"This is to inform you, on the part of the English and French senior naval officers, that had you agreed to their demands, and removed your guns from the walls, they should have felt bound in honour to have acted up to their promise, and have prevented an attack on you on the settlement side by Imperial forces, which in countless numbers and heavily-armed ships advance to attack you. We now inform you that we maintain a perfect neutrality, but if you fire the guns or muskets from the battery or walls opposite the settlement on the advancing Imperialists (thereby endangering the lives of our men and people in the foreign settlement), we shall then feel it our duty to return the fire and bombard the city."
This was equivalent to saying, "If you defend yourselves against the Imperialists we shall kill you;" for in firing upon the pirate vessels as they advanced from the foreign settlement and amongst the British men-of-war, these latter must inevitably have been endangered.
The following extracts from official despatches and other memoranda will show how the British squadron joined the fleet of pirates in driving the Ti-pings out of Ningpo.
On the 10th of May, Captain Dew wrote to Admiral Hope:—
"Sir,—I found it necessary to capture the city of Ningpo, and drive the rebels out, under the following circumstances:—
"You are aware, Sir, that the rebel chiefs had been informed that if they again fired, either on our ships or in the direction of the settlement, we should deem it a casus belli. This morning at 10 a.m., the Kestrel, and French vessels Etoile and Confucius were fired on by the Point battery. I cleared for action in this ship, when a volley of musketry was fired on us from the bastion abreast. The undermentioned vessels, viz., Encounter, Ringdove, Kestrel, and Hardy, with the Etoile and Confucius, French gunboats, now opened fire, with shell, on the walls and batteries, which was replied to with much spirit from guns and small arms."
The despatch continues to this effect:—At noon the Ti-ping guns were silenced and practicable breaches effected. At two o'clock the city was stormed, and at five o'clock, all opposition having ceased, the ex-governor and his troops landed from their junks. Captain Dew gave them charge of the city, and re-embarked his men. We must now find out what had become of the ex-governor, his troops, and Apak's fleet during this time. Captain Dew carefully avoids stating whether they had made the attack at daylight, according to arrangement, or left him to play the bravo alone, for he does not mention one word about his allies, until he hands over the city to them. Consul Harvey, however, in a despatch to Mr. Bruce, dated May the 16th, throws some light upon the subject; he states:—
"Shot and shell were poured into this large city with very little intermission for a period of five hours by the combined fleet, at the end of which time the walls were scaled, and the Taeping forces were at once completely routed and dispersed."
The only fleet was eighty lorchas of the pirate Apak, the English and French aiding by six vessels only, a fact suppressed by Captain Dew.
The final expulsion of the Ti-pings from Ningpo was thus effected:—