Yet the Peguers were not discouraged. Preparations were made to send forth another army to meet the fate of that which Apporaza had led to death, not victory. Furthermore, the Peguers showed themselves devoid of all political sagacity, in taking a measure at this critical time which could not fail to seal the doom of his party. I said before, that the old king of Burmah was among the Peguers, and had received kind treatment; now, they completely changed their tactics, charged him with a conspiracy, a charge probably not without foundation; implicated numbers of the Burman nobility in the neighbourhood, and agreed upon a simultaneous slaughter of the obnoxious persons. Accordingly, on the 13th of October, the Peguers rose, and first torturing and slaughtering the court of Chioekmen, drowned him in a sack, and proceeded to the slaughter of the principal Burmans. The measure was not without its effects. The Burmans of Prome, Donabew, and the remaining border provinces, retaliated, and deserted to Alompra. But events were passing in his court of no little significance. The eldest son of the deposed king had joined Alompra with a large force of the Quois or Yoos tribe inhabiting the country of Muddora, east of Ava. But the prince, not having brains enough to see that Alompra was fighting for himself, and not for any prince, as arrogantly as imprudently assumed the style and title of king. However Alompra would not brook two kings in Burmah, and the prince, soon seeing his mistake, fled to Siam. Alompra, enraged that the pseudo-king had escaped, slaughtered above a thousand of the Quois tribe, under pretence of a conspiracy. Beinga Della, in the beginning of 1755, marched from Pegu upon the city of Prome, then occupied by a garrison of Burmans. Here, however, he met with no degree of success, and when Meinlaw Tzezo, the commander sent by Alompra to relieve the town, approached, they had not the sense to engage him in open fight. After a little skirmishing, therefore, he eluded them, and threw himself into the place. Forty days passed without the Peguers gaining any advantage, yet they prolonged the siege of Prome with no little obstinacy. But Alompra, with one of those tremendous marches for which he was so celebrated, soon came rushing down upon them, sweeping away men, stockades, war-boats, and everything else. Yet considerable bravery was exhibited in the naval portion of the battle. “Instead of his ineffectual fire from ill-directed musketry,” says Symes,[214] “the boats closed, and the highest personal prowess was evinced on both sides; knives, spears, and swords, were their weapons; after a long and bloody contest, victory declared for the Burmans, whilst the vanquished Peguers sought safety in a precipitate flight.”