Little did the English government foresee how strangely their plans would be overturned by the formidable Revolt in India. In the earlier half of the month of June, the English nation directed no particular attention to the affairs of the east. The Persian war had come to a close; the Chinese difficulty was languidly waiting for a solution; and news of the Indian Revolt had not yet arrived. But the close of the month witnessed a different state of things. The terrible tragedies at Meerut and Delhi were now known; and legislators and the press alike demanded that the comparatively unimportant Chinese expedition should not be allowed to absorb the services of Queen’s troops so much needed in India. On the 29th, in the House of Lords, the Earl of Ellenborough said: ‘We have sent to China that naval force which should, in my opinion, be left upon the shores of England, to give security to this country even under the auspices of the most profound peace. That naval force has been despatched to the Chinese waters—for what?—to carry on a contest between Sir John Bowring and Commissioner Yeh! Six battalions of troops have been sent out there for the same purpose; but I cannot help thinking that those six battalions will be found insufficient to bring under our control the numerous population of Canton. The consequence will be, that we shall find ourselves under the necessity of sending out further reinforcements. But are we, with India in danger, to fight the battle of the government? Are we, my lords, determined, happen what may, to persevere in that fatal policy which her Majesty’s ministers have adopted?’ Similar animadversions were made in the House of Commons by Mr Disraeli. The ministers, while announcing the immediate dispatch of more troops to India, did not promise that the Chinese expedition should be diverted from its purpose; for they underrated at that time the serious import of the sepoy revolt. Soon afterwards, however, when the news from India became more and more gloomy, orders were issued that some of the troops not yet embarked should be sent to India instead of China. As no such catastrophe as a mutiny in India could reasonably be anticipated when the Earl of Elgin was sent out, the ministers could not tell how far that plenipotentiary might accede to any application made to him by the governor-general of India for the use of the troops already approaching or in the Indian seas.
Such being the progress of opinion and of preparation in England in reference to the Chinese quarrel, we may resume the rapid sketch of operations in China itself.
When, at about the middle of May 1857, Viscount Canning received news at Calcutta of the disasters at Meerut and Delhi, he instantly, as we have seen in a former chapter,[[194]] transmitted telegraphic messages to Bombay, Ceylon, and Madras. He inquired whether the Earl of Elgin and General Ashburnham had arrived at either of those stations, on their way to China; and made earnest applications that the troops sent from England to China might be diverted from that route, and despatched to Calcutta instead. Canning and Elgin had both been intrusted by their sovereign with extensive powers; both, when they came to communicate, saw that the events in India were more critical than those in China; and both were of opinion that the Queen’s troops were more wanted on the Jumna and Ganges than on the Canton or Pekin rivers. Hence arose an almost entire stoppage of the operations in the China seas till towards the close of the year. The slight events that marked the summer and autumn may be noticed in a few brief paragraphs.
Towards the close of May, before any considerable reinforcements could reach China, an attack was made by the British on a fleet of Chinese war-junks with very considerable effect. One of the many channels which the Canton river presents, called by the English Escape Creek, being known to contain a large fleet of junks, Commodore Elliot was ordered to make a vigorous demonstration in that quarter. On the 25th he entered the creek, with the Hong-kong, Bustard, Staunch, Starling, and Forbes, towing boats filled with men from the Inflexible, Hornet, and Tribune. He found forty-one mandarin junks, all heavily armed, moored across the creek; a brisk engagement ensued; and it was not until after the loss of many men, on the 25th and two following days, that the junks were destroyed.
The month of June opened with an engagement of more importance—the battle of Fatshan. This city is about seven miles distant in a straight line from Canton, but lying upon a different affluent of the Canton river. The expedition was not so much against Fatshan itself, as against a fleet of junks lying in the Fatshan branch or channel. Sir Michael Seymour himself accompanied this expedition. The channel was too narrow to admit any except small-craft; and therefore the work was to be done by gun-boats and row-boats. At three in the morning of the 1st of June the expedition started forth, the Coromandel towing three hundred marines in open boats. Many heavily armed forts line the Fatshan creek near the city, and these speedily opened fire as the boats advanced. When the Coromandel had nearly reached the town, the Hong-kong, Haughty, Bustard, Forester, Plover, Opossum, and other gun-boats, steamed up, each having its few but formidable guns, and each towing ships’ boats full of ‘blue-jackets.’ The men landed at the foot of a hill which was crowned with a fort mounting twenty large guns, and which from that day was called Fort Seymour. The rush up the hill was exciting; commodores, captains, lieutenants, seamen, marines, all ran up, equally regardless of danger; and after a few rounds from the fort’s guns, the Chinese, dismayed at the boldness of the English, took flight, and ran away from their guns. The assailants then hastened to attack the junks, which, mounting twelve guns each, were able to pour forth a tremendous fire of shot and shell. How the British escaped with so little loss in this encounter is a marvel. The seamen were in ecstasies at the boldness of the duty assigned to them. The boats’ crews baffled the shots from so many hundred guns by rowing right up to the junks, beneath the line of fire of the guns; and when there, they did not cease till they had set fire to the junks, from which the crews escaped precipitately over the opposite sides. Out of the seventy-two junks, sixty-seven were destroyed.
Anxious were the speculations whether these renewed successes would or would not lead to any decisive termination of the struggle. Bowring and Parkes among the civilians, Seymour and Elliot among the naval commanders, knew well enough that without a military force this could not be done. They knew, moreover, that until the Earl of Elgin should arrive, they could not be placed fully in possession of the views of the home-government. They anxiously counted the days before the new arrivals would be announced. The Earl of Elgin and General Ashburnham were at Bombay on the day when the disastrous news from Meerut and Delhi reached that city. The general went on to Hong-kong, where he arrived on the 10th of June; but the earl, after reaching Singapore, gave orders that two of the approaching regiments should be diverted from the Chinese expedition to the service of Viscount Canning. This was ominous of the cessation of any effective operations on the China coast. Elgin, moreover, issued orders that, if Canning should make pressing application for more aid, other regiments should be similarly diverted to Calcutta. Meanwhile, at Canton, Yeh remained as impassable as ever; he did not yield an inch. The rich were flying from the city, the poor were half starved by the stoppage of all trade; nevertheless these miseries, bad enough to the Chinese themselves, did not improve the position of the English.
Early in July the Earl of Elgin arrived in the Shannon war-steamer. A large staff of military officers had now assembled at Hong-kong; but there was nothing for them to do, seeing that the regiments had not arrived, nor did it appear probable how soon Canning could spare them. A fleet and a staff of military officers were now in the Canton river almost in a state of idleness. The active correspondent of the Times, having no fighting to witness, made those rambling visits to Shang-hae and elsewhere which enabled him to give so graphic an account of the Chinese in their homes and shops and places of amusement. On the 13th the French admiral arrived at Hong-kong, to confer with Elgin on the policy to be pursued. At first there was an intention of steaming up to the Pei-ho river, on which the imperial city of Pekin stands, to bring the emperor to a conference. Within a few days, however, an urgent dispatch arrived from Viscount Canning, announcing that the revolt was spreading widely in India, and asking for further aid. The Earl of Elgin at once changed his plan. He set off to Calcutta, taking with him a force of fifteen hundred seamen and marines, mostly belonging to the Shannon and Pearl war-steamers. It was these hardy men who constituted the ‘Naval Brigades’ so often mentioned in past chapters of this work, and in service with which the gallant Captain Sir William Peel met his death. Elgin’s determination was arrived at in part from this circumstance—that Baron Gros, the French high-commissioner or plenipotentiary, was not expected at Hong-kong until September; and that any negotiations at Pekin would be weakened in force unless the two countries acted in conjunction through their respective representatives.
August found the English officers and seamen very little satisfied with their position and duties in the Chinese waters. An occasional junk-hunt was all that occurred to break the monotony. Of fighting, such as men-of-war’s men would dignify by the name, there was little or none. Yeh continued to govern Canton; the Cantonese continued to suffer by the suspension of their trade with the British. The four northern ports managed to retain a trade which was very lucrative to them—selling tea and silk to the English, and buying opium, which the Chinese dealers sold again at an enormous profit in the upper or inner provinces. As for the emperor at Pekin, the English authorities at Hong-kong had no means of determining to what extent he was cognizant of affairs in the south, nor how far he sanctioned the immovable line of policy followed by his viceroy at Canton.
In the early part of September, Yeh took advantage of the lull in warlike operations; he built more junks, cast more cannon, raised up several guns which had been sunk by the English, and collected a fleet of two hundred war-junks in the Canton and Fatshan waters, ready to encounter the ‘barbarians’ again in time of need. As a means of ascertaining what was in progress in this quarter, Commodore Elliot set forth from Hong-kong to make a reconnaissance. He started up the Canton river on the 9th, taking with him the gun-boats Starling, Haughty, and Forester, and the heavy boats of the Sybille and Highflyer. He steamed through some of the channels, which are so numerous as to convert the banks of the river into a veritable archipelago, difficult to explore on account of the shallowness of the water in the channels. He met with a vast array of trading-junks, which he did not molest because they were engaged in peaceful commerce; and a few war-junks, which he destroyed; but he did not reach any spot where war-junks in large numbers were congregated. One event of this month was the appearance of Russia on the scene. Admiral Count Putiatine, who had been appointed governor of the Russian province of Amoor, and who had made a rapid overland journey from St Petersburg to the mouth of the Amoor in seventy days, steamed from that river to the Pei-ho on a diplomatic mission. The purport of this mission was not revealed to the English; but there were many at Hong-kong who surmised that Russia, like the United States, was secretly planning that a goodly share of any contingent advantages arising from the struggle should fall to her—leaving all the odium of hostilities on the shoulders of England and France.
When October arrived, the stormy state of the China seas rendered it doubtful how soon the Earl of Elgin’s diplomatic expedition to Pekin would take place. The British community at Hong-kong rather rejoiced at this; for they had all along advocated the simple formula—take Canton first, and negotiate with the emperor afterwards. The earl’s intention to postpone his visit becoming clearly known, many of the staff-officers who had been in enforced idleness at Hong-kong took their departure—some to Calcutta, some to other places. When Baron Gros arrived in the Audacieuse, which was not until the middle of October, the talk of the fleet was that Canton would be really and effectually besieged, as a preliminary to any proceedings further north. The Imperador arrived towards the close of the month, bringing five hundred marines direct from England; and large accessions of warlike stores denoted a resolution on the part of the government to bring about some definite termination of this Chinese quarrel.