On the same day on which the ultimatum of the Envoys was delivered to Yeh, i.e. on the 12th of December, 1857, the glad news reached Lord Elgin that Lucknow had been relieved: the more welcome to him as carrying with it the promise of speedy reinforcement to himself, and deliverance from a situation of extreme difficulty and embarrassment. 'Few people,' he might well say, 'had ever been in a position which required greater tact—four Ambassadors, two Admirals, 'a General, and a Consul-general; and, notwithstanding 'this luxuriance of colleagues, no sufficient force.' And what he felt most in the insufficiency of the force was not the irksomeness of delay, still less any anxiety as to the success of his arms. 'My greatest difficulty.' he wrote, 'arises from my fear that we shall be led to 'attack Canton before we have all our force, and led 'therefore to destroy, if there is any resistance, both life 'and property to a greater extent than would otherwise 'be necessary.' The prospects of immediate reinforcements from India diminished his fears on this score, and sent him forward with a better hope of bringing the painful situation to a speedy and easy close.
[Sidenote: Changed quarters.]
_H.M.S. 'Furious,' Canton River.—December 17th.—_You see from my date that I am again in a new lodging. It promises to be, I think, more agreeable than any of our previous marine residences. We have paddles instead of a screw. Then the captain has not only given up to me all the stern accommodation, but he has also done everything in his power to make the place comfortable…. He is the Sherard Osborn of Arctic regions notoriety. I am on my way to join Gros, in order to decide on our future course of action. I mentioned yesterday that Honan was occupied, and that I had received a letter from Yeh, which must, I suppose, be considered a refusal. This was the fair side of the medal. The reverse was an ugly quarrel up the river, which ended in the loss of the lives of some sailors and the destruction of a village,—a quarrel for which our people were, I suspect, to some extent responsible. I fear that, under cover of the blockade instituted by the Admiral, great abuses have taken place…. It makes one very indignant, but unfortunately it is very difficult to bring the matter home to the culprits. All this, however, makes it most important to bring the situation to a close as soon as possible. It is clear that there will be no peace till the two parties fight it out. The Chinese do not want to fight, but they will not accept the position relatively to the strangers under which alone strangers will consent to live with them, till the strength of the two parties has been tested by fighting. The English do want to fight.
[Sidenote: Yeh's reply.]
December 18th.—This does not promise to be a lively sojourn. We are anchored at present at a point where the river forks into the Whampoa and Blenheim reaches. We have the Blenheim reach, and my suite wish me to go up it to the Macao Fort, from which they think they would have a good view of what goes on when the city is attacked. I wish, however, to be with Gros, and he will go up the Whampoa reach as far as his great lumbering ship will go. Meanwhile we are here confined to our ships, as it would not of course do for me to go on shore to be caught. Poor Yeh would think me worth having at present. What will he do? His answer is very weak, and reads as if the writer was at his wits' end; but with that sort of stupid Chinese policy which consists in never yielding anything, he exposes himself to the worst consequences without making any preparations (so far as we can see) for resistance. Among other things in his letter he quotes a long extract from a Hong-kong paper describing Sir G. Bonham's investiture as K.C.B., and advises me to imitate him for my own interest, rather than Sir J. Davis, who was recalled. Davis, says Yeh, insisted on getting into the city, and Bonham gave up this demand. Hence his advice to me. All through the letter is sheer twaddle.
[Sidenote: Advance on Canton.]
December 22nd.—On the afternoon of the 20th, I got into a gunboat with Commodore Elliot, and went a short way up towards the barrier forts, which were last winter destroyed by the Americans. When we reached this point, all was so quiet that we determined to go on, and we actually steamed past the city of Canton, along the whole front, within pistol-shot of the town. A line of English men-of-war are now anchored there in front of the town. I never felt so ashamed of myself in my life, and Elliot remarked that the trip seemed to have made me sad. There we were, accumulating the means of destruction under the very eyes, and within the reach, of a population of about 1,000,000 people, against whom these means of destruction were to be employed! 'Yes,' I said to Elliot, 'I am sad, because when I look at that town, I feel that I am earning for myself a place in the Litany, immediately after "plague, pestilence, and famine."' I believe however that, as far as I am concerned, it was impossible for me to do otherwise than as I have done. I could not have abandoned the demand to enter the city after what happened last winter, without compromising our position in China altogether, and opening the way to calamities even greater than those now before us. I made my demands on Yeh as moderate as I could, so as to give him a chance of accepting; although, if he had accepted, I knew that I should have brought on my head the imprecations both of the navy and army and of the civilians, the time being given by the missionaries and the women. And now Yeh having refused, I shall do whatever I can possibly do to secure the adoption of plans of attack, &c., which will lead to the least destruction of life and property…. The weather is charming; the thermometer about 60° in the shade in the morning; the sun powerful, and the atmosphere beautifully clear. When we steamed up to Canton, and saw the rich alluvial banks covered with the luxuriant evidences of unrivalled industry and natural fertility combined; beyond them, barren uplands, sprinkled with a soil of a reddish tint, which gave them the appearance of heather slopes in the Highlands; and beyond these again, the white cloud mountain range, standing out bold and blue in the clear sunshine,—I thought bitterly of those who, for the most selfish objects, are trampling under foot this ancient civilisation.
[Sidenote: Summons to Yeh.]
December 24th.—My letter telling Yeh that I had handed the affair over to the naval and military commanders, and Gros's to the same effect, were sent to him to-day; also a joint letter from the commanders, giving him forty-eight hours to deliver over the city, at the expiry of which time, if he does not do so, it will be attacked. I postponed the delivery of these letters till to-day, that the expiry of the forty-eight hours might not fall on Christmas Day. Now I hear that the commanders will not be ready till Monday, which the Calendar tells me is 'the Massacre of the Innocents!' If we can take the city without much massacre, I shall think the job a good one, because no doubt the relations of the Cantonese with the foreign population were very unsatisfactory, and a settlement was sooner or later inevitable. But nothing could be more contemptible than the origin of our existing quarrel. We moved this evening to the Barrier Forts, within about two miles of Canton, and very near the place where the troops are to land for the attack on the city. I have been taking walks on shore the last two or three days on a little island called Dane's Island, formed of barren hills, with little patches of soil between them and on their flanks, cultivated in terraces by the industrious Chinese. The people seemed very poor and miserable, suffering, I fear, from this horrid war. The French Admiral sent on shore to Whampoa some casks of damaged biscuit the other day, and there was such a rush for it, that some people were, I believe, drowned. The head man came afterwards to the officer, expressed much gratitude for the gift, but said that if it was repeated, he begged notice might be given to him, that he might make arrangements to prevent such disorder. The ships are surrounded by boats filled chiefly by women, who pick up orange-peel and offal, and everything that is thrown overboard. One of the gunboats got ashore yesterday, within a stone's-throw of the town of Canton, and the officer had the coolness to call on a crowd of Chinese, who were on the quays, to pull her off, which they at once did! Fancy having to fight such people!
Christmas Day.—Who would have thought, when we were spending that cold snowy Christmas Day last year at Howick, that this day would find us separated by almost as great a distance as is possible on the surface of our globe! and that I should be anchored, as I now am, within two miles of a great city, doomed, I fear, to destruction, from the folly of its own rulers and the vanity and levity of ours. We have moved a little farther up the river this morning, and as we are, like St. Paul, dropping an anchor from the stern, I have had over my head for several hours the incessant dancing about and clanking of a ponderous chain-cable, till my brains are nearly all shaken out of their place.