The Mentri, The Malay "Governor" Of Larut, Although Aided
By Captain Speedy And A Force Of Well-Drilled Troops Recruited
By him
in India, and possessing four Krupp guns, was powerless to restore
order, and Larut was destroyed, being absolutely
Turned into a
wilderness, in which all but three houses had been burned, and, while
the Malays had fled, the surviving Si Kwans were living behind
stockades, while those of the faction opposed to that with which the
Mentri and his Commander-in-Chief, Captain Speedy, had allied
themselves, were living on the products of orchards from which their
owners had been driven, and on booty, won by a wholesale system of
piracy and murder, practiced not only on the Perak waters but on the
high seas.
The war waged between the two parties threatened to become a war of
extermination; horrible atrocities were perpetrated on both sides; and
it is said and believed that as many as three thousand belligerents
were slain on one day early in the disturbances. If the course of
prohibiting the export of munitions of war had been persevered the
strife would have died a natural death; but the Mentri made
representations which induced the authorities of the Straits to accord
a certain degree of support to himself and the Si Kwans, by limiting
the prohibition to his enemies the Go Kwans. Things at last became so
intolerable in Larut, and as a consequence in Pinang, that the Governor
of the Straits Settlements, Sir A. Clarke, thought it was time to
interfere.
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