Seeing the dacoit bands active and gathering strength, while the British officers and the garrison were apparently helpless, the villagers, to whom guns had been given, the quasi-militia men amongst the foremost, joined the insurgents. It was another object-lesson in the folly of arming the Burmese peasantry, and the still greater folly of allowing an Asiatic foe to think you are afraid to attack him. The town of Gangaw was defended by a stockade of teak. The military post had been so placed as to rest on this stockade, and would have become untenable if the enemy had succeeded in occupying the town. The garrison of 170 men had therefore to defend the town stockade, nearly a mile in extent. It was not considered strong enough to hold the town and at the same time to move against the hostile bands, who had now gathered in considerable numbers, and were occupying a village called Shonshé on the south, and three villages on the north-west. On the 24th of December a convoy with supplies left Gangaw for Kan, which was the next post to the north. It was fired upon soon after leaving Gangaw, and lost two men killed and two wounded. From Kan this party went on to Sihaung, from which place it returned. It was again attacked on the march back, between Sihaung and Kan, and lost heavily. Meanwhile the enemy, who had been strengthened from the peasantry around, attacked Gangaw on the 30th of December, and again on the 31st. They were reckoned to number 500 men, but their attacks inflicted no loss on the garrison. Some sort of council of war, in which both civil and military officers joined, now took place, and it was held that if a determined attack were made on Gangaw or Kan it must succeed. The garrison of Kan, therefore, was ordered into Gangaw, and they obeyed the order, to say the least, without reluctance. They met with no opposition on the way, but they brought with them reports of the loss suffered by the detachment which went to Sihaung, which helped further to depress the dispirited garrison. In Gangaw itself, although it was assaulted daily until the 6th of January, when a relieving force arrived, there were no casualties. The enemy was contemptible, and even his numbers were, it is believed, exaggerated. The danger was created by the inaction of the defence rather than by the number or the enterprise of the assailants.