faces impassive. The general went into the tent. In a moment he reappeared with Nancy on his arm, her thin face demure but her eyes dancing with some of the mischief of the Nancy Hasseltine of old. Ceremoniously he led her to the head of the table and seated her on his right hand.

These Burmese officials knew Nancy very well. For a year and a half she had abased herself before them for the smallest favors. She had endured rebuffs and insults without a murmur of anger. Now this victorious British lord and general, most likely own brOther to the East India Company, and probably even a brother of the British king, gave her the position of highest honor. As they cringingly took their own seats, they looked with fearful eyes at the pair at the head of the table, the wife of the American missionary and the commanding general of the British army. If she cared to tell what she knew—and if she were anything like a Burmese, she would—almost every one of them had something to fear: probably death, certainly torture.

Nancy knew what was in their minds. She was too human not to let a little of what she felt show in her eyes. General Campbell, suspecting it, had difficulty repressing a smile.

“I fancy these gentlemen must be old acquaintances of yours,” the general said as food was placed among them. “Judging from their appearance you must have treated them very badly.” The Burmese did not know English, but they could tell he was talking about them. One of them in particular showed fear. As he tried to eat, the food slipped off the fork he held in his trembling hand. The man’s behavior attracted General Campbell’s attention. “What is the matter with the owner of the pointed beard over there?” the general went on. “He seems to be seized with a fit of ague.”

Nancy looked at him carefully, warm recognition in her CXpl‘CSsion. “I do not know,” she said, “unless his memory may be too busy. He is an old acquaintance of mine. Probably he considers himself in danger now that he sees me under your protection.”

And she told the story of how Adoniram had been placed in five pairs of fetters and thrust into the Inner Prison, half dead from fever, and how it was to this man’s house she had walked early one morning to see if he would help a little. It was this man who had kept her waiting in the hot sun until noon, who had heard her request indifferently and refused it with contempt. It was he who had seen her silk umbrella as she turned to leave and snatched it out of her hand. It was he who had laughed and said, “Only fat people need to fear sunstroke. The sun can’t find a woman as thin as you.”

The English officers ranked along one side of the table found it difficult to keep a courteous silence as she told the story. But their looks at the shrinking official spoke even louder than their few indignant words. By a sort of intuition he seemed to know what Nancy said. His face writhed with fear. His hand shaking uncontrollably, he tried to wipe the perspiration that oozed from his death—pale face.

Nancy took pity on him. In Burmese she reassured him softly, “You have nothing to fear.” She explained to General Campbell what she had just told him. Conversation turned to other subjects, Nancy and Adoniram translating polite remarks back and forth. But the dinner was not a success for the Burmese commissioners. They ate little and shook much. The white men were painfully correct, but no more.

After the dinner, alone in their tent, Adoniram and Nancy rocked with perhaps un-Christian laughter. “I never thought I was over and above vindictive,” confessed Adoniram between gaSps, “but really, it was one of the richest scenes I ever beheld.”