The Opium War

by Julia Lovell

  Around 16 March, Yang Fang wrote to the emperor of the eight great difficulties in defending Canton, including the facts that the Qing navy had been wiped out, that the British had the run of the river up to Canton, and, tellingly, that the courage of the province’s soldiers had been destroyed, and that the place was crawling with traitors. But using troops from other provinces was no solution, either: they were not familiar with the city and its suburbs. (Yang Fang admitted that, as an outsider, he had the same problem, and had not had time to investigate for himself the lie of the land around the city.) Neither were the Cantonese to be relied on: 90 per cent of them had already fled, while many of whose who stayed behind did so to ‘burn and plunder’.27 A week after Yang Fang arrived in Canton, he rode out from his headquarters through the narrow, congested city streets. ‘Suddenly,’ he reported to the emperor, ‘a Chinese traitor seized my left arm and almost unhorsed me . . . Your slave immediately ordered that his head be hung up and exposed – by killing one man, to strike fear into the hearts of the populace.’28 Another contemporary account seems to tell a different story: that the unfortunate man was a hapless hauler who had got in the way of Yang Fang’s retinue while eating a bowl of porridge and was immediately beheaded for his error.29 On 8 May, a Cantonese man who had offered an opinion on the conflict was paraded through the streets as a traitor, stripped to the waist, both ears pierced with small flags, while being struck with a rattan whip to the beating of a gong.30

  Almost as soon as Yishan arrived in the city, he made the following diagnosis of the situation: ‘The trouble lies within, not without, because every merchant has got rich through the foreigners, and even the lowest orders make their livings from them. All the merchants and people who live near the coast are fluent in the foreigners’ language. The craftier of their number are spies, and know everything that is going on around the government offices, and are quick to pass it on.’ The going rate for information, he reported, was twenty dollars – for which locals were so avid that they regularly fabricated reports for the foreigners. All the losses of January through to March were, he argued, down to treachery and cowardice – ‘and that is why I say we need to defend more against the people than against the pirates.’31 As Yang Fang and Yishan procrastinated about war through April, they busied themselves instead putting up threatening notices about the dangers of collaboration, ‘to curb the traitors’ hearts’.32 Yishan’s feelings were fully reciprocated by the Cantonese. ‘Yishan had no interest’, one local writer commented acidly, ‘in logistics, battle-plans, the lie of the land, about strategies for victory and defence, for subduing the enemy and resisting foreign aggression – and neither did he have anything to contribute. The only thing he was good for was buying watches and woollens, and giving or attending great banquets.’33

  There was, quite likely, a deal of truth in official suspicions about the loyalty of the Cantonese, whose interests were financial rather than patriotic. Howqua, the richest of the merchants, was happy to inform his old British friends of recent developments on their return to the Canton factories at the beginning of March: about Qishan’s dismissal, about the appointment of Yishan and Yang Fang, and so on. ‘The locals’, Liang Tingnan pronounced, ‘were perfectly used to the foreigners . . . and in any case were unable to understand complicated things. Feeling that the whole business would not hurt them, they quietly sympathized with Elliot.’34 As British trade operations in Hong Kong prospered at surprising speed through the autumn and winter of 1841, the island’s newly founded Gazette remarked complacently that well-to-do Cantonese merchants were already flocking towards the free-trade port. ‘What do we care for this so-called war?’ the message seemed to go. ‘There’s money to be made.’

  The usual dysfunctions in the Qing military machine made matters worse. Through the spring, Daoguang’s 17,000 troops straggled into town late, underfed, underpaid, undertrained, underequipped – or not at all. ‘The imperial troops that have arrived’, Yang Fang told the emperor, ‘are all unaccustomed to naval warfare.’35 There was no doubt in Yang Fang’s mind that this ill-treated ragbag would go over to the highest bidder: ‘there has long been the rumour’, he reported to the emperor concerning the fall of the Canton estuary forts in February and March, ‘that our marine forces received three hundred dollars for each unloaded cannon shot.’36 ‘As for our fleets,’ ran Yishan’s analysis, ‘in the past they all made money out of protecting the opium trade. As for our soldiers, they cared only that the rebellious foreigners should be victorious and that the prohibition on opium should be relaxed.’37 Over half the province’s cannons ‘have been scattered and lost and, except for the defence of the city, are inadequate for offence or defence . . . No reply has been received about those sent from Hunan and Guangxi. The saltpetre sent for has not reached Canton either. We are burning with anxiety.’38

  Daoguang’s men tried delaying. They tried lying. They even tried to angle for the emperor’s sympathy: ‘The sores on your slave’s legs have again broken out,’ Yang Fang wrote on 28 April, ‘but he does not dare on this account to evade any of his responsibilities.’39 In the end, they tried fighting.

  Despite the unfavourable impression that locals had of Yishan’s military capabilities, he did have a plan of sorts. His idea was to launch a surprise water attack on the light British fleet stationed near the city: to organize assault teams who, supported by land artillery, would rush at the British ships by night on skiffs, fireboats and rafts loaded with flammable materials. Useful materials were being stockpiled on the southern edge of the city: fire arrows, fireballs, exploding poison cannon, poison fireballs and so on.40

  There were a number of flaws in this scheme, most of them arising from the unreliability of the Qing forces, and logistical problems in getting men and materiel together. Because Yishan was so distrustful of the local soldiers, he insisted on using amphibious commandos from Fujian and Zhejiang – of whom, as the day of the planned attack drew near, perhaps fewer than 1,000 had arrived. In the event, their numbers were hastily boosted by 700 last-minute, probably clueless extras from Sichuan and Canton. But this top-secret plan’s greatest drawback was that it was not top secret.

  For one thing, the Qing had long been transparently preparing for war. ‘Edict after edict was hurled against the British’, remembered a British lieutenant. ‘ “Exterminate the rebels! Exterminate the rebels!” ’41 By April, the Chinese Repository estimated that some 50,000 soldiers were gathered in or around Canton: ‘Not one fourth of these’, its correspondent added, ‘are fit to bear arms. Many of them are wandering as vagrants about the suburbs. Even those on guard at the gates of the city appear unarmed.’42 Another British captain stationed on the factory front exercised his brain by counting the daily shiploads of reinforcements that passed by on their way into Canton, while jittery civilians travelled in the opposite direction.43 Forts and batteries were being rebuilt; 36,000 local militia had been recruited.44 Yang Fang sent Elliot letters that he might or might not have supposed to be subtle: telling him that vast numbers of battle-hardened soldiers had arrived, that the British were hopelessly outnumbered, that peaceful negotiation was the only option. ‘Cast not aside the words of an old man, but open your heart and let your bowels of kindness be seen.’45 On the morning before Yishan’s nocturnal stealth attack was launched (21 May) Elliot exhorted all British and American merchants to leave the factories for their own safety; yet again, one of his loyal Cantonese informants must have come good for him.

  By midnight on 21 May, the factories were almost deserted, beyond a handful of profit-fixated American merchants. As the traders scattered, the rest of the British fleet moved up from Hong Kong and Macao, stationing themselves in a long snake between Canton and the entrance to the Bogue. Four warships, and the Nemesis, were anchored nearest the factories. ‘Everything was buried’, recalled one captain, ‘in the most profound silence’ until several junks – tied together in twos and threes – were observed being set alight, then sent drifting towards th
e British boats.46 A fleet of other junks and rafts followed, stuffed with oil-soaked cotton. Soon, Chinese soldiers were swarming through the water towards the warships – perhaps intending to drill holes in the hulls. A neat ‘shear with the helm’ enabled the foremost ship to dodge the fire junks, while a touch of artillery put the attackers off. Firing from Chinese batteries hidden amid Canton’s houses, though, proved more of a problem for warships trapped (on an airless Canton summer night) in one of the Pearl River’s narrow channels. The only thing that saved them was darkness and an ebb tide: in nine minutes, just before fireboats could approach to incinerate the warships, the Nemesis had chugged to the rescue to answer the fire from the city. (Though there was a very bad moment when a lit rocket became stuck in its firing tube, threatening to explode on board, until Captain Hall calmly reached down and dislodged it, badly burning his hand.) As the Qing counter-offensive started to go wrong, the panic on the faces of the crews of the fifty-odd fireboats was illuminated by their burning cargoes; many jumped ship and drowned, or were caught by British musket-fire. By dawn, the batteries had been silenced and destroyed, and their firers put to flight. The tide now turned, dragging the remaining fireboats back towards the city, whose wooden southern suburbs burst into flames.

  With hindsight, it was no surprise that the Qing attack failed. Yishan – perhaps suffering from imperial pressure, perhaps (as one contemporary Chinese account has it) ‘yielding to a desire for glory’ – had ordered a secret attack that seems to have taken his own side more by surprise than the enemy. He informed Yang Fang only after the soldiers had actually left the city for the river – possibly fearing that Yang, who may well have had high hopes that he could bamboozle the emperor indefinitely with mere talk of preparing for war, would force him to cancel the idea.47 (The moment that Yang belatedly learnt of the plan, he is said to have stamped and sworn, declaring that ‘we’re bound to lose’.)

  Pausing only to celebrate Queen Victoria’s birthday with a high-noon salute on 24 May, the 2,393-strong British force cleared the river to the south of the city of functioning forts, and made its way to the west of Canton. By dawn on the 25th, all had been landed just off a creek around two miles north-west of the city. The entire force – a good number of them diarrhoea-stricken – began to tramp over rice-fields and burial grounds, dragging with them their four 12-pounder howitzers, four 9-pounder guns, two 6-pounder field-guns, three mortars and two 62-pounder rockets to their objective: Yuexiushan (the Mountain of Transcendent Excellence) – a moderate hill, a few hundred feet high, in the centre of the northern edge of the city wall. The men straggled at their peril: one camp follower, slowed by his burden of provisions, but nevertheless no more than 500 feet ahead of the next company, was found the day after lying by the roadside, headless.48

  By 10 a.m. on 25 May, the hill and a new collection of optimistically named fortifications (the Forts of Extreme Protection and of Extreme Security, and the Tower that Suppresses the Oceans) were in British hands (the 49th and 18th Regiments participating in a strictly disciplined race as to which would scramble up the hill to claim the forts first), with their Qing defenders scrambling down the hillsides firing tiny rockets to mask their retreat in smoke.

  After an uncomfortable (those lucky enough to sleep did so in scratch bivouacs) and busy night (fifteen pieces of artillery had to be dragged up the hill and set up by nightfall), 26 May dawned more quietly. British guns now pointed at Canton from its southern, water-bound approaches, and from the hills to the north. Perched up on their hill, the British at last had a little time to study the city before them, with its six miles of walls – twenty-five-feet high, twenty feet thick – now purged of any activity beyond the waving of white flags, and its gates spilling civilians out into the countryside.

  To anyone with a sense of Sino-Western trading history, this was a moment to savour. For almost a century, European merchants’ exclusion from Canton had been emblematic of so many of their frustrations with the Chinese empire. ‘Now’, observed Liang Tingnan, spying the British on the hill with their telescopes, ‘they could see everything that was going on.’49 For the first time, Britons could stare into this once secluded city: over its two square miles of narrow granite streets, lead-blue brick houses, mud hovels and temples. To the north and south of the city, twin pagodas rose up, reminding onlookers of the masts of a junk. ‘That one of the first cities of the Chinese empire,’ a British army dispatch put it with characteristically clipped reserve, ‘whose population of 1,203,004, defended by 40,000 soldiers, in and without the walls, whose defences had been now a whole year in preparation; strong in its natural position, and approachable only by an intricate and uncertain navigation, near 400 miles inland, should have in 3 days fallen before a force of not more than 3,500 effective men, soldiers, royal marines and seamen, I trust will be considered a circumstance gratifying and creditable to the national feeling, and to Her Majesty’s arms.’50

  Strictly speaking, Daoguang had wasted his three million ounces of silver; but, at fifteen dead and a hundred and twelve injured, the British had incurred their heaviest losses yet.

  By 26 May, the city – and its defenders – were in spectacular disarray. The British bombardment alone had done terrible damage. ‘The cannon did not fall silent for a single moment’, wrote Liang Tingnan. ‘When night fell, the fires burned as bright as day . . . Neither officials nor soldiers dared come out to help – all you could hear was the noise of burning and death.’51 But the Qing armies were almost as destructive. Discipline had fallen to pieces as soon as the first assault had failed on the night of 21 May, and the troops had taken out their disappointment by thoroughly plundering and destroying the foreign factories. Soon, 7–8,000 of the rank-and-file soldiers from other provinces fell back inside the city gates. In the meantime, all those who could do so travelled in the opposite direction, with such reckless panic that women and children were trampled underfoot. In the chaos, non-Cantonese soldiers – from far-away corners of the empire, finding themselves in a strange city, probably not understanding the local dialect, and seeming almost as terrifyingly foreign to local populations as the British themselves – were isolated from their own regiments and officers, and crammed into tents fifteen at a time. As a result, morale collapsed: ‘they broke and fled’, recorded Wei Yuan, ‘indulged in mutual recriminations, began to complain about their pay [and] looted just as they liked.’52 The officers were similarly undisciplined, scattering into abandoned civilian houses, leaving their commanders clueless as to their whereabouts. ‘You never saw them except on payday,’ remembered Liang Tingnan.53

  Commanders either refused outright to leave the city to fight, or strenuously dissuaded others from doing so. ‘I’ll get them!’ roared old Yang Fang, preparing to lead a 2,000-strong column out of the northern gate to do battle until his colleagues forcibly prevented him. At one point during these desperate days, Yishan was importuned by a handful of labourers who wanted to know what, precisely, he was planning to do to save the city. He responded by having their leaders immediately beheaded.54 ‘Innumerable bodies strewed the streets’, observed one resident. ‘All discipline was gone, and the roads were filled with clamour and confusion. Everywhere, I saw plunder and murder. Thousands of our soldiers ran away, having loaded themselves with stolen goods, then pretended they had lost their way pursuing the enemy.’55 When the British started to fire on the commanders’ former headquarters, Liang Tingnan scornfully remarked that ‘the fleas had already jumped’.56

  As banditry spread through the province as a whole, the threat of civil war loomed over the city. Tensions were particularly bad between the Hunanese reinforcements – concentrated around the east gate – and local fighters. Many of the Hunanese had apparently passed the time by sleeping with female lepers, who gave the disease to them – the folk belief was that if a woman could pass the affliction on to a man, she would recover and be able to get married. Another folk belief told that eating the flesh of a child would cure the sickness an
d so, allegedly, some stole and cooked children in their camp. Outraged local soldiers then went on a murderous rampage against the Hunanese child-eaters. ‘The bodies were piled high on the drill-ground’, remembered Liang Tingnan.57 ‘Traitors! Traitors!’ screamed local militiamen, chasing back inside the city any victims who tried to escape.58 An uncorroborated British account reports that some imperial troops ate the flesh of irregulars from Hubei.59

  Sifang Fort – the Fort From Which All Directions Can Be Viewed – is a pleasant spot to visit these days, nestling in the centre of the 230 acres of Yuexiu Park, a surprisingly beautiful oasis of green within contemporary Canton’s grubby concrete sprawl. Heading along the park’s broad pedestrian avenues carpeted with fallen tropical blossoms, towards the dull red walls of the Tower for Suppressing the Seas, you could easily miss the turning towards the old fort – now a small, discreetly signposted arena – from which the British and their guns looked down over Canton.

  It was a less comfortable place in 1841: an exposed mound just beyond the old walls of the city, ideal for catching the worst of the Canton summer sun. Canton’s climate is bearable between about October and April; by May, it has long ceased to be reasonable, even to those in appropriately loose, cool clothing. Imagine the sufferings of the British troops, then, in their heavy uniforms: the long-sleeved, stiffly tailored frock jackets constructed out of dense, heat-retaining wool; the cap’s steeply inclined peak more useful for channelling sweat than for casting shade. On 30 May, one British major collapsed and died of a heatstroke.