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CHAPTER II.

BATTLE OF PROME—1825.

America we will pass nearly half way around the globe in our search for the next decisive battle after that of Ayacucho. All students of history are well aware that the British power in India in the first half of the present century was represented by the East India Company. From an association of merchants trading to the East Indies in A. D. 1600, the Honorable East India Company grew to a colony of national importance. It possessed an army and a navy, it had the right of eminent domain, it had a commercial monopoly the greatest ever known, and the people under its control numbered many millions. It possessed the powers of a state and likewise its ambitions; it conquered territories neighboring to its own and then looked for more territories to conquer. Kingdoms and principalities of India were brought under its sway, and there was hardly a decade in the two hundred and fifty years of its existence in which it was not at war with neighboring powers. It generally came off victorious, thanks to the splendid fighting qualities which British soldiers have displayed through many ages, backed by the well-known British policy of never submitting to temporary defeat at the hands of Asiatics. While the British in the early part of the present century were extending their boundaries in the northwest provinces of India, the kingdom of Burmah displayed a