of discussion had been carried on between Sultan Abdullah and his chiefs,
and they determined not only that the British Resident should be got rid
of, but one of them, entitled the Maharaja Lela, undertook to do the
business the next time Mr. Birch visited him.
This man, the Maharaja Lela, was a chief of considerable rank, after the
Sultan he was the seventh in the State. He lived at Pâsir Sâlak, on the
right bank of the Perak River, about thirty miles above the residence
of Sultan Abdullah, and about forty below that of ex-Sultan Ismail. He
avoided Mr. Birch whenever it was possible (though living only five miles
from him), and managed to keep friends with both Sultans.
During the month, Sultan Abdullah, who was then with his boats at Pâsir
Panjang, a couple of miles below the Maharaja Lela’s house, summoned his
chiefs and informed them that he had given over the government of the
country to Mr. Birch. This announcement was received in silence by the
others, to whom it was doubtless no news, but the Maharaja Lela said,
“Even if your Highness has done so, I do not care at all. I will never
acknowledge the authority of Mr. Birch or the white men. I have received
letters from Sultan Ismail, the Mĕntri and the Pĕnglima Kinta telling me
on no account to obey the English Government in Perak. I will not allow
Mr. Birch to set his foot in my kampong at Pâsir Sâlak.”
The Sultan said, “Do you really mean that, Maharaja Lela?” and the Chief
replied, “Truly I will not depart in the smallest degree from the old
arrangement.”
Another chief, the Dâtoh Sâgor, who lived on the other side of the river,
exactly opposite to Pâsir Sâlak, said, “What the Maharaja Lela does I
will do.”
The Sultan then got up and withdrew.
Two or three days before the end of the month the Sultan called another
meeting of his chiefs at a place called Durian Sa’bâtang, ten miles below
the small island on which the Resident’s hut stood. At that meeting
the Sultan produced the proclamations which were to be issued, placing
the administration in the hands of British officers, and asked his
chiefs what they thought of them. The Laksâmana, an influential chief,
said, “Down here, in the lower part of the river, we must accept the
proclamations”; but the Maharaja Lela said, “In my kampong I will not
allow any white man to post those proclamations. If they insist on doing
so, there will certainly be a fight.” To this the Sultan and other chiefs
said, “Very well.”
The Maharaja Lela immediately left, and having loaded his boats with
rice, returned up river to his own kampong.
Pâsir Sâlak was the usual collection of Malay houses scattered about
in groves of palm and fruit trees by the river-bank. Prominent amongst
these was the Maharaja Lela’s own dwelling, a large and comparatively new
building of a more than ordinarily substantial kind, round which he had
for months past been digging a great ditch and throwing up a formidable
earthwork crowned by a palisade. These preparations had been duly noted
by the Resident.
Arrived at his own home, the Maharaja Lela sent out messengers to summon
all the men in his immediate neighbourhood, and when they were collected
he addressed them and stated that Mr. Birch was coming up the river in
a few days, and that, if he attempted to post any notices there, the
orders of the Sultan and the down-river chiefs were to kill him. The
assembled people said that, if those were the commands of the Sultan and
the Maharaja Lela, they would carry them out. The chief then handed his
sword to a man called Pandak Indut, his father-in-law, and directed that
everyone should give to him the same obedience as to himself. The people
then dispersed. It was one or two days after this that Mr. Birch arrived
at Pâsir Sâlak.
Before describing the events of the 2nd November I must go back for a
moment.
A number of officers, of whom I was one, had accompanied Sir W. Jervois
in his journey to Perak. When the Governor and those with him left the
State I was directed to remain behind with Mr. Birch to assist him in his
negotiations with the chiefs. A fortnight later I went to Singapore with
important papers and the drafts of proclamations defining the authority
of the Resident under the new arrangement. These proclamations were
printed, and I returned to Perak with them, joining Mr. Birch in his
house on the 26th October.
I found the Resident had met with an accident; he had slipped down and
so badly sprained his ankle that he could not walk without crutches.
Lieut. Abbott, R.N., and four bluejackets were at Bandar Bharu (the
Residency), where were also quartered the Sikh guard (about eighty men),
the boatmen, and others.
Mr. Birch undertook to distribute the proclamations himself in the
down-river districts, and directed me to go up river, to interview the
ex-Sultan Ismail, the Raja Muda, the Raja Bĕndahâra, and other up-country
chiefs, and, having distributed the proclamations at all important
villages from Kôta Lâma downwards, to try to meet him at Pâsir Sâlak on
the 3rd November. There, he told me, he expected trouble for which he was
quite prepared.
The Sikh guard was in a state bordering on mutiny in the evening of
the 27th, but by the following morning they seemed to have returned to
their senses, and about noon I left Bandar Bharu with two boats for the
interior, Mr. Birch starting down stream at the same time.
He must have got through his part of the work more rapidly than he
expected, for he reached Pâsir Sâlak with three boats at midnight on the
1st November, and anchored in midstream. The 1st November was the _Hâri
Râya_, the first day after the Fast. At daylight his boats went alongside
the bank, and the Resident’s own boat was made fast to the floating
bath-house of a Chinese jeweller, whose little shop stood on the high
bank a few feet from the riverside. This was the only Chinese house in
Pâsir Sâlak.
Mr. Birch was accompanied by Lieut. Abbott, an armed guard of twelve
Sikhs, a Sikh orderly, the Malay interpreter (an eminently respectable
Malay of nearly fifty named Muhammad Arshad), and a number of Malay
boatmen and servants. There must have been about forty people in the
party. Mr. Birch had with him a 3-Pr. brass gun, a small mortar, and a
number of English firearms and Malay weapons, besides other property.
Directly after their arrival Mr. Abbott borrowed a small boat from the
Chinaman and went across the river to Kampong Gâjah to shoot snipe, the
Chief of that place, the Dâtoh Sâgor, returning in the boat to Pâsir
Sâlak, where he at once sought an interview with Mr. Birch.
After this conversation, which was held in the Resident’s boat, the Dâtoh
Sâgor and Mr. Birch’s interpreter went to the Maharaja Lela’s house,
and the interpreter said to the Maharaja Lela that the Resident wished
to see him and would go to his house for that purpose, but if the Chief
preferred it, and would go to Mr. Birch’s boat, he would be glad to meet
him there. The Maharaja Lela said, “I have nothing to do with Mr. Birch,”
and the interpreter returned to the boat and reported to his master the
result of his interview.
The news of the Resident’s arrival had been spread in every direction,
and all those in the neighbourhood were ordered to come in. By this
time, sixty or seventy men had assembled and were now standing about on
the bank of the river close to Mr. Birch’s boats. They were all armed
with spears and _krises_, and Mr. Birch asked the Dâtoh Sâgor what they
wanted, and that they should be told to stand further away. The Dâtoh
told them to move away, and they gave a few yards, but at the same time
began to abuse the Resident, calling him an “infidel,” and asking what
he meant by coming there asking questions and speaking like one in
authority. Probably the Resident did not understand these ominous signs,
but his boatmen heard and realised that trouble was brewing.
Mr. Birch now gave some proclamations to the interpreter, who took them
on shore and posted them on the shutters of the Chinaman’s shop. Almost
immediately, Pandak Indut, the Maharaja Lela’s father-in-law, tore them
down and took them off to the Maharaja Lela’s house. That chief’s dictum,
was “Pull down the proclamations, and, if they persist in putting them
up, kill them.” Then it may be supposed he washed his hands of all
responsibility, and Pandak Indut went out to execute his master’s orders.
Meanwhile, Mr. Birch had handed to his interpreter some more
proclamations to replace those removed, and, after giving directions to
prepare his breakfast, went into the Chinaman’s bath-house to bathe,
leaving his Sikh orderly at the door with a loaded revolver. This
bath-house was of the type common in Perak, two large logs floating in
the stream, fastened together by cross-pieces of wood, and on them built
a small house with mat sides about five feet high, and a roof closing on
the sides but leaving two open triangular spaces at front and back. The
structure is so moored that it floats parallel to the bank, and a person
even standing up inside it cannot see what is taking place on the shore
close by.
It was now about 10 A.M., and in spite of the threatening attitude of the
large crowd of armed Malays standing in groups and passing between the
river-bank and their chief’s house, the Resident was composedly bathing
in the river, while his people were some of them cooking on the bank,
others sleeping in the boats, and a few, the Malays, anxiously expectant,
fearing the signs boded a catastrophe.
They had not long to wait. The interpreter was still replacing the
proclamations on the Chinaman’s hut, when Pandak Indut and a number of
other men came quickly from the Maharaja Lela’s house.
The crowd asked, “What are the Chief’s orders?”
Pandak Indut replied, “He leaves the matter to me.”
Going straight up to the Chinese shop, he began tearing down the
newly-posted papers; the interpreter protested, and, seeing no heed was
paid to him, turned towards the bath-house. He had not made half a dozen
steps, when Pandak Indut overtook him and thrust his spear into the man’s
abdomen. The wounded man fell down the bank into the river and caught
hold of his master’s boat, but others followed him and cut him over the
head and hands, so that he let go and struggled out into the stream.
The interpreter disposed of, Pandak Indut cried out, “Here is Mr. Birch
in the bath-house, come, let us kill him,” and, followed by three or four
others shouting _âmok, âmok_, they leapt on to the floating timbers and
thrust their spears through the open space in the front of the house.
At that time men in the boats could see Mr. Birch’s head above the mat
wall; it disappeared without any sound from him, and a moment after
he came to the surface of the water astern of the house. Some of the
murderers were already waiting there, and one of them, a man called
Sipûtum, slashed the Resident over the head with a sword. He sank and was
not seen again.
The Sikh orderly, standing with a revolver at the door of the bath-house,
jumped into the river without any warning to his master, swam off to one
of the boats and saved himself.
The river-bank was now the scene of a general _mêlee_. A Malay boatman
and a Sikh had been killed, but the others had got one of the boats away
from the bank into midstream and towards it two of Mr. Birch’s Malays
were swimming while they supported the grievously wounded interpreter.
With difficulty they gained the boat and got the man in. As they
dropped down the river Mr. Birch’s coxswain urged the Sikhs to fire
on the Malays, but they said they could not do so without an order! He
accordingly gave the order, and some shots were fired which for a moment
cleared the bank. A small boat with two men in it put out lower down
stream to intercept the fugitives, and two of them were wounded by shots
from these men. The coxswain then wrenched a rifle from a Sikh and shot
one of these assailants. After this the boat proceeded unmolested to
Bandar Bharu. Long before they arrived there the interpreter died.
Mr. Abbott, shooting on the other bank, was warned of what had taken
place, and with great difficulty got into a dug-out and made his way down
stream under the fire of the Malays on the bank.
The attack, the murder of the Resident, his interpreter, the Sikh and
the boatman, and the escape of the rest of the party was the work of a
few minutes. Whilst still the passion of strife and bloodthirst swayed
the crowd, the Maharaja Lela walked into their midst and asked whose
hands had done the Resident and his men to death. Instantly Pandak Indut,
Sipûtum, and the others, claimed credit for their murderous work. The
Chief said, “It is well, none but those who struck blows can share in
the spoil.” He then called a man forward and said, “Go and tell the
Laksâmana that I have killed Mr. Birch.” The message was delivered the
same day, and the Laksâmana said, “Very well, I will tell the Sultan.”
That evening the Maharaja Lela sent a letter to ex-Sultan Ismail
describing what he had done, and, to remove any doubt on the subject, he
sent with it the Resident’s own boat.
These are the facts about Mr. Birch’s assassination, and it may be of
some interest to add that the Resident’s two boats were immediately
rifled and all their contents carried up to the Maharaja Lela’s house.
An attack upon the Residency was planned, ordered to be carried out that
night, and a number of men started on the expedition, and even got within
a few hundred yards of Bandar Bharu; but it began to rain, and a man at
whose house the party called told them they would get a warm reception,
and it would be quite a different thing to murdering the Resident, so
they elected to return with their object unattained.
By the help of a friendly Malay, a foreigner, Mr. Birch’s body was
recovered, brought to Bandar Bharu, and there buried on the night of the
6th November.
The Maharaja Lela and his neighbour the Dâtoh Sâgor, having “burnt their
ships,” proceeded to stockade their villages, and those stockades were
subsequently taken, the rebels driven out, and their villages destroyed.
Sooner or later punishment overtook every man directly concerned in this
crime, and also nearly all those who were indirectly responsible. Some
fell during the subsequent fighting, one died an outlaw in the jungle.
The first man captured was Sipûtum. He was brought in to Bandar Bharu
late one evening in the early part of 1876, and I went to see him in the
lock-up about midnight. A wilder looking creature it would have been hard
to find. He was a _Pâwang_, a medicine man, a sorcerer. For many weeks
he had been a hunted outcast, and he seemed to think that capture was
almost preferable to the life he had been leading. He sat on the floor
and described to me his share in Mr. Birch’s murder, pausing between the
sentences to kill mosquitoes on the wall of his cell. He volunteered the
statement that Mr. Birch was a good man, who had been kind to him, and
that what he did was by order of his Chief, whom he was bound to obey.
The responsibility of the individual for his own actions was a doctrine
that was strange to him, and he learnt it too late to profit by it.
In December 1876, the Maharaja Lela, the Dâtoh Sâgor, Pandak Indut, and
four others were arraigned before the Raja Muda Jusuf and Raja Alang
Husein, and charged with murdering Mr. Birch and the others at Pâsir
Sâlak on the 2nd November 1875.
They were prosecuted by Colonel Dunlop, R.A., and myself, on behalf of
the Government, and defended by an able and experienced member of the
Singapore Bar. After a trial which lasted eight days, they were severally
found guilty and condemned to death, but the extreme penalty was exacted
only in the cases of the three first named.
Sultan Abdullah, and other Chiefs whose complicity in the assassination
was established by the fullest evidence, were banished from the State,
and a like sentence was passed upon the ex-Sultan Ismail and some of his
adherents.
In Mr. Birch the British Government lost one of its most courageous,
able, and zealous officers, but, by the action which his death made
necessary, the State of Perak gained in twelve months what ten years of
“advice” could hardly have accomplished. That was not all, for the events
of those twelve months, when they came to be fully known, threw a light
on the inner life of the Malay and his peculiar characteristics, that was
in the nature of a revelation. It is all too soon to forget the lesson or
disregard its teachings.
XX
A PERSONAL INCIDENT
Haud multum abfuit quin interficeretur
HORACE
_From CAPTAIN SPEEDY, Queen’s Commissioner,
Larut, to H.E. SIR WILLIAM JERVOIS,
Governor of the Straits._
LARUT, _November 9th, 1875_.
[Extract:]
“In the second report, that of 7th instant, Sergeant Din
states that he was told by one Kulup Riau that Mr. Swettenham
had been murdered by the Raja Lela at Pâsir Sâlak on the 5th
instant. I regret to state that I have every reason to believe
that the report is but too true. My inspector, Din Mahomed,
reached Kuala Kangsar (where I sent him with a party of men
immediately on hearing of Mr. Birch’s death, to warn and guard
Mr. Swettenham) at 2 P.M. on 4th instant, but, on his arrival,
he found that Mr. Swettenham had unfortunately left, to return
by the river a few hours previously; owing to the rapidity of
the current, the boats should have reached Pâsir Sâlak by the
following day. I have sent detectives, both Chinese and Malay,
to inquire into the matter, and to obtain, if possible, the
remains of these unfortunate officers.”
I came across the above passage in a Blue Book, and I will explain why
Captain Speedy had every reason to believe in the certainty of my death,
and how it was that my remains were not to be collected just then.
In the preceding sketch I mentioned that I left Bandar Bharu at noon on
the 28th October with two boats, and intended, if it were possible, to
meet Mr. Birch at Pâsir Sâlak about the 3rd November.
Besides the Malay boatmen, I had with me a very celebrated Selangor
chief named Raja Mahmud, a man whose whole life had been passed in
jungle warfare, and as he had come through it scathless he was regarded
by Malays as invulnerable and respected accordingly. His latest exploit
had been to take command of a body of Malays in an engagement with Her
Majesty’s troops in a neighbouring State (Sungei Ujong), and as I had
subsequently persuaded him to go to Singapore and give himself up to
the Governor, he had attached himself to me and thoroughly enjoyed the
possibility of trouble in Perak.
Then I had a Manila boatman, one of the best coxswains on the river, a
marvellous dancer of hornpipes and no less courageous than Raja Mahmud
himself—more so he could hardly be. Lastly, Mahmud had a couple of men
devoted to himself, and I had a Chinese servant.
This being the wet season the river was high, poling difficult and
progress slow, so that it was not till the morning of the 30th that we
reached Blanja, the village of Sultan Ismail. As Ismail had been elected
Sultan by a number of influential chiefs who declined to recognise either
Jusuf or Abdullah (though both of them had far superior claims), and, as
by the Pangkor Treaty and recognition of Abdullah, Ismail no doubt felt
aggrieved, I did not expect a very friendly reception from him, nor did I
suppose that I should be specially welcome as the bearer of proclamations
which could not be otherwise than distasteful to him. It was only
six weeks since I had been at Blanja with the Governor, and again a
fortnight later I went there alone. Since then Ismail (or his advisers
in his name) had summoned nearly all the principal people of the upper
country, and a very large number of boats had arrived at Blanja, bringing
all the chiefs and their retainers. Moreover, to increase his following
the ex-Sultan had resorted to an expedient not unknown in England;
certain high offices of State were vacant, and into these he inducted his
own adherents—in fact, created peers, to give himself a majority in the
Upper House.
I waited half the day hoping to see Ismail, but failed. They said he was
asleep and meant to remain asleep a long time. That is a common form of
Malay diplomacy, and, as I could not afford to delay longer, I explained
the proclamations, left a number of copies and said I would call on
Ismail on my way back in a few days. As a piece of news they told me a
customs station had been established at Blanja, and everyone who passed
would be taxed, white men or Malays. I said I should be glad to see the
collector, and he was introduced, but seemed embarrassed, and assured me
he was only carrying out his master’s orders, so I continued my journey.
If any conclusion could be drawn from the conversation and manner of the
Blanja people, disturbances (war, they called it) were imminent.
The next day I was at the Raja Muda’s village, and had a long talk with
him. He also was for war, but did not think the Malays would begin it.
He said no good would be done in the country, till “the malcontents”
had been taught a lesson. Unfortunately, as far as could be seen, all
the chiefs with very few exceptions, were in that category. The people
hardly count, they are passive and recognise that they live to obey their
leaders.
That night I reached Kuala Kangsar, and the then important personage of
the place, an old lady who lived on the hill where now the Residency
stands, informed me that she had been living in daily fear of attack by
the people of a neighbouring village called Kôta Lâma. The shops in Kuala
Kangsar were all closed, and everyone was waiting for the bursting of the
storm.
The latest excitement here was that a notoriously bad character named
Raja Alang, living in a house by the path which led from Kuala Kangsar to
the neighbouring district of Larut, saw a foreign Malay (a man of Patâni)
walking past with his wife and two children. When the man got opposite
Raja Alang’s house he raised his trousers to keep them out of the mud,
and as Raja Alang considered this disrespectful to him, he called to the
man and told him he must pay a fine of a hundred dollars. The man was
of course unable to comply with this monstrous demand, so the Raja took
him, his wife and children, into the house, and said he would keep them
there till the money was paid. After a couple of days, during which they
were given no food, Raja Alang said he would sell the woman and children
to raise the amount of the fine. Just at dawn on the following morning
the Patâni man got up, took from a Malay lying near him a _kris_, and
with it stabbed the owner to death. Then he struck out wildly, killing
another man, a woman, his own two children, and a child of Raja Alang,
while he wounded his own wife. Raja Alang hastily left the house, hurting
himself considerably, for he forgot the steps in the hurry of his exit.
The murderer went next door and killed two more women and then escaped.
Altogether he killed nine people and wounded three. It is a detail,
I mention it only as showing the state of society, and because this
incident, at the time of my arrival, was, with rumours of war, dividing
the interests of the people of Kuala Kangsar.
On the 1st November I read and posted the proclamations in Kuala
Kangsar, and on the following day I went to see the Raja Bĕndahâra, the
third highest officer in the State. He lived across the river, and to him
and a large crowd of his followers I read the proclamation, and gave the
Bĕndahâra some copies, which I asked him to have posted.
Amongst the crowd was Raja Alang, who gave me his version of the _âmok_,
and denied that he had ill-treated the Patâni man. I see from the journal
I kept in those days that I expressed my surprise that such things were
not of daily occurrence, looking to the infamous way in which the people
were treated by the Rajas, to which he replied that he had done wrong
but was now _taubat_ (a reformed character), that he wished to go to
Mecca (the desire of all Malays who want to wipe out a bad record and
rehabilitate themselves with society), and would be obliged if I would
lend him a thousand dollars for the purpose!