The road to Prome began at Danubyu, where the Burmese commander-in-chief Maha Bandula was killed in April 1825. Bandula had been the most capable general in the Konbaung army, and his death shattered Burmese morale. British forces under General Archibald Campbell pushed north through Lower Burma, consolidating control over Prome, the Arakan coast, the Tenasserim seaboard, Assam, and Manipur. When peace negotiations opened at Ngagyaungbinzeik, twenty miles north of Prome, the British demands were staggering: recognition of Manipuri independence, cession of Rakhine and its dependencies, a British Resident at the Court of Ava, and an indemnity of two million pounds sterling. The Burmese envoy, the lord of Kawlin, offered to give up claims on Assam and Manipur and cede the Tenasserim coast, but refused to surrender Rakhine. Negotiations collapsed. The British historian G.E. Harvey later estimated that the Konbaung dynasty could have raised no more than 60,000 men for the entire war -- and by December 1825, most of those men were already gone.

Maha Ne Myo's army, despite its advantage in numbers, was poorly equipped and facing a professional force backed by artillery and a river flotilla. The Burmese divided into three divisions: Maha Ne Myo at Sinbaik on the left, a center division under Kee-Woonghee on the Napadi hills, and a third force of 3,000 under Minhla Minkhaung on the Irrawaddy's western bank. Their strategy, as a contemporary British observer noted, was characteristically Burmese -- "creeping onwards slowly and certainly, stockading and entrenching at every step, risking no general engagement." They harassed British outlying positions with raids but never committed to a direct assault on Prome itself. General Campbell decided not to wait for one.

On December 1, 1825, Campbell left four native infantry regiments to hold Prome and marched against Maha Ne Myo's left division at Sinbaik. Sir James Brisbane's river flotilla opened a coordinated cannon barrage against the center position -- a two-hour diversion that pinned the Burmese forces on the Napadi hills in place. Lieutenant General Willoughby Cotton led a bayonet charge that stormed the left division, and Campbell's follow-up attack turned their retreat into a rout. The next day, Campbell struck the center. Six companies of the 87th Regiment -- the Royal Irish Fusiliers -- assaulted the base of the Napadi hills, but the Burmese held strong positions accessible only by a narrow road and defended with artillery. A multi-pronged attack finally broke them: the 13th and 38th Regiments hit from the front while the 87th flanked from the right. On December 5, troops crossed the Irrawaddy to attack Minhla Minkhaung's western division. Rockets and mortars opened fire first, and the Burmese retreated before a ground assault led by Cotton and Brigadier Richard Armstrong swept through what remained.

With all three Burmese divisions scattered, the road to Ava lay open. Campbell advanced north virtually unopposed until encountering a stockaded defense at Bagan -- the ancient temple city, pressed into service as a last fortification. But the Kingdom of Burma no longer had the military power to resist. The court at Ava, facing the reality of a British army within striking distance of the capital, entered serious peace negotiations on January 1, 1826. The resulting Treaty of Yandabo, signed the following month, imposed precisely the terms the Burmese had rejected at Prome: cession of Rakhine, Assam, Manipur, and Tenasserim, plus a massive indemnity. The Battle of Prome was not the largest engagement of the First Anglo-Burmese War, but it was the decisive one -- the moment when the Konbaung dynasty's attempt to hold its western empire ended, and the long process of Burma's absorption into the British colonial sphere began.