Admiral Seymour had thus, by the middle of November, obtained full command of the Canton river; and he then stayed his operations for a while. The original cause of dispute, comparatively trifling, had now given place to a very grave state of affairs; and it remained to be seen whether the Palmerston ministry would lay all the blame on the obstinacy of Commissioner Yeh, or whether Bowring and Seymour would be considered to have exceeded their powers and their duties. So far as concerns the attitude of the Cantonese themselves, three deputations from the principal merchants and gentry waited on Mr Parkes between the 8th and 12th of November, to express their wishes that an amicable termination of the quarrel could be brought about; but at the same time to assert their conviction that, such was the inflexibility of the high-commissioner’s character, he would never alter his expressed determination to refuse the English representatives admission into the city.
It may be well to remark in this place that the opium difficulty, which was unquestionably paramount above all others in the first war with China, had now lost much of its importance. The imperial government had in later years issued very few edicts against the traffic in this drug. Perhaps the quietness in this matter was mainly due to the fact that the export of silver to pay for the Indian opium was no longer needed—the increased sale of tea and silk being sufficient to make up an equivalent.
On the 26th of the month, other armed forts in the Canton river were taken by the English. The Chinese, in revenge for these proceedings, burned and destroyed almost all the European factories, mercantile buildings, and banks at Canton—leaving so little but ruins that Admiral Seymour could hardly find a roof to cover the seamen and marines when they afterwards landed. The commercial losses might be repaired; but an irreparable consequence of the incendiarism was the destruction of Dr Williams’s printing establishment; including the large founts of Chinese type with which Morrison’s Dictionary was printed; and comprising also more than 10,000 unsold volumes of books.
In this sort of piecemeal war, each successive attack irritated in its turn the opposite party; but the burning of the factories determined Bowring and Seymour to the adoption of a sterner policy than had hitherto been displayed. They resolved to bombard Canton itself, and to send an application to the governor-general of India for military aid—trusting that the home-government would hold them justified in adopting this course under difficulties and responsibilities of no light kind.
The year 1856 came to a close. The new year was ushered in with an attack by the Chinese on Dutch Folly on the 1st of January. Six guns mounted on the Canton shore, and four on the opposite shore, fired into the Folly; but the small English force there stationed soon quelled this attack. On the 4th, a fleet of war-junks opened fire on the Comus and Hornet at the barrier in Macao Passage. No sooner did news of this attack reach Admiral Seymour, than he hastened forward in the Coromandel, towing all the available boats of the other ships. On nearing the junks, some of them undauntedly attacked the Coromandel, the boats, and a fort called the Teetotum Fort, which the English had before captured. The junks were heavily armed, and some of them had long snake-boats lashed to each side to row them along. A third fleet came down Sulphur Creek, and attacked the Niger and the Encounter. This was altogether a new aspect of the quarrel; the Chinese, not in the least humbled by the demands of Bowring and Seymour, became the assailants in the Canton river, and fought with a resolution hardly expected by their opponents. The attacks were not attended with very definite results. Not one junk was taken; they retired and collected into a somewhat formidable fleet of nearly four hundred.
The state of affairs was in every sense unsatisfactory to the English authorities. Commissioner Yeh was as firm as ever, and severely reproved the Canton gentry and merchants who had sent deputations to Sir Michael. He issued proclamations, denouncing the ‘barbarians’ in fiercer terms than before. Cruel massacres took place, whenever an isolated Englishman chanced to fall into the hands of the Chinese. Proclamations in the native language found their way to Hong-kong, inviting the seventy thousand Chinese residing in that island to rise against their English employers. Some of these Chinese were detected in attempts to introduce poison into the bread made for and sold to the English residents by the Chinese bakers. Against all this Bowring and Seymour could do little; and yet something, it was felt, must be attempted; for British trade at Canton was for a time ruined; and if matters were allowed to remain in their present state, the triumph of the Chinese would be most humiliating and pernicious to the English.
During the month of January (1857), while no progress was made in settling the differences at Canton, the spirit of the Chinese at Hong-kong became more and more hostile to the British; nor were those at Singapore unaffected by the taint. The warlike movements of the month—so far as that can be called war where no war had yet been declared—exasperated the Chinese, without making any impression on the obstinacy of Yeh. They consisted in the destruction of a portion of the city of Canton. Early on the morning of the 12th, bodies of marines and sailors set forth, armed with fireballs, torches, steeped oakum, &c.; they were conveyed in ships’ boats, and landed on different parts of the suburbs of the city. The boats then retired a little way from the shore, while the Barracouta, Encounter, and Niger, kept watch in the middle of the river. The men advanced into the outer streets of the city, and commenced the work of destruction. The houses being mostly built of wood, they were easily ignited, and the breeze within an hour united all the fires into one vast sheet of flame. To increase the destruction, shot and shell were poured into the city from the ships and the fort. Throughout the whole of the day, did this miserable work continue—miserable in so far as it inflicted much suffering on the inhabitants, without hastening the capture of the city. On the 13th the attack ceased; Sir Michael Seymour made what arrangements he could to retain command of the passage of the Canton river; while the Cantonese provided for their houseless towns-people in hastily built structures. The British naval force under Sir Michael Seymour, comprising all the ships in the India and China seas, was by this time very formidable. It comprised the Calcutta (84), Raleigh (50), Nanking (50), Sybille (40), Pique (40), eight other sailing-vessels varying from 12 to 26 guns, twelve war-steamers, and seven steam gun-boats. These could have wrought great achievements in action at sea, with their 5000 seamen and marines; but there were scarcely any regular troops to conduct operations on land.
During February, the English consuls and traders could not but observe the increasing hostility of the Chinese. Dastardly assassinations occasionally took place; piracy was more rampant than ever; war-junks made their appearance wherever an English boat appeared to be insufficiently guarded; and proclamations were issued in the name of the emperor, applauding the firmness of Yeh. The merchants wished either that the affair of the Arrow had never been taken notice of by the British authorities, or else that the warlike operations had been carried on with more resolute effect. All the commercial relations had become disturbed, without any perceptible prospect of a return to peaceful trade. One of the worst features in the state of affairs was this—that as the English throughout the whole of the China seas were at all times few in number, they were obliged to employ Chinese servants and helpers; and these Chinamen were found now to be very little trustworthy. On the 23d of the month, the passenger-steamer Queen was on its way from Hong-kong to Macao; when suddenly the Chinese passengers joined with the Chinese crew in a murderous attack on the English passengers and officers, by which several lives were lost.
March arrived, but with it no solution of the Chinese difficulty. Even supposing Sir John Bowring, by this time, to have received instructions from home, warlike or otherwise, there had been no time to send him reinforcements of troops; and until such arrived, any extensive operations on land would be impracticable. Sir John and his colleagues waited until their hands were strengthened.
In April, Seymour as well as Bowring remained quietly at Hong-kong, effecting nothing except the destruction of some junks. On the 6th, Commodore Elliot, with a fleet of armed boats from the Sampson, Hornet, Sybille, and Nanking, captured and destroyed eleven war-junks and two well-armed lorchas, after a chase and an engagement which lasted all day. Documents fell into the hands of the authorities at Hong-kong, tending to prove the complicity of the mandarins and many inhabitants of Canton in the various plots of incendiarism, kidnapping, and assassination, which had imperiled the persons and property of the English at that island. There were no present means of punishing these conspirators; but the discovery led to increased watchfulness.