Pioneers and Founders: or, Recent Workers in the Mission fieldYonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
History
Pioneers and Founders: or, Recent Workers in the Mission field
Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
Missionaries
As soon as Sir Archibald Campbell heard of the sufferings of the Judsons,
he demanded them as well as the English subjects; but the King was aware
that they were not English, and would not let them go. This attempt at a
treaty failed; but its failure, and the alarm consequent upon a report of
the advance of the English, led to Mr. Judson's being sent off, almost by
force, with two officials, to promise a ransom if Ava were spared. Sir
Archibald Campbell undertook that the city should not be attacked,
provided his terms were complied with before he reached it; and among
these was the stipulation that not only English subjects, but all
foreigners should have free choice whether to go or to stay. Some of the
officials tried to persuade Mr. Judson to stay, declaring that he would
become a great man, but he could not refuse the freedom offered him after
such cruel sufferings, and he was wont to declare that the joy of finding
himself floating down the Irrawaddy in a boat with his wife and baby,
made up for their twenty-one months of peril and misery.
They were received with courtesy, and indeed with gratitude, respect, and
veneration at the English camp. The Englishmen who had been in captivity
bore witness to the kindness with which Mrs. Judson had relieved their
wants, as well as those of her husband: how she had brought them food,
mended their clothes, obtained new ones, and, as they believed, by her
arguments and appeals to the ignorant and barbarous Government, had not
only saved their lives, but convinced the authorities of the necessity of
accepting the British terms of peace.
These terms included the cession of a large portion of the Burmese
territory; and this it was that decided the missionaries to leave Ava;
for the state of exasperation and intolerance into which this brought the
Court, made it vain to think of continuing to give instruction where they
would be regarded with enmity and suspicion. Meantime, the officers in
the English camp, who had not seen a lady for nearly two years, could not
make enough of the graceful, gentle woman, so pale and fragile, yet such
a dauntless heroine, and always ready to exert herself beyond her
strength for every sufferer who came in her way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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