The Chinese are believed to have fought Gough’s little army of 2200 men[138] at Chapoo with 8000 regular troops, 1700 of whom were Tartars. Their losses were, as usual, enormous—from 1200 to 1500—while those of the British were two officers and eleven other ranks killed, six officers and forty-six other ranks wounded. The casualties among the XVIIIth were heavy: Colonel Tomlinson, a sergeant, and three privates were killed;[139] Lieutenants A. Murray and E. Jodrell, a sergeant, a drummer, and twenty-seven rank and file were wounded. One of the pay-sergeants had a very narrow escape: he was in the habit of carrying the company roll in his forage cap, and when at nightfall he wanted to make entries in it he found it cut to pieces by bullets.
As soon as the arsenal, guns, and other munitions of war at Chapoo were destroyed, the expedition made sail for the Yang-Tse-Kiang, where we bombarded Woosung, a town at the mouth of the river of the same name. Though small, the place was heavily fortified, for the Chinese trusted to its guns for the protection of the lower reaches of the river. In the capture of Woosung the army played no part, for the troopships were aground on mud-banks when the sailors and marines, after knocking the batteries to pieces, landed to take possession of the town. Two days later, on the 19th of June, the Royal Irish formed part of a column which marched fourteen miles inland to Shanghai, destroyed the warlike stores at this great centre of trade, and then returned to Woosung, to find that during their short absence some batteries of Royal Artillery, the 98th, and several Madras regiments had joined the force, and that Major J. Cowper had come up from Kulangsu to take command of the XVIIIth, bringing with him the company which had been left to garrison Chinhai. The fleet remained storm-bound at Woosung until the 7th of July: then the weather moderated, and the Admiral, Sir William Parker, ordered his seventy vessels—men-of-war, transports, and store ships—to weigh anchor for Nankin, now the object of our operations. This enormous city was the commercial capital of China, and the centre of a great network of canals connecting Pekin with the Yang-Tse-Kiang and the southern provinces of the Empire. Once masters of Nankin, we could stop all inland traffic on the canals, and by paralysing the commerce of the country bring irresistible pressure on the Emperor, six hundred miles away in his Court at Pekin. The task before the Navy was a heavy one. In peace time the mere passage of so large a number of ships over a hundred and seventy miles of an almost unknown river would have presented difficulties. Now these difficulties were increased by the necessity of guarding against attack, and by the knowledge that before the guns of the fleet could be trained upon the walls of Nankin we would have to fight the garrison of at least one large town on the banks of the river. The steamers scouted upstream, sounding and surveying as they went: the sailing ships followed in a stately procession many miles in length, watched by crowds of peasants who gazed in wonder at the “war junks” of the Barbarians. On the 20th of July, the rearmost of the fleet reached Chinkiangfu, a walled city fifty miles below Nankin; and next day Gough landed his troops, now numbering 6664 men. The first brigade (Major-General Lord Saltoun) was to clear the enemy from a camp south-west of the town; with the second, Major-General Schoedde was to attack the northern wall of the town; to Bartley’s brigade (the third) was entrusted the storming of the western wall. The first brigade did its work easily; the second had hard fighting before its bayonets glittered on the northern wall; the third brigade, and especially the XVIIIth regiment, had exciting adventures in carrying out the duty assigned to them.
The Royal Irish were the last troops to disembark. They did not land till seven A.M., when the heat was already so oppressive that the Adjutant, Lieutenant Graves, persuaded Major Cowper to leave the men’s great-coats behind, undertaking to provide the entire regiment with furs from the shops of the pawnbrokers, with whom the wealthy Chinese regularly stored their winter clothing. To go into action without great-coats was quite a new departure, but even more daring was the next order: the men were told to take off their stocks, sling them over the left shoulder, and unfasten three buttons of their jackets and three buttons of their collars! These precautions, though to our ideas not very far-reaching, served their purpose, for while in other corps numbers of men were knocked over by the heat, not a man in the XVIIIth suffered from sunstroke. The regiment was making its way through the suburbs to the western face of the wall, when an A.D.C. arrived with orders for the Royal Irish to come up at the double to the western gate, where the General was anxiously awaiting them. The troops around General Gough were in bad case: many lay senseless from sun apoplexy; the remainder were so exhausted that they could only keep up a feeble fire on its defenders. As soon as the XVIIIth appeared Gough welcomed them with the order “Go on, Royal Irish, and storm.” “We halted,” writes an officer who was present, “to tell off a storming party of fifty men, and then with arms at the trail and bending low, the stormers made a dash down a cross-street within about twenty yards of the gate, and from the windows of the houses which ran parallel to the wall, we opened fire on the Chinese gunners and soon silenced them. The engineers then advanced and placed a powder-bag against the gate (a very strong one and, as we afterwards found, strengthened by four or five tiers of sand-bags piled against it from inside); we were ordered to lie down; the fuse was lit, and in about ten seconds everything was flying about our heads. This brought us to our feet in a hurry; we gave a cheer and dashed into the archway, which was densely filled with smoke; those who got in first were soon brought to their knees by kicking against the sand-bags which we could not see, but we had to scramble on as quick as possible as there was danger of receiving a poke from a friendly bayonet behind! We got out as black as monkeys, to find ourselves in a sort of yard, surrounded by high walls, with a second gate leading from it into the city. We had just started breaking this second gate down, when we heard a friendly voice behind it shouting ‘Hold on, we’ll open it for you!’” It turned out that the 55th, after escalading their own wall, had worked round to the western gate, which the Chinese abandoned when they saw their flank in danger.
The Royal Irish were at once sent to drive the Tartars from the western wall. They moved off left in front,[140] and as there was not room on the rampart for four men abreast they marched in threes. The grenadier company were soon dropped to hold a commanding building close to the wall; the remainder of the regiment pushed on without seeing any of the enemy, until a keen-eyed officer noticed a large number of Tartars emerging from the shelter of some houses on the town side of the wall. The commanding officer, insisting that they were not fighting men but harmless coolies, refused to send out skirmishers to protect the head and right flank of his straggling column, and the Tartars were allowed to establish themselves in gardens surrounded by high walls, which made excellent rests for matchlocks and gingals. As soon as the regiment was within range they opened a heavy fire upon the leading company, killing Captain C. J. R. Collinson, wounding Lieutenant S. Bernard, and causing several casualties in the ranks. The rampart along which the XVIIIth was marching was so narrow that it was difficult for messengers to pass rapidly from company to company, and as no orders were received the men halted for directions: but by the time the enemy had discharged a second volley, an officer had called upon the Light company to avenge their captain. Collinson’s “Light Bobs” dashed down the slope of the rampart, scaled the mud walls and, followed by the remainder of the regiment, fell furiously on the Tartars, who, after a stout resistance, broke and fled. Not all, however, of the enemy had lost heart. Just as the regiment had re-formed after the charge, a gigantic Tartar rushed towards the line, brandishing a sword in each hand; the officers, unwilling to send so brave a man to his death, made signs to him to retire, but in vain, and he was almost amongst the men when a well-aimed bullet laid him low. The grenadier company came in for a full share of the excitements of the day. Their captain, Wigston, noticed some of the Tartars drawn up across a narrow street leading to his post, and sent a subaltern, Lieutenant W. Venour, and twelve men to dislodge them. The Tartars held their fire until the party of grenadiers were close to them, and then let fly with some effect. Lieutenant I. H. Hewitt with fourteen men hurried up to reinforce Venour’s detachment, and the street was cleared after sharp hand-to-hand fighting. Hewitt had a narrow escape: a Tartar cut at him with his sword, and the blow would have been fatal had not Private M‘Carthy “raised his musket and parried it, though unfortunately with the loss of his thumb, the sword cutting right through the bone, and also through Hewitt’s forage cap, slightly raising the skin of his head. We left a picket there,” continues Lieutenant Murray, “as occasional shots were still fired from the houses. A short time afterwards a Tartar soldier rushed in amongst the men and stabbed one of them in the side with his knife: he was shot instantly. We were obliged to set fire to the houses to drive the Tartars out of them, for we would not let the men follow them into the buildings.”
Although the troops did their best to stop the frenzy of rage and terror which seized upon the population after we had captured the town, the number of people who committed suicide at Chinkiangfu was as great or even greater than at Chapoo. One instance among hundreds will prove how determined the Tartars were not to survive the disgrace of a defeat. When their General realised that the day was lost he retired to his house, ordered his servants to set fire to the building, and allowed himself to be burned to death. It was fortunate for the success of Gough’s little army that the overweening contempt of the Chinese for foreigners had prevented the employment of European adventurers to mould and lead their armies. Had the Tartar troops been trained and disciplined by Continental soldiers of fortune, as were the Sikhs, the enemies whom Gough was to encounter in a few years, a great array of British soldiers would have been required to win on the banks of the Yang-Tse-Kiang victories as decisive as those of Sobraon and Goozerat.[141] In the capture of Chinkiangfu two officers and thirty of the other ranks were killed, eleven officers and ninety-eight other ranks wounded, and three privates missing. The casualties among the small Naval landing party were three killed and twenty-one wounded. The XVIIIth lost one officer, Captain Collinson, and two private soldiers killed; one officer, Lieutenant S. Bernard, two sergeants, and fifteen privates wounded.
While the soldiers were fighting on shore, the sailors were doing invaluable work on their own element by blockading the chief waterways to Pekin; and in a few days the result of the stoppage of trade with the capital was so disastrous to the merchants of China that the Emperor was obliged to sue for peace. But before negotiations had been opened, Pottinger, Gough, and Parker realised that the presence of British troops and British ships at Nankin would greatly stimulate the tardy movements of the Chinese diplomatists, and on August 9, 1842, the whole force, less a small garrison left to hold Chinkiangfu, was ready to assault the walls of the commercial capital of China. But no assault was necessary, as twenty days later a treaty of peace, this time a genuine one on the part of the Chinese, was signed on board a British man-of-war. Its terms were satisfactory: every point on which England had gone to war was ceded by the Emperor; our national honour was vindicated, and the rights of our traders secured. During the negotiations dignified courtesies were exchanged between the Mandarins and the Plenipotentiary. On one of these occasions the grenadier company of the Royal Irish acted as guard of honour to Sir Henry Pottinger while he solemnly dined with the Chinese officials: our late enemies turned out their best soldiers to receive the English guests, but though Lieutenant Murray admits that among them were many tall, fine-looking fellows, he insists that they were “nothing in appearance to our company, who looked remarkably well, and must have astonished the Chinese much.” Though the spectators doubtless admired the physique and martial bearing of the Irishmen who had so often routed the picked troops of China, they must have smiled at the contrast between the comfortable dress of the Tartars, who wore long loose coats and boots coming well up the leg, and the stocks, tightly buttoned shell-jackets and equally tight white trousers of the British army.[142] The spies among the crowd, for the Chinese had many very observant secret service agents in their employ, must have wondered why the infantry who served on board ship were armed with percussion muskets, while those who fought on land carried flint-locks.
No sooner had the treaty of peace been officially ratified by the Emperor of China than the expedition began to descend the Yang-Tse-Kiang with all speed, for the climate had begun to tell heavily upon the health of soldiers and sailors alike. So short-handed from sickness was the crew of H.M.S. Rattlesnake that the Royal Irish, by this time nearly as much at home on a ship as in a barrack, helped largely in working her successfully down the river. At the mouth of the Yang-Tse-Kiang the expedition broke up: some of Gough’s units sailed for India; others went home, while the corps ordered to remain in Chinese waters proceeded to their several destinations. Among the latter was the XVIIIth, which was sent to Chusan, where its various detachments were assembled by the end of October, 1842. When the casualty returns were prepared it was found that though the losses in action had been small, those caused by dysentery, malaria, and cholera had been very heavy. Lieutenant-Colonel N. R. Tomlinson and Captain C. J. R. Collinson had been killed; Major R. Hammill, Lieutenants H. Vavasour, A. Wilson, F. Swinburn, D. Edwardes, J. Cochrane, G. W. Davis, S. Haly, Hon. C. H. Stratford, Ensign M. Humphreys, and Assistant-Surgeon J. Baker had died from disease; six officers had been wounded but had recovered from their injuries. Among the other ranks nine non-commissioned officers and men had been killed, seventy-seven wounded, and two hundred and fourteen had died from illness, accident, or the effect of wounds.[143] In honour of those who perished a monument was erected in St Patrick’s Cathedral. It stands in the north transept—the Walhalla of the regiment, where the old Colours, faded by the sun in many climes and pierced by bullets in many battles, overhang the stately memorials by which the Royal Irish regiment has sought to keep green the memory of its illustrious dead. The numerous monuments are described fully in [Appendix 10], and photographs of them are reproduced in various parts of the book.
At the opening of Parliament in 1843, the House of Lords passed the usual vote of thanks to the troops which had taken part in the campaign. A medal was issued to the officers and men who had served in the Chinese war; leave was granted to the XVIIIth to add to its other battle honours the word “China” and the device of the Dragon, and Colonel G. Burrell, Lieutenant-Colonel W. H. Adams, and Majors J. Cowper and J. Grattan were awarded the C.B.
Very disagreeable orders awaited the regiment on its arrival at Chusan. Four companies were to remain there as part of its garrison until the Chinese had fulfilled all the obligations of the treaty, while headquarters and the greater part of the regiment were to occupy the island of Kulangsu, which our Government also held as a pledge of Chinese good faith. Kulangsu had already acquired the reputation of being one of the most unhealthy stations in China, and the Royal Irish soon discovered that its evil reputation was but too well deserved. According to Lieutenant-Colonel Graves’s statement, when the headquarters companies landed they found the detachment of the regiment which had been there for some months in a deplorable condition. There had been many deaths among all ranks; every one of the surviving officers was down with fever,
“and there were not thirty men under command of a sergeant who were fit for duty or could shoulder a firelock.... When the Headquarter companies landed from Chusan the men were healthy and well seasoned, but they very soon began to feel the climate, and before long half the men were on the sick list, and we began to bury them very fast. I had been appointed Staff Officer for the island, and at first found much difficulty in getting coffins quick enough, so I ordered twenty at a time to be supplied by a contractor at Amoy. Several of our officers died, and at last I found much difficulty in getting men enough to relieve the guards. I went to our Colonel, Cowper—who was the Commandant of the island—and represented that if we did not get a ship sent up from Hong Kong for the invalids we should very soon have no men for guard. We got a ship and found her of the greatest benefit; she was anchored half a mile out of the harbour, and the invalids sent on board her came back in a week fit for duty.