Drawing his mercenary sword, and brushing back the Yankee locks, General Ward gave the word to assault in a tone of assured victory. The disciplined Chinamen, led by their foreign officers, rushed forward bravely enough; but the Ti-pings had not been half destroyed by shot and shell; neither at that time had they lost their best troops in conflict with the British and French, nor the moral effect of their former triumphs. Consequently, after three attempts to storm the stockade, when five officers and seventy men were placed hors de combat, Admiral Hope advanced to call off the men, and was rewarded with a Ti-ping bullet lodged in the calf of his leg. Ward, having none of the resistless artillery to mow down the patriotic Ti-pings, found them more than a match for his men—disciplined, led by foreigners, and well armed as they were. A retreat was therefore sounded, and the British Admiral was ignominiously carried away upon a litter borne by sundry cursing Celestials.
To avenge the glaring insult and audacity of those rebels who had dared to deposit a bullet in the calf of a leg of a British Admiral, who was doing his utmost to kill them, the next morning the allied forces brought their artillery to bear, and without a single casualty succeeded in driving the Ti-pings from this and several neighbouring entrenchments, killing some 300, and burning and destroying the large quantities of grain, as stated by Admiral Hope. Not only in this instance, but very many others, the allies acted with far more wanton destructiveness than ever the Ti-pings did.
The next attack upon the Ti-pings by the gallant allies came off on the 17th of April. Upon this occasion the redoubtable Admiral was unable to act, in consequence of his injured limb. The place at which the combined English, French, and mercenaries gathered fresh (Chinese) laurels, was the village of Che-poo, with its defences, situated about 18 miles S.E. of Shanghae. The attacking force mustered some 2,500 strong, with 14 pieces of artillery, the whole commanded by General Staveley and Admiral Protet, assisted by Captain Borlase, R.N., and the filibuster Ward.[6] These troops were embarked in a flotilla of British and French gunboats, and carried up the Shanghae river, to cause as much devastation and bloodshed as they had already created elsewhere.
It was a splendid morning, and the landscape seemed beautiful, as the troops, after landing in the neighbourhood of Chee-poo, marched forward on their mission. Through fields rich with the ungathered crops, which it was pretended the Ti-pings might devastate, over seven or eight miles of smiling and profusely-cultivated country they wound their way. Upon arriving within a mile of the village, they halted for their guns to come up, and rested preparatory to the coming attack.
The guns having arrived, at 2 p.m. were in position, and opened a most destructive fire at 500 yards, and in half an hour the rebels were in full retreat. The poor fellows endeavoured to face the overwhelming hail of shot and shell; and, as one official report states, "returned a desultory fire, but without doing any mischief, while the allies made dreadful havoc amongst them." Driven from their works by the irresistible artillery, the Ti-pings retreated in three columns in the direction of the walled city, Chan-za, when, as the official report states, "the Royal artillery and naval guns were brought to bear upon the retreating mass with terrible effect." The loss of the Ti-pings, out of a total strength of less than 4,000, amounted to more than 600 killed and 300 taken prisoners, who were, of course, cruelly executed by the Manchoo mandarins; the allied loss was nil!
The Ti-pings had not expected any attack upon that day, and when the camp was entered, their dinners were found smoking in the cups, while half-finished letters were lying on the chiefs' table.
The report published in the Shanghae Daily Shipping List states:—
"As the houses were ransacked, great quantities of valuable jewels, gold, silver, dollars, and costly dresses were found, which was fair (?) loot to the officers and men. One blue-jacket found 1,600 dollars, and several soldiers upwards of 500 each, while many picked up gold bangles, earrings, and other ornaments and pearls set with precious stones. It was a glorious day of looting for everybody, and we hear that one party, who discovered the Ti-ping treasury chest with several thousand dollars in it, after loading himself to his heart's content, was obliged to give some of them away to lighten his pockets, which were heavier than he could well bear—a marked case of l'embarras des richesses. The rebel stud of ponies was well supplied also, and many of the soldiers rode back with their booty."
All this looting and butchery of unresisting men (it would be absurd to term the defence of the Ti-pings, resulting in one Englishman wounded, but hundreds of themselves killed—a resistance according to military parlance) was executed, we must particularly remember, because their cause, which had for its sole object expulsion of the foreign Manchoo and establishment of Christianity, might interfere with British commercial interests, and that "temporary one arising out of the indemnities!"
The Shanghae Daily Shipping List, just quoted from, was the paid official organ of the British Government, and when it stated the above, it may easily be imagined what the disgraceful scene really was. This journal, under a variety of style and title, has been repeatedly quoted in the Blue Books upon China, issued by Her Majesty's Government, as the opinion of the press in China. Its truthfulness may fairly be estimated from the following comparison of a statement which appeared in its columns upon the massacre at Wong-ka-dza, and another upon the one at Che-poo. Both places are situated in the same tract of country, and only a few miles apart. In its detail of the first affair, the official organ, speaking of the slaughter of the Ti-pings, terms it:—