When I got back to Rangoon, the preliminary correspondence with India and Mandalay was starting. It was all desperately urgent and deadly secret, and the Chief Commissioner and his Secretary were more than fully occupied. The Burmese answer to our first representation was deliberately curt and discourteous. Under the orders of the Government of India an ultimatum was therefore sent to the King of Burma. He was required to suspend the execution of the decree against the Corporation, to receive at Mandalay an envoy from the Viceroy with a view to the settlement of the matter in issue, and for the future to permit the residence at the capital of an agent of the Indian Government, who should be received and treated with the respect due to the Government which he represented. It was further intimated that the Burmese Government would be required to regulate its external relations in accordance with advice of the Government of India, and to afford facilities for opening up British trade with China.[74] The ultimatum was despatched on the 22nd of October, 1885. It was taken by Captain Cooper, of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, on the steamer _Ashley Eden_, which went specially to Mandalay for the purpose. An answer was required by the 10th of November. In default of receiving a reply Captain Cooper was instructed to leave Mandalay on a fixed date. The mission was of a hazardous nature. Captain Cooper discharged it with intrepidity and skill. He remained with his steamer fires banked, and he returned bearing the haughty and uncompromising answer of the Burmese Government. As he passed down the river he ran the gauntlet of the fire of forts on the bank. Such was the Burmese notion of the courtesy due to envoys. The answer was received in Rangoon on the 9th of November. Two days earlier the King of Burma issued a proclamation calling on his subjects to rally round him to resist the unjust demands of the British Government, and expressing his determination to efface these heretic foreigners and conquer and annex their country.[75] When the ultimatum was considered by the Burmese Court and Government, there seems to have been a division of counsel. The two highest officers of State were two Mingyis, the virtuous and temperate Kinwun, the corrupt and blood-thirsty Taingda. The Queen, Sûpăya-lât, was certainly present when the situation was discussed. The Kinwun advised moderation and diplomacy; the Taingda was for blood and fury. The Queen’s voice was for resistance. She had the unexampled impertinence to tell the Kinwun Mingyi, a man of mature and reverend years, her father’s trusted Councillor, that when she had beaten the English she would dress him in a tamein[76] and send him to live among the women. The counsels of unreason prevailed. The proclamation was issued, and futile resistance was undertaken.