Such is the opinion of a journal always hostile to the Ti-pings.
Having loaded their boats with plunder, and placed a garrison of some 500 European troops in Kah-ding, the British and French warriors returned to Shanghae and vain-gloriously displayed their evilly acquired riches about the rum-shops of that model settlement, while their worthy allies, the braves, made a gallant and triumphant entry, with trophies of Ti-ping heads, cruelly hacked from the men vanquished by British and French artillery. When these heads became unpleasant to parade about the foreign settlement, and the loot became exhausted, or the allied commanders eager for more, the combined forces were mustered together for another desolating raid into a country that would have been happy and peaceful but for their wicked interference.
The city of Tsing-poo, situated close upon 32 miles to the west of Shanghae, although falsely represented by officialdom as "in the neighbourhood," was next selected for sack and pillage.
Starting from Shanghae in British gunboats (which, by the by, always returned towing long tiers of loot laden boats) upon the 7th of May, the expedition, after being placed in country boats about twenty miles up the river, arrived before Tsing-poo on the evening of the second day.
General Staveley was Commander-in-chief, assisted by the French Admiral, while the English Admiral, in spite of his wound, was present as an admiring non-effective.
The combined force comprised 2,613 British and French troops, with nearly forty pieces of artillery; about 1,800 of Ward's filibusters; and an Imperialist army of 5,000 to 7,000 men, under their general, Le.[8] Tsing-poo was garrisoned by some 4,000 Ti-pings, very few of whom escaped.
Before daylight on the 12th of May, the besieging forces, with guns and ladders, covering and storming parties, were in position. They moved up silently in the dead of night and early morning, and were in their places by 4 a.m. Then came a short half-hour of the peculiar suspense before battle, while all those valiant British and French well-armed troops lay flat on their faces, safely under cover, and breathing not a word, for fear the doomed Ti-pings might by a singular piece of good fortune manage to hurt some of them. By this time, however, the warm summer day was dawning, and the beleaguered garrison, discovering the formidable array against them, opened fire with the few small guns they possessed, sending their uneven roundshot whizzing over the heads of the crouching enemy.
Almost at the same moment the besiegers opened fire from their numerous and overwhelming artillery. Armstrong guns, naval 32-pounders, French rifled guns and mortars (with one French 68-pounder, rifled piece, mounted on board a light draught gunboat) in breaching and enfilading batteries, commenced a terrific bombardment of the south gate and wall.
The city, during the night, had been surrounded by the Chinese braves; no hope of escape presented itself, and the besieged fought as desperate men will fight for their lives. Amid the torrent of shells, shrapnel, Moorsom, conical, diaphragm, Armstrong, and other scientific engines of destruction crashing and continuously exploding among them, they bravely stood to their four or five 2-pounders, and resolutely manned their walls under the fearful and murderous fire. The poor Ti-pings, in order to protect themselves from the irresistible foreign shell, or "twice eye shot," as the Cantonese in their pidgeon English term it, had built a sort of stockade all round the city wall; this, with the parapet, formed a passage, which was covered in with a beamed and tiled roof. Instead of affording safety to them, however, this work added to the destructiveness of the enemy's fire, though it would have been better for the doomed men to have been killed outright by British shot than be captured and tortured to death in the execution grounds of the Manchoos. A battery of four Armstrong guns enfilading the wall sent almost every shell through the roof, to burst between the parapet and stockade, thereby inflicting fearful havoc among the crowded defenders.
After about an hour's bombardment, two practicable breaches were effected by the besiegers; the English and French storming parties then advanced, protected by strong covering parties, who kept up a deadly rifle fire on the besieged, while the field-pieces being dragged forward enfiladed the parapet and breaches, mowing them down by dozens as they courageously crowded behind their broken wall to repel the stormers. The two snake flags of the Chief were planted on the summit of the breach, while his bravest men surrounding him did their utmost to drive the assaulting column back. The carnage at this point was immense; the defenders no sooner rushed into view than withering volleys of musketry and a storm of grape and canister destroyed them. The principal Ti-ping chiefs were killed at the head of their men; still, a smart fire from jingalls was kept up till the stormers gained the top of the breach and effected a lodgement; and then, it is sufficient to say, the defenders were attacked with the British bayonet. Even when driven from the wall, several hundred of the Ti-ping soldiery rallied at its foot, and fruitlessly sacrificed themselves in attempting to expel the successful enemy.