Page:Lord Amherst and the British Advance Eastwards to Burma.djvu/83

 army and the deposition of the king. A kinsman took his place, and piously contented himself with slitting the ear of the fallen 'King of Heaven.' After a time of exile in Bhután, the dethroned king ventured back, and for a while recovered power. The Burmese, however, proved treacherous allies, and again the poor king had to fly; but on this occasion he found refuge in the adjacent British district. Thus the Company had a Shan pretender on its hands in Rangpur as well as a community of fugitive Mugs in Chittagong. History repeated itself. The commander of the Burmese forces in Assam threatened to pursue the royal refugee; the Company's 'Commissioner of the North-East Frontier' prepared to repel aggression.

We have now to turn to the third—and, happily, the last—point at which, on the eve of Lord Amherst's administration, the Company had strained relations with the representatives of the Court of Ava. The ancient valley kingdom of Manipur hardly calls for any detailed description. The tragic massacre of an English Envoy, of which it was the scene only a few years ago, made its position, its characteristics, and even its physical aspect, familiar to the most phlegmatic of home-keeping Britons. It will be remembered that of the columns which were despatched to restore order and exact reparation, one advanced by way of Cachar and another by way of Upper Burma. This fact supplies the key to the events of 1823. So far back as 1762 a treaty of alliance had