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46 BIRMAH.
Indian government to secure an amicable intercourse,
for the purposes of commerce, with the Birman power.
In the year 1799 and 1800, fresh hostilities broke
out between the Birmans and the Siamese, in
which the latter were the aggressors ; and they ob-
tained at first considerable advantages, routing
the Birmese forces opposed to them. But so great
were the exertions and resources of Minderajee-praw,
that the Siamese were soon compelled to fall back ;
and the result appears to have been, a recognition of
the old boundary, and a truce of longer duration than
usual. The feudal system of conscription which pre-
vails in the Birman empire, enables the sovereign
readily to bring into the field a force of powerful and
menacing amount. The court of Amarapura can
without much difficulty, command, by means of its
great feudatories, the viceroys of Pagahm, Prome,
Tonghoo, and other chiefs, a body of from 60 to 80,000
men on any one poinj;, and by means of its noble
rivers can direct this vast force with sufficient precision
to the prescribed spot. So well arranged and com-
bined are their military movements, that, in the in-
vasion of Arracan by the late monarch in 1783, a
simultaneous operation by three divisions of troops,
and a flotilla of war-boats, took place so accurately,
that they all appeared at nearly the same moment
before Arracan ; and that country has ever since fur-
nished its contingent levy of troops for the armies of
Birmah. But during the Siamese war of 1799 and
1800, a large mass of Arracanese, disgusted or terrified
by the new regulations of conscription, emigrated in
a body into the British province of Chittagong ; and
after various disputes
and altercations with the Bir-
mans, they at length were allowed peaceably to settle
on districts apportioned out for them in the British