Age of Conquest: A Kings and Generals Podcast

Last time we spoke the horrifying trade of Poison and Pigs. The “Poison” referring to the still thriving opium trade and “pig” being the kidnapping of Chinese coolies. We also briefly talked about the rise of the Taiping rebels under Hong Xiuquan, the self proclaimed brother of Jesus Christ. The Taiping rebellion alongside the trade of Poison and Pigs was wreaking havoc upon the Qing dynasty and then to ignite the powder keg came a rather small event. The Arrow incident set into motion Ye Mingchen to butt heads with Harry Parkes and John Bowring and all 3 of these men would begin a duel that set into motion the kindling for another opium war. Soon things got completely out of hand and Rear Admiral Seymour was brought into the mix leading to him ordering the first official shots of what will become the second opium war. #19 This episode is Part 1 of the Second Opium War: Seymour’s onslaught   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. Ye Mingchen upon learning of the threat immediately called upon Canton’s militia, but their response was not exactly enthusiastic. Unlike the previous Lin Zexu, a noble and very charismatic figure, Ye lacked public support and the rank and file soldiers often disregarded him. A large reason for this was because of the brutality he unleashed on the Taiping Rebels in the two provinces he ran. Ye’s two hundred warships while numerous, in the face of the British state of the art gunboats and steamers, were basically childs toys. Parkes sent Ye another demand: to grant British residents the right to live and work outside the factories. Ye refused the demand and on October 28th, the British sent the steamer Encounter to shell the rooftop of the vice regal residence. This action did drive some popularity for Ye as many began to say the viceroy was fearless and had remained in his courtyard reading a book as the shells missed him. Ye then upted the anty by placing a price on British heads from 30 to 100 dollars. Ye also placed a whopping 30,000 dollars for Parkes head. When Seymour came to Canton he found the Encounter moored off the city near the factories. He sent the Sampson and Barracouta to seize the Blenheim and Macao forts meeting no resistance. One of the British sailors named William Kennedy described the city “The river was alive with every kind of craft, from the little sampan, propelled by a single oar in the stern, to the heavy trading junk with her single iron-wood mast and mat sails. Numerous flower-boats belonging to wealthy mandarins were moored off the town, conspicuous by their gaudy paint, and crowded with laughing girls, who kept up an incessant chatter as they peeped out at the foreign devils!” The next day, Seymour seized the Bird’s nest fort and then the two Shameen forts guarding the passage. All of the guns they found in the forts were rendered unserviceable.  When the bombardment of Canton had begun, a hole was made in Canton’s walls and this allowed a detachment of Royal Marines to land and get into the factory sector to protect the inhabitants. Chinese guns on the walls did not fire upon the invaders who all entered the city to an eerie silence. Some Chinese matchlocks did fire upon them but it seems many were antiquated and did no damage. W.t Bates, the captain of the HMS Actaeon planted the Union Jack atop Canton’s wall, and he was joined by an American envoy to Hong Kong, James Keenan who likewise was waving the Stars and Stripes. Now this is an interesting bit, because the US remained neutral during the conflict between China and Britain. James Keenan apparently was shit faced when he did this haha. The British began to move a large cannon through the wall breach and used it to further shell Ye’s residence.. The royal marines and sailors formed posts and barricades with field gun support around certain streets to guard against counter attacks. On October 25th the Chinese forces attacked the British pickets, but were easily repulsed, resulting in 14 casualties for them. On October 27th, the Encounter opened fire on Ye's poor residence as the Barracouta and Sulphur Creek shelled Chinese positions along the hills in the back of Canton. The British forces warned the Chinese civilians to evacuate themselves and their property. On october 28th, the British attacked again, this time from the Dutch Folly where they placed 2 large guns. The shelling of Cantons walls set fires within the city and the next morning the British began firing upon Chinese counter artillery being mounted on the opposite side of the Dutch Folly. Seymour then led a 400 man party personally to capture Ye’s residence, but they found it to be abandoned. Seymour reported “the Chinese troops offered little resistance beyond a scattered fire from the streets and houses”, two British were killed with 12 wounded. Seymour did not have nearly enough men to hold Canton, so he soon pulled back to a safer encampment outside the walls, but not before sending Ye a threat “The lives and property of the entire city are at my mercy, and could be destroyed by me at any moment,”. Ye sent an emissary to Parks with a truce offer, but Parkes rebuffed it by making vague threats about allying with the Taiping rebels. It was most likely a bluff, because Bowring personally loathed what he called “the Jacobin like God worshippers”. It seems even Ye knew this to be a bluff as well. Seymour continued his siege of Canton and managed to gain control of all the seagoing traffic in the gulf of Canton by chasing off all the Chinese war junks that came near. Seymour estimated it would take at least 5000 men to hold the city.  Meanwhile Ye began to really saber rattle, making a proclamation to the residents of Canton to “preserve quiet minds, guard your property, but do not give way to alarm”. It should be noted Ye said this from a very safe hiding place. Well the Chinese and European residents gradually began to desert Canton as Seymour’s bombardment grew more intense and many had to flee for their lives. Snipers inside the city returned fire on the British using antiquated matchlocks, but it amounted to nothing. By the end of October, Ye finally agreed to parley with the British, but still refused to meet them in person, instead sending subordinates, which was most likely also a face saving insult to the British. Bowring demanded in person negotiations and sent Seymour a letter to toss at Ye “In the administration of all matters in China the rule adhered to is that which heaven shows is the right one to pursue: the chief consideration is the people. It is said in The Book of History, ‘Heaven sees as my people see; Heaven hears as my people hear.’ Is this not an additional reason why I should be unable to constrain the people? I must add that as it is the habit of Your Excellency’s nation to adore the spirit of Heaven, it behooves you in my opinion so much the more to conform in your actions to the principle given us by heaven. Let Your Excellency maturely consider this. “ On November the 6th the British seized the French Folly fort along the pearl river near Canton. Enroute to it they ran into a armada of 23 Chinese war junks, but easily sent them into a rout, but at the cost of 1 death and 4 wounded sailors. The battle lasted no more than an hour and Parkes described the defenders as “putting up a very hot resistance, the battle was exceeding creditable to the bravery of not just our men, but of the Chinese also”.  Just before november the 12th, Seymour sent word to the Qing commanders garrisoning the bogue forts “The British Admiral wishes to spare life, and is not at war with the Chinese; and as it is necessary for him to hold possession of the Bogue Forts, until the conduct of the Viceroy Yeh can be referred to the Emperor of Pekin, one hour will be given for the purpose of clearing out; if this offer is at once accepted, boats will be permitted to pass to and from the main land and the Wantungs. In this case, the forts will remain uninjured, ready to be returned in the same state to the Chinese when these differences are over; and the rebels will neither be allowed to pass the Bogue Forts, nor to enter them whilst in our possession” Seymour waited an hour but received no answer. In truth the Qing commander of the forts could not give an answer, if he did he would be beheaded. On November 12th, a British squadron of 6 ships opened fire on the two Wangtong island forts which were both fully manned, holding over 200 guns. The Qing defenders tossed stink pots at the first Royal marines to enter the forts. The Chinese fired upon the invaders, but as soon as enough British had entered the forts the defenders fled to prepared escape boats. As Seymour described it “the battle was a considerable, though ill-directed resistance of about an hour or so”. The British had one death and 5 wounded aboard the HMS Nankin. The next day the British attacked and captured the Anunghoy forts, each holding 200 guns whereupon Seymour chided “there was some resistance”, there were no casualties. The Americans also got to have a go at the Qing at this time. The USS Portsmouth and USS Levant were sailing off the Chinese coast when they received news of the war. The two sloops of war were tasked with protecting American lives and to land 150 marines at Canton to do so. They made a peaceful landing and began to occupy the city. Commodore James Armstrong and Captain Henry Bell came aboard the USS Jacinto, landing additional forces in Canton. On November the 15th the American force withdrew from the city. As they were withdrawing, Commander Andrew Foote of the Portsmouth was rowing to his ship, but as he did so a Chinese garrison fired on his small boat a few times, nearly hitting him. The next day the US marines decided to retaliate against the Qing for what had occurred. The Steam frigate USS San Jacinto alongside the two slopes of war made their way up the Pearl River and launched an attack on Canton’s coastal forts, also known as the barrier forts. The USS Portsmouth was the first to fire upon the nearest fort on November 16th. For 2 hours the American bombardment harassed the forts until the forts stopped firing back. Before sending the marines to attack though, the Qing commander and American officials attempted diplomacy, but it failed to reach any result by November 20th. Commodore Armstrong ordered his ships to continue firing upon the forts. During the mayhem the USS Levant received 22 cannonball hits to her sail and hull. Under the cover of their naval bombardment, 287 American troops led by COmmander Andrew Foote landed unopposed. 50 marines led by Captain John Simms spearheaded the attack and they quickly captured the nearest fort and proceeded to unleash its 53 guns to attack the second nearest fort. When the Qing saw the fort was shooting at them they launched a counterattack of 3000 soldiers from Canton. The melee lasted until november 24th, until the combined efforts of the Americans on land and their naval squadron managed to push back the Qing army killing and wounding dozens. The Americans then seized 2 more of the forts and spiked 176 of their guns. It is alleged the Qing had around 250-500 casualties while the Americans suffered 22. The USS Levant lost a man and had 6 wounded during the cannon exchange. Afterwards Armstrong tried diplomacy again and signed an agreement of neutrality between the US and the Qing for the duration of the war. America would respect the agreement until another incident in 1859.    In the meantime with the siege going on at Canton trade fell apart. Howqua and the other Cohong merchants faced ruin. On november 12th, the Cohong merchants pleaded with Parkes. Howqua explained their impossible position. He said they agreed the British should be allowed to live in Canton outside the factories, but they currently lacked enough firepower to enforce this. Parkes said of the Cohong groveling “Their weight as a class both with [the] authorities and people is far less than we suppose. The people, particularly the rural population, were opposed to our admission.” Nonetheless the Canton stalemate continued till november 17th, when Bowring left for Hong Kong. Bowring reported to the foreign minister lord Clarendon “I have exhausted all the means with which I could influence either the hopes or fears of this incarnation of ancient Chinese pride, ignorance and unteachableness.” The Taiping Rebels heard about the situation and offered military assistance to the British, but the British distrusted them. Towards the end of november a armada of rebel ships with 1500 men showed up to Canton hoping to coordinate an attack on the Qing. Instead the Taiping were met by a British fleet commanded by Captain Keith Stewart. But Parkes did use the Taiping offer to intimidate Ye, telling one of his assistants  “partisans of the revolutionary factions had intimated their wish to cooperate in an attack on the city, but that the Admiral had declined all connection with their proceedings.” Parkes added to this that the British decision could change depending on Ye’s actions.  Ye was making a mistake during all of this, he assumed because of the lack of British manpower that they also lacked resolve. So on November 28th Ye made another proclamation “The English barbarians have attacked the provincial city, and wounded and injured our soldiers and people. Wherefore I herewith distinctly command you to join together to exterminate them, killing them whenever you meet them, whether on shore or in their ships.”. By mid december Ye felt emboldened enough to order the destruction of the foreign factories, but also officially denied any involvement in it. At around midnight of December 14th, some Chinese bearing torches burnt the factories to the ground. The British tried to fight the fires, but were unable to extinguish them. All that remained of the foreign buildings were the British chapel and boathouse in the end. Parkes was in Hong Kong that night, but a member of his staff, Henry Lane died in the fire.  Ye’s bounties prompted some atrocities to take place on december 29th. The chinese crew of the steamship Thistle, carrying mail from Hong Kong to Canton, mutinied en route and beheaded all 11 european passengers, aided by some other Chinese who had snuck aboard disguised as passengers. The Thistle was set on fire and found drifting into Canton harbor with the headless victims. The heads were brought for reward, at that point its alleged Ye was paying 100$ a head. The Chinese figured out a primitive but effective way of fighting the British. In January of 1857, the Qing launched a flotilla of fire ships containing over 8000 pounds of gunpowder against Seymour’s ships at harbor. The attack failed, but it certainly unnerved Seymor who never expected such retaliation. Seymour sailed out of Canton harbor with 2 ships, the Encounter and Niger and made way for the relative safety of Macao.  Before making it to Macao, on January the 4th, Seymour took 9 ships to attack and capture the Macao Fort which was located on an islet around 3 miles south of Canton. The Qing threw 70 War junks at the force incorporating an array of strategies such as fire boats, regular naval cannon warfare and using smaller row boats to toss stink pots at the British vessels. The Qing were soon overwhelmed and had to give up on the naval battle, allowing Seymour to claim the fort. On January 15th, 400 residents in Hong Kong got extremely ill after eating bread from the local bakery. The doctors at the scene said it was arsenic poisoning, but the culprit had either not wanted the British to die or was too incompetent to know how to poison properly. Turns out he put so much arsenic in the dough that it forced the victims to throw up the poison and thus led to no fatalities. Bowring’s wife and children were some of the victims and Lady Bowring almost died. This led Bowring to write to the Colonial secretary Labouchere “I beg to apologize if anything should have been forgotten at this last moment. I am shaken by the effects of poison, every member of my family being at this moment suffering from this new attempt upon our lives”. The owner of the bakery went on trial despite the fact his own family was poisoned as well, luckily he was acquitted. Yet the British public demanded justice and they pointing their fingers at Ye Mingchen. Ye Mingchen at the time was hosting Napoleon III’s representative, the Comte de Courcy and said this to the man about the incident “Doubtless there are many Chinese whose hatred against the English has been much increased, but to poison people in this underhand manner is an act worthy of detestation. Whoever he is, the author of this poisoning is an abominable creature, but since he is in [Britishcontrolled] Hong Kong, I find it difficult to proceed against him.” Well the British police in Hong Kong arrested 52 of the Bakery’s employees as Bowring prevented a mob from lynching them. The arrested were jammed into a single room only 15 feet square for 19 days, the jailers simply did not have the space. The prison doctor eventually demanded they be moved to better quarters fearing an outbreak of plague might occur. The public went into a mass hysteria because of the poisoning event and a witch hunt began. It became almost comical, almost 500 arrests were made and some of the charges were simply “the man looked suspicious”. The native population of Hong Kong began to freak out and nearly half of them would leave to immigrate to Australia and California.  The Arrow incident and Thistle massacre had provided Bowring a justification to increase hostilities. On January the 10th Bowring sent a letter to the Governor General of India, Lord Canning asking for reinforcements, because he thought Seymour’s expeditions in the Gulf of Canton were not providing results. What Bowring really wanted was to seize Canton, in his words “The gate of China is Canton, and unless we can force an entrance there, I believe the difficulties of obtaining any improved position in China will be almost invincible. The valor of H.M. naval forces [is] not able to take the city.” Bowring also stated he had spoken with Seymour and that both men agreed on the necessity for military aid in the form of at least 5000 men with a small amount of artillery. Back home in Britain, parliament anticipated Bowrings requests and on January 31st, before learning of the request Bowring had sent to Canning, ordered Canning to dispatch a regiment and artillery to Canton. On February 9th, the foreign minister ordered Seymour to seize the entrance to the Grand Canal which would effectively cut off the capital's rice supply. Beijing could be starved into submission since Seymour’s countless capturing of Forts and victories on the sea had not produced any real response from the Emperor. Bowring was given new orders to obtain new concessions, now Britain wanted; a permanent British ambassadorial presence at Beijing, even more ports and rivers open and the right for British commercial and missionary access to China’s interior. However back in Britain there was great concern for the cost of conflict with China. The Times estimated that a war with China may cost up to 10 million pounds in lost trade and tax revenues. Eventually the leader of the Tories brought a motion of no confidence against the Whig government and in particular against Palmerstons management of the conflict in China. On February 24th, the Tories denounced Bowring and Palmerstons as a quote “bald faced and illegal land grab and the usurpation of an independent nations sovereign powers”.  The Torries leader, Earl of Derby said this “I am an advocate for the feeble defenselessness of China against the overpowering might of Great Britain. I am an advocate for weakness against power, for perplexed and bewildered barbarism against the arrogant demands of over-weaning self-styled civilization. The Arrow issue is the most despicable cause of war that has ever occured”. You know its kind of a meme today to mock Britain for being this evil empire for most of history, but instances like this that often go unheard that there were people trying to stop conflict. The more you know as they say. Derby called upon the conscience of the bishops in the House of Lords and his secular colleagues “to declare that they will not sanction the usurpation of the most awful prerogative of the Crown, the declaring of war; that they will not tolerate the destruction of the forts of a friendly country; that they will not tolerate the bombardment and the shelling of a commercial and open city”. Derby was met with a standing ovation for his speech. Palmerston managed to influence Lord Shaftebury, a philanthropist and notorious critique of the opium trade, to join his side of the argument. Turns out the prime minister had bribed him by giving him control of the appointments of bishops, such appointments brought with them a cathedral, extensive lands and a salary from rent that allowed many Bishops to live like lords. Yet Shaftesburys conscious was troubled by the situation and he wrote in his diary “A sad result. Right or wrong, the government must be supported to bring these matters to a satisfactory close. Hope and believe that God, having employed [the Prime Minister] as an instrument of good, would maintain him. But his ways are inscrutable. Opium and Christianity could not enter China together.” Now Lord Clarendon had quite a battle on his hands with his opposition, Mr. Derby. Clarendon stood up to give a speech after Derby, but the standing ovation and cheers for Derby persisted heavily. The foreign secretary argued the Arrow was indeed a British vessel and decried the Emperor for not living up to the terms of the Treaty of Nanjing. Clarendon then made a case for military action “I fear that we must come to the conclusion that in dealing with a nation like the Chinese, if we intend to preserve any amicable or useful relations with them, we must make them sensible of the law of force, and must appeal to them in the manner which they alone can appreciate.” Some responses began to pour out such as the tory member, Lord Malmesbury who began to denounce Bowringer as a warmonger who was lying to both Seymour and Ye Mingchen. Lord Ellenborough a former governor general of India tossed at Bowring “that he had disregarded the instructions of four successive secretaries of state, supported, as I supposed he is by an influence with the government which I cannot comprehend”. Ellenborough began to condemn Britain's activities in China on the basis of economic loss. After two days of debate, Derby’s motion was put to a vote. It was 146 against 110, in favor of the current government.  On the same day the Whigs won out in the house of lords, the commons took up the Arrow registration debate and Bowrings requests for reinforcements to invade Canton. Richard Cobden, a MP from Manchester and a adamant pacifist brought the issue to a motion of no confidence. Cobden argued the seizure of the Arrow was justified and a legitimate exercise of Chinese sovereignty while condemning Bowring’s and Seymou’rs actions. He addressed his colleagues stating Bowrings military actions threatened Britain's commerce in Canton. He ended his speech with this “Is not so venerable an empire as that deserving of some sympathy—at least of some justice—at the hands of conservative England?” The issue of the opium trade was brought up by other MP’s such as Gladstone and Samuel Gregson. Gladstone said “Your greatest and most valuable trade in China is in opium. It is a smuggling trade. It is in the worst, the most pernicious, demoralizing and destructive of all the contraband trades that are carried upon the surface of the globe.” Gladstone and some other MP’s called for negotiations and treaties rather than blockades and bombardments.  The Whig rebuttal to the Torries came in the form of a speech from the Prime Minister. He argued that when the Qing forces seized the Arrow, they had pulled down the Union Jack. This seems to have enraged more people in the house of commons than the seizure of the Chinese crew, don’t be touching the Union Jack. Palmerston then made a speech rambled about how the opium trade had nothing to do with the situation at hand. But then went on to contradict himself by saying this  “The existing restrictions on our commerce are one cause of that trade in opium to which [Cobden and Derby et al.] so dexterously alluded to…We can pay for our purchases only partly in goods, the rest we must pay in opium and silver.” The vote was made, and it came to 263 vs 247 to censure. Queen Victoria then 38 years old and pregnant with her 8th child, confided in her husband Prince Albert “I am grieved at the success of evil party motives, spit and the total lack of patriotism”.  And so Palmerston dissolved Parliament and decried “there will be no change, and there can be no change, in the policy of the government with respect to China”. Palmerston continue to argue the Arrow was a British ship and that Ye Mingchen was a quote “An insolent barbarian wielding authority at Canton has violated the British flag, broken the engagements of treaties, offered rewards for the heads of British subjects in that part of China, and planned their destruction by murder, assassination and poisons. He is one of the most savage barbarians that ever disgraced a nation. Ye had been guilty of every crime which can degrade and debase human nature.” Kind of overkill don’t you think Palmerston? Palmerston then pointing fingers at the Torries saying their moral high ground was simply an act to force the Whig ministry to fall and not in fact to save China from Britain's war upon her. He then alleged there would be a massacre of all European residents in Canton if the house did not back the war.  I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.  Rear Admiral Seymour led an onslaught against the city of Canton and multiple Qing forts along their riverways. The British politicians were racking their heads trying to figure out how to proceed, but in the end it seems war will be back on the menu.  

Last time we spoke about the end of the infamous First Opium War of 1839-1842. The Qing tried to procrastinate as much as they could in the face of a goliath force wrecking havoc upon them. Their cannons were simply outmatched and as a result the British armada was easily brushing aside their war junks and fortifications. Many horrible battles were fought and countless Qing commanders took their own lives in shame after defeat. The closer the British forces got to Beijing the more desperate the Qing became and eventually Emperor Daoguang was forced to send diplomats to negotiate a peace. The result was the infamous treaty of Nanking a utter humiliation for the Qing dynasty, marking the beginning of the century of humiliation for China. Britain grabbed Hong Kong, the Qing would pay 6 million taels of silver in reparation. But the treaty made zero mention of why the war had occurred at all, Mr. Opium. Was Mr. Opium gone..no by no means was he. #18 This episode is The Trade of Poison and Pigs Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on the history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. So the last time we left off, on October 12th of 1842, the last $6 million dollars of payment reached the British armada and they finally departed from Nanking. The tension between the Chinese and British was still raging however. In fact there would be another skirmish so to say. In november of 1842, opium merchants decided to bring their wives for a trip from Whampoa to Canton violated a Chinese taboo against mixing of sexes. The Chinese residents of Canton seized and burned the Union Jack flying over the British factory there. Defenders of the American factory shot 5 rioters before the Qing police managed to calm things down. Then the shipwrecked survivors of the Ann and Nerbuda were grabbed from jail and beheaded by angry Chinese. This pressed Pottinger to threaten retaliation and soon the viceroy of Canton, Yiliang rushed to the scene to arrest the ringleaders of the executions and sent them to Beijing to be punished.  The British press, such as the Illustrated London News hailed the Treaty of Nanking as “It secures us a few round millions of dollars and no end of very refreshing tea. It gives an impetus to trade, cedes us one island in perpetuity, and in short puts that sort of climax to the war which satisfies our interests more than our vanity and rather gives over glory a preponderance to gain,”. Now just like the Treaty of Nanking itself, the press made zero mention of the reason for the war in the first place, Mr. Opium. Now with Hong Kong island in the hands of the British, it would be used as an offloading point for opium, go figure. Despite the horror of the war, the demand for the opium was still raging and thus the poisonous relationship between the two empires remained alive. Now not everyone in Britain was jubilant about the situation. The Times of London condemned the opium trade and criticized the treaty of Nanking quite a bit. They went a step further by calling the victors of the war “early victorian vikings” a nickname that would soon denote the raping and pillaging that would occur in the second opium war. Alongside this the Anglican Church members of the Tory party railed against opium. On January the 4th of 1843, Lord Aberdeen, the new boss of Pottingers foreign office told a British envoy to China “The British opium smugglers must receive no protection or support in the prosecution of this illegal speculation”. An order from the Council gave Pottinger the power to quote “forbid the opium traffic in Hong Kong”. For Pottinger’s part, he paid lip service to this by issuing lukewarm threats on August 1st of 1843 ““Opium being an article the traffic in which is well known to be declared illegal and contraband by the laws and Imperial Edicts of China, any person who may take such a step will do so at his own risk, and will, if a British subject, meet with no support or protection from HM Consuls or other officers.”. Officially, at the least and to what degree it mattered, there would be no more gunboat diplomacy nor gunboat protection for opium smugglers. Now as you can imagine there were those who saw the dollar bill signs such as Jardine & Matheson who could not help themselves. They were not alone, the British Exchequer also wanted to see tax revenues from the opium trade to balance the budget. At the time of the first opium war, the opium trade accounted for 10% of the Exchequers budget. James Matheson sent a letter to a colleague indicating he was untroubled by the status of parliament and Pottingers tiny threats because he knew it would come to nothing, “The Plenipotentiary [Pottinger] had published a most fiery Edict against smuggling, but I believe it is like the Chinese Edicts, meaning nothing, and only intended for the Saints [High Church Anglicans] in England. Sir Henry never means to act upon it, and no doubt privately considers it a good joke. At any rate, he allows the drug to be landed and stored at Hong Kong.”. And so the opium smugglers simply ignored their homelands attempts to stop them. The opium trade did not just continue it would increase. The end of the first Opium War was not the end at all to the opium problem. In fact British parliament was coming to the conclusion the only resolution to the issue was the legalization of opium in China. As countless had done before, many in parliament were shifting culpability to the users and their leaders rather than the dealers. Many blamed Emperor Daoguang, stating he did nothing to halt the distribution and use, which is simply a lie and a dumb one. The Opium smugglers and English textile manufacturers were purchasing the mouths of members of parliament to promote their interests.  Now back to the “early victorian vikings”, the heroes of the war such as Sir Henry Pottinger well he was rewarded the grant post of Governor of Madras, and an annual pension of 1500 pounds. Charles Elliot was sent to the backwaters of Bermuda, Trinidad and in a rather symbolic fashion ended up in Napoleon's place of exile, St. Helena. Jardine & Matheson both left China and entered parliament as Whig supporters. Jardine died in 1843 to an undiagnosed and painful illness leaving Matheson to represent the seat of Ross and Cromartry in parliament from 1847-1868. Jardines death produced a bit of a myth that he was cursed from the opium trade, but Matheson lived to the ripe age of 91 so take that with a grain of salt. Jardine & Mathesons Qing counter party, Houqua died from diarrhea, so I guess ⅔ could be said to have some sort of curse on them. As for the heroic figure of Lin Zexu, his effigy became a cynosure at a museum with a plaque under his statue stating he destroyed 2.5 million dollars worth of British property without mentioning that the property was opium. The Emperor forgave Lin Zexu in 1845 and allowed him to return to service, but as for Yilibu the Emperor shunned his ass into exile. The Treaty of Nanking can be better seen as a truce, or perhaps in the same regard as the treaty of versailles. The interval between the two opium wars was that of an armed truce rather than a peace. After the first opium war, Opium began to get into the port of Shanghai, then onto the Yangtze river which provided a highway for it to infiltrate the Chinese hinterlands. The Chinese population were becoming more and more addicted to the substance as the British traders became more addicted to the profits. The grand vision of the English textiles penetrating China’s market turned out to be a complete waste. The Chinese preferred their own homespun cloth and failed to buy the British products while the British could not stop their increasing demand for Chinese silk and of course Tea. Now while the British addiction to Tea did not result in weeks of den dwelling and intoxication, they were still very much addicted and this contributed to another trade imbalance. Yes the silver was flowing again out of Britain and back to China, by 1857 the British would be paying China 15 million for silk and tea. Despite the enormous demand for Opium, the Chinese were spending 7 million on it, 1.5 million on cotton textiles from India and another 2 million from Britain still leaving Britain to owe back 4.5 million. And the Chinese policy of only accepting silver never changed.  After the first Opium war, the illicit trade became known as the Poison trade. Around the same time another terrible commerce began nicknamed the Pig trade. The “pigs” in this case were referring to coolies who were either hired or literally kidnapped and forced into indentured servitude overseas. Britain had outlawed such practices back in 1807, but this did not stop the trade and it differed little from African slavery. Interesting thing to note here, the term “shanghaied” was born from this situation. When coolies were drugged up and thrown onto ships often from Shanghai, this is how that term was born. For the Chinese part, often the Qing officials would open up their jails and hand over prisoners. As indicated in a letter complaint to the foreign secretary, lord Malmesbury from a British official in Canton  “iniquities scarcely exceeding those practiced on the African coast and on the African middle passage have not been wanting…the jails of China [have been] emptied to supply ‘labour’ to British colonies…hundreds [of coolies] gathered together in barracoons, stripped naked and stamped or painted with the letter C (California), P (Peru) or S (Sandwich Islands) on their breasts, according to destination.” Now the British wanted to keep the poison trade rolling, but the pig trade was really infuriating the Chinese. This led many of the opium merchants to push for action to be made to stop the pig trade. Powerful lobbies pushed the British parliament to enact the Chinese passenger act of 1855. While this act did not outlaw the trade of coolies, what it did do was codify and improve the conditions in which coolies could be transported to their place of labor. In 1850 the Daoguang Emperor died and within his will he begged for forgiveness for agreeing to sign the shameful treaty of Nanking. His fourth son became his successor, Xianfeng who was 19 at the time he took the dragon throne. Unlike his more industrious father, Xianfeng did not care much for government. Xianfeng was married to a Manchu princess, but he chose to spend the majority of his time with his concubines, one named Cixi who will become one of the most important figures in modern Chinese history. Cixi participated in the selection for wives for Xianfeng alongside 60 other candidates. She was one of the few candidates chosen to stay and Xianfeng became obsessed with her to the point he spent most of his time in bed with her while taking puffs from his opium pipe, oh yes the emperor even took up the illicit drug. Cixi ended up bearing his only son and this earned her the rank of co-empress with the title of Empress of the Western Palace, Xianfengs actual wife held the title of Empress of the eastern palace. As the mother heir, Cixi held enormous influence at the imperial court. Now going way far into the future, Emperor Xianfeng would die in 1861 after a very short life of overindulgence and he would leave his 6 year old son, Zaichun as his successor. A day before his death on his death bed he made an imperial edict that 8 men would act as a regency council to aid his son, later to be enthroned as the Tongzhi emperor. He gave the 8 men power of regency, but indicated their edict must be endorsed by the Noble Consort Yi and the Empress Consort Zhen, these being Empress Dowager Cixi and Empress dowager Ci’an. However Cixi performed a palace coup against the regency council and installed herself and Xianfengs first wife as co-regents, who would rule China until her son came of age. After the death of the co-empress, Cixi ruled China alone until 1908, yeah 1908, this woman was a monolith of modern Chinese history and not looked upon too favorably mind you. Cixi’s was an opium addict which is shocking given the incredible power grab moves she made and the amount of dominance she held over the Qing dynasty. Many historians believe she stuck to an opium maintenance dose that prevented both impairment and withdrawal. Anyways she will be a large part of the story in the future, but I just wanted to give you a taste of her now. Meanwhile in China countless disasters were occurring both man made and from mother nature. The high government office of the Qing dynasty which was filled by those who had to pass the rigorous imperial examinations, well that system had guaranteed the competence of the ruling class, but something had changed. Now anyone who had around 800 pounds could get around the examinations and this led a flood of mediocrities, albeit rich ones to come to power. These people proved to be unequal to the responsibilities they had simply purchased and the once industrious and highly educated Qing bureaucracy decayed rapidly. Adding to this was a horrible natural disaster. In 1856 the Huang He River overflowed and destroyed thousands of acres of rice paddies. The capital began to starve and with such a drastic problem came drastic solutions. As had happened to China countless times before, the decay of the Imperial court combined with famine amongst the people would lead to one if not the worst rebellion in human history. Now I would to stipulate this here, there is going to be two large events that will both require a number of episodes each, but both events overlap. The Taiping Rebellion of 1850-1864 and the second opium war of 1856-1860. I will be covering both separately and in depth, beginning with the second opium war than the Taiping Rebellion afterwards. However it's impossible to talk about one without the other, so I will sprinkle information here and there and apologize for the tease. Now the Taiping Rebellion is a colossal event in modern Chinese history. It began in the southeastern province of Guangxi. At its zenith the Taiping rebels controlled 17 provinces in south and central China. It was the most destructive civil war in human history causing massive hardship via military action, religio-political repress and retaliations and wide scale famine as a result of mother nature. All told the estimations for deaths because of this civil war are unreal, somewhere between 20 to 30 million people.  Now like I said I will have an entire mini series on the Taiping Rebellion, so I will not be going into any fine detail, but for now I want to at least explain a bit about why it is going on in the background. The leader of the movement was a man named Hong Xiuquan, the 4th son of a hard working rural family in Guangdong. His family was Hakka, they are a minority group in southern China with a unique culture that differed from Han Chinese. Hong’s family did everything they could to get enough money so their son could get a good education and attempt to pass the first imperial examination in order to become part of the scholar-gentry class. Hong failed his first two attempts and was left humiliated so he left home and went to Canton where he hoped to continue his studies in order to pass a third time around. In Canton Hong came across Protestant missionaries and studied some of the bible under them. When Hong attempted the imperial exam for a third time he failed yet again and because of this he had a nervous breakdown. Hong began to suffer delirium and a series of dreams or what he called visions that would change his life and that of China. He found himself talking with an older bearded man with golden hair and a younger man whom he referred to as “elder brother”. The younger man gave him a magical sword and taught him how to slay demons. Now as I may have mentioned in a previous episode my first degree is in neurobehavioral sciences, but you don’t need a degree in the field of psychology to know Hong probably was schizophrenic. At first he did not associate these weird visions with anything else nor act out, instead he worked for 6 years as a village schoolteacher, still studying to give the imperial examination a 4th go. In 1843 Hong failed the imperial examination a 4th time and it broke him. His ambition to become a member of the scholar Gentry class was shattered and he suffered a full nervous breakdown. He apparently was catatonic for a month and would come out of this stupor sporadically screaming things like “kill the demons”. These demons he spoke of he later identified as the traditional Chinese gods and the Emperor of the Qing dynasty. As he gradually recovered from his breakdown, Hong began to reread Christian texts until he came to the sudden realization that the men in his visions were God and Jesus. With some quasi logically thinking, he began to explain to himself that he failed the imperial examination because he had a greater purpose and because he referred to Jesus as Elder brother in his dreams, he must be the brother of Jesus. Yes folks, Hong Xiuquan the self proclaimed brother of Jesus Christ. Hong returned to Canton in 1847 to study the bible more thoroughly under an american southern baptist missionary named Isaacher Roberts. Shortly after he relocated to eastern Guangxi in a rugged area known as Thistle mountain where he began preaching and developing a new doctrine. Many converts flocked to Hong, notably many Hakka’s and other minority groups, hell even triads joined in. The triads of course had inner motivations such as wanting to overthrow the Manchu and reclaim the ming dynasty. Hong afterall was saying they all had to destroy the demons and restore China on the path of righteousness. Now again I don’t want to get into the finer details, but in 1851 Hong began a rebellion using thousands of his converts known as the God Worshippers. Hong’s doctrine was that of opium abstinence and he attracted countless opium addicts to his flock and helped cure them of their addiction. In many ways the Taiping movement was something like a 12 step program for recovering addicts, but it also encompassed so much more. It including communalism, socialism, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor Robinhood mentality and it was quite Marxist. Hong had his forces take all the plunder and funds and pooled it in a common treasury shared equally by members of the collective. Hong advocated to abolish private ownership of land and impose the death penalty on those trying to hold onto their wealth. He also made a long list of taboos including alcohol, gambling, tobacco, prostitution, concubinage, the pig trade and other forms of slavery. And before any of you start screaming at your headphones, by far and large many including Hong did not follow these rules, like I said it was very Marxist, haha shots fired. Hong called his movement the Taiping Tianguo “heavenly kingdom of the great peace” and named himself the heavenly king. The Taiping talk of expropriating land scared the hell out of Beijing and even Queen Victoria who received news of the rebellion. The obvious actions took place, the emperor sent forces to quell the insurrection in guangxi province. The emperor sent Zhen Zuchen at the ripe age of 67 to exterminate the rebels. Zhen was a devout Buddhist, but he respected the god worshippers and targeted the Triads. By 1850 China had suffered 4 years of famine, right at the time the emperor began to escalate his attacks on the Taiping. Because of  Zhen’s choice of only targeting triads, the emperor choose to bring out of retirement and disgrace none other than Lin Zexu. Lin Zexu was given the task of eliminated the Taiping, but at the ripe age of also 67 he died while en route to Guangxi. Lin Zexu never got his last hurrah chance to redeem himself. So by 1851 the Qing forces performed horribly and were repulsed from Thistle Mountain by the Taiping rebels who were armed with pikes and halberds for the most part. Cool side note, women fought alongside men for the Taiping and there was a real attempt at equality amongst the sexes, keyword attempt. Hong eventually adapted the ten commandments for Chinese sensibilities. He named the emperor a false god in his first commandment and added complete obedience to himself and his officers as the 4th. The commandments led Hongs rebel group to become a bonafide theocracy. By the fall of 1851 the Taiping ranks had grown to a whopping million, mostly built up from starving peasants fleeing famine torn areas of Guangxi. The Qing sent forces against them in Thistle mountain only to lose each time. Ironically a major reason the Taiping kept winning battles may have been  because of their opium ban. Some sources estimate the Qing military engaging the rebels in this region may have been suffering 90% opium addiction rates, which is insane if thats true. Regardless by september 25th of 1851, Hong felt confident enough to move out and this led his army to conquer vast amounts of territory. By January 12th of 1853 Hong’s forces took the city of Wuchang after blowing up its gates and massacring all the Manchu people they could find deeming them demons. At this point Hong set his eyes on a very grand prize, the old capital of China, Nanjing. Nanjing was being defended by only 7000 Machus alongside 6000 Qing regulars. Hong tossed 80,000 men and women soldiers into a siege of Nanjing on february 28th and after two weeks they blew a hole it Nanjings walls. Now I don’t want to spoil anymore and honestly everything I brutally summarized will be covered much much more indepth, but what you need to know is Hong established his own capital, the heavenly kingdom in Nanjing. He builds up his forces even more, performs wide scale reforms and creates a very large administration. The Taiping become a very real threat to Beijing and honestly could have overthrown the Qing dynasty at multiple points. The Qing for their part in the later 1850’s were not only dealing with the bloodiest civil war the world had ever seen, but we’re fighting western forces cause the second opium war was raging. And that is what I am building towards folks, trying to lay this rather insane 3d chess table of stuff going on simultaneously. Now I said it before, but much like the Treaty of Versailles, the Treaty of Nanjing caused more problems than it solved and simply led to another war. China was humiliated by the conditions of the treaty, it surrendered her symbolic and practical forms of sovereignty to Britain. That bitterness was simmering since 1842 and like a powder keg would eventually explode in 1856. In february of 1856, a french priest named Abbe Auguste Chapdelaine, god the old french names are dreadful haha, well Abbe was converting a village called Xilin in the province of Guangxi, ironically in the center of the Taiping rebel control.  So Mr Abbe was arrested and imprisoned, they tossed him in a cage and set it up in the village square. Chapdelaine was in violation of Chinese law because he was performing missionary work in China’s interior. Another thing that did not help his cause was the fact he shared the same beliefs as the Taiping…well I mean not exactly mind you he was a catholic and the Taiping were on a more protestant footing, but tomato tomato. In fact Mr Abbe and the other Catholic missionaries were appalled by the bastardized proto protestant movement of the Taiping and they actually supported the Qing rule. Abbe was at the wrong place and wrong time so to say. On February 29th of 1856, Abbe was beheaded, dismembered and eviscerated by his executioners whom the rather hysterical French press claimed later took pieces of Abbe and cooked it and ate it, specifically his heart. Historians agree that the cannibalism story here was most likely urban legend.  The French representative at Canton, Comte de Courcy was powerless and furious. He began sending letters to Cantons viceroy, Ye Mingchen, but took no military action to avenge the death of the priest. It seems Ye Mingchen believed the French had no stomach for a fight, so he sent Comte an insulting reply to his letters explaining that that atrocity was a simple case of mistaken identity “Chapdelaine dressed and spoke like a Chinese, nobody thought him to be french”. Well the French would not be alone in their grievances with the Qing. On October 8th, the 127 ton lorcha, the Arrow, a hybrid ship, it had a British hull but Chinese junk sails, was registered in Hong Kong as a British vessel. But in reality it was owned by a Chinese merchant and manned by a crew of 14 Chinese. Well the Arrow docked in Canton with a cargo of rice from Macao en route for Hong Kong. The Arrow’s figurehead captain was a 21 year old Belfast native named Thomas Kennedy. His role on board was literally just to make the ship seem British owned and operated as British vessels held privileges because of the Treaty of Nanjing.  Well on that day, Kennedy was not aboard the arrow, he had gone over to another lorcha captained by another figurehead captain named John Leach. Also aboard was Charles Earl, the captain of the Chusan. At 8am the friends were having breakfast when they noticed 2 large Qing warships flying the emperors flag, carrying 60 Qing marines, the ship was heading towards the Arrow. Qing officials boarded the Arrow and arrested her Chinese crew, bound them all and tossed them onto a Qing warship. Leach, Earl and Kennedy jumped into a sampan and rowed towards the warship. To make the situation a bit more fun, a Portuguese lorcha nearby stated later in testimony the Arrow had not had its Union Jack flying. Kennedy would claim the Qing marines pulled down the Union Jack. Regardless when Kennedy got to the warship he  began protesting their seizure, but the Qing forces simply sent curses his way. Kennedy tried to smooth things over asking if just 2 of his crew could be allowed to stay on the Arrow as caretakers and the Qing officials agreed and handed 2 men over, but took the other 12 away. Now the Arrow might seem an unlikely prize for the Qing to seize since it was just carrying rice, but the Arrow had a dark past so to say. The Arrow had been built by the Chinese as a cargo ship, but it had been captured by pirates then recaptured by Cantons viceroy, Ye Mingchen who sold it at an auction to a comprador employed by a British firm. The comprador registered the Arrow as a British ship, but something the new owner did not look into was changing the existing crew of the ship which included 3 pirates. The Qing would use the presence of these pirates as a justification for seizing 12 of the crew. Later it would turn out the registration had also expired, so by that technicality it was not a British ship at the time also, don’t you hate getting pulled over? Kennedy went crying about the seizure to the acting British consul, Harry Parkes who was the consular official of 4 out of the 5 ports opened by the treaty of Nanjing. The problem of Arrow’s status did not deter Parkes who immediately went on the offensive. Parkes ranted about “the gross insult and violation of national rights the Chinese had committed”. Parkes began arguing about the treaty requiring the Chinese to first ask permission before arresting a Chinese citizen serving on a British registered ship. Parkes demanded that all 12 of the crew be handed over immediately. The Qing commander explained that one of the sailors was the father of a notorious pirate and suspected other of the crew to be pirates, hence he would hold them. When Parkes persisted in his demands, one of the Qing officials slapped him, uh oh.  The humiliated Parkes, returned to the British consulate and wrote a letter to Ye Mingchen who ontop of being the viceroy of Canton was the viceroy of Guangxi, Guangdong and Imperial commissioner in charge of foreign affairs. “I hasten therefore to lay the case before your excellency Ye, confident that your superior judgment will lead you at once to admit that an insult so publicly committed must be equally publicly atoned. I therefore request your excellency that the men who have been carried away from the Arrow be returned by the captain to that vessel in my presence and if accused of any crime they may then be conveyed to the British consulate, were in conjunction with proper officers deputed by your excellency for the purpose, I shall be prepared to investigate the case”. Now Ye Mingchen was not the kind of Qing bureaucrat to whom adhered to lets say, the fine points of international law. Ye Mingchen had crushed the Taiping rebels within his two provinces of control with great brutality. He had executed every captured Taiping rebel along with their wives and children, sheesh. It is said in Canton alone the butchery was around 200 Taiping per day. Parkes also sent word to his superior, Sir John Bowring, the governor of Hong Kong. Parkes told him the crewmen were flying the Union Jack and deserved the same rights and protections as British subjects. Well Mr. Bowring was super excited at the opportunity that the Arrow’s seizure had provided, he sent word back to Parks “cannot we use the opportunity and carry the city question? If so, I will come up with the whole fleet”. That fleet would consist of 16 men of war and 3 steamships all docked at Hong Kong harbor. Bowring wanted to at least be given permission to move out of the factories and set up shop within Canton proper as pertaining to the treaty of Nanjing. However that part of the treaty was written out properly in English while the Chinese translation literally stated instead that the foreigners and Chinese should remain segregated. The justification for this, we shall call it translation error, was the fact the Qing officials argued there was a ton of xenophobia in Canton. If the British came to live amongst the Cantonese, some might attack or even kill the British, thus segregation was for their protection. Lord Palmerston had given orders not to push the issue of British housing in Canton because he did not think the risks were even worth the reward, but his representatives it seems ignored these orders.  After two days, Ye Mingchen responded to Parkes letter stating he could free 9 out of the 12 crew, but insisted on keeping the remaining three because they were former pirates. As for the Arrow, Ye claimed the captured crew swore an oath that the ship was Chinese made and owned. Ye sent the 9 crew with the letter as a show of good faith. Now at this point it seems obvious Parkes was looking to make a diplomatic point more so than get back the crew cause he refused to accept custody of them. Instead Parkes sent another letter to Bowring in Hong Kong suggesting the British should retaliate by seizing a Chinese junk, particularly one that was involved in grabbing the arrow. On october 14th, the British gunboat Coramandel boarded a Chinese junk without a fight and towed it to Whampoa. Turns out the British did not really think things through, as the ship ended up being a private craft, not owned by the Qing government. Ye Mingchen simply ignored the matter. Bowring then took the chance to inspect the registration of the Arrow, something Parkes had failed to do. Bowring soon discovered Arrows registry as a British ship had expired on september 27th, so by that technicality, the Qing had not violated British territoriality by seizing her. Despite Bowring learning the truth of the matter, this did not change his determination to goad Ye Mingchen into action. Bowring told Parkes to write a letter to the viceroy again on october 21st. This time the letter was an ultimatum. Ye Mingchen was given 24 hours to free all 12 crewmen and to provide an official apology and promise to respect all British shipping in China. If Ye did not comply “her majesty’s naval officers will have recourse to force you to compel complete satisfaction”. Ye Mingchen was in a pickle, while he knew full well the British backed up their threats he also needed to save face. So Ye returned all of the crew, but refused to apologize and offered that in the future he would only consult with foreign interlopers over criminals like the Arrow’s pirates. Ye wrote to Parkes “Hereafter if any lawless characters conceal themselves on board foreign lorchas, you, the said Consul, shall of course be informed of the same by declaration in order that you may act with the Chinese authorities in the management of such affairs,”. Ye also however offered a compromise to avoid similar incidents in the future by adding “Hereafter, Chinese officers will on no account without reason seize and take into custody the people belonging to foreign lorchas, but when Chinese subjects build for themselves vessels, foreigners should not sell registers to them… for it will occasion confusion between native and foreign ships, and render it difficult to distinguish between them.”. Well Ye’s response was just what Parkes and Bowring needed to commence hostilities and that is just what they did. On october 23rd, Parkes ordered Rear Admiral Michael Seymour to seize and destroy the 4 barrier forts 5 miles south of Canton on the pearl river. The Coromandal was the first to fire upon one of the forts, the first shot of the second opium war. Two of the forts fired back on the British fleet before ultimately surrendering. 5 Chinese defenders died and they would be the first casualties of the war. Rear Admiral Seymour placed blame on the Chinese for the casualties reporting to Parkes “loss of four or five killed on the part of the Chinese [was] solely arising from their ill-judged resistance to our force.”. Seymours easy victory bolstered Parkes war mongering and drove him to bring the war straight to Ye Mingchen. Parkes wrote to Seymour “should Ye still be contumacious, I think that the residence of his excellency, which is not far from the waterside, should also in that case feel the effects of bombardment”. Yes this guy was pretty much an asshole.  I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.  Well things got out of hand pretty quickly. The arrow incident while small in scale was just a match to ignite a growing powder keg. As Gandalf said “the board is set, the pieces are moving”. The second opium war had begun.

Last time we spoke, the ironclad steam warship Nemesis had made a name for herself wrecking havoc upon the Qing navy. Lin Zexu was dismissed and Qishan began negotiations with the British. Hong Kong island was now under British occupation, Chuanbi fell to the British and it seems a treaty would be ratified but both the Emperor Daoguang and Britain's parliament rejected it forcing Britain to continue its war. The British attacked the Bogue, the First Bar island, Whampoa Island and soon Qishan was rushed to Beijing and cast into chains by the Emperor. Then the British attacked Canton hoping to force the Qing government to come to a deal. Emperor Daoguang was being fed false reports from his officials of the ongoing war, but how long could they delude him until everyone realized this was a serious war? This episode is the First Opium War Part 3: treaty of nanjing   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War.   As usual the reports coming back to the emperor were embezzled. It was said the British were stopped at the walls of Canton by the army of General Fang and repelled. In fact, on top of the Qing forces beating back the British it was said a peasant militia had killed thousands of British forcing them to flee Canton. Some went further than this and said the British expedition was on its last legs. Yishan’s report to the Emperor said “the barbarians had begged the chief general that he would implore the great Emperor in their behalf, that he would have mercy upon them, and cause their debts to be repaid them, and graciously permit them to carry on their commerce, when they would immediately withdraw their ships from the Bocca Tigris, and never dare again to raise any disturbance."The Qing court urged the emperor to build upon the great victory and to bring an even larger army into the field against the barbarians. Now that the factory quarter was secure, Elliot turned his attention back to Amoy, but he still had a large problem. The British force was full on facing an epidemic of malaria and dysentery causing numerous casualties. The British warships were becoming hospitals for the countless decimated troops. Elliot had to take the force to Hong Kong island to treat the men. On July 21 of 1841 while Elliot was forming plans to attack Amoy a merchantman from India arrived with opium and a copy of the Canton Press. The newspaper read that Elliot had been dismissed by Palmerston on April 30th of 1841! It turned out the British press had vilified Elliot for making truces with the Chinese instead of pushing for a decisive victory. The Canton truce was lambasted because the 6 million was just a fraction of their demands. Elliot sent word back to Palmerston to ask why he was being dismissed and got a reply. “Throughout the whole course of your proceedings, you seem to have considered that my instructions were waste paper, which you might treat with entire disregard, and that you were at full liberty to deal with the interests of your country according to your own fancy.”. Elliot would make a public statement “it has been popularly objected to me that I have cared too much for the Chinese. But I submit that it has been caring more for lasting British honour and substantial British interests to protect a helpless and friendly people”.   Even Queen victoria made a statement about Elliot when she wrote to her uncle King Leopold of Belgium “All we wanted might have been got, if it had not been for the unaccountably strange conduct of Charles Elliot, who completely disobeyed his instructions and trie to get the lowest terms he could”. Sir Henry Pottinger, a diplomat and veteran of the Afghan wars replaced Elliot as superintendent of Trade and given an annual salary of 6000 pounds, twice that of Elliots to rub it in. Sir William Parker was also sent to be commander in chief and both he and Pottinger held impressive resumes and vast military experience. Pottinger served during the Napoleonic wars as a cabin boy at the age of 12 and then later joined the Indian army. Parker at the age of 31 retired with the rank of captain and a large fortune in prize money from the French ships he captured during the Napoleonic wars. Parker had been spending 15 years on his estate in Litchfield as a gentleman farmer before being called out of retirement by Palmerston. Parker and Pottinger arrived in August of 1841 and were met graciously by Charles Elliot before he left with his family back home to England. The opium smugglers were delighted to finally be rid of Charles Elliot and his moralistic distaste for the opium trade. They had hoped the new guys would be more amenable than Elliot and were in for quite a shock. One of the first things Pottinger did was tell the residents of Canton “could allow no consideration connected with mercantile pursuits…to interfere with the strong measures which he might deem necessary, and if they put either themselves or their property in the power of the Chinese authorities, it must be clearly understood to be at their own risk and peril.”. While Elliot was argued to be a Sinophile, Pottinger was the very opposite a Sinophobe. Pottinger did not have any understanding of Chinese culture nor their protocol for saving face in dealings. When the governor of canton came to greet Pottinger in Macao, Pottinger simply sent a subordinate to meet the man insulting him greatly.  On August 21 of 1841 the British armada was 32 ships strong, with 4 regiments of over 27,000 men aboard them. Pottinger left 1350 men to garrison Hong Kong and sailed for Amoy (present day Xiamen). Amoy was a granite island around 300 miles north of Macao and not really of any value, it was quite barren, but it was closer to Beijing and thus a threat to Emperor Daoguang. Amoy had been fortified by the Qing recently, they built a few batteries on Gulangyu island which lies just off the coast of Amoy and they prepared defenses all along Amoy’s coast. Amoys coast held 96 embrasures and over 200 cannons to defend its harbor. Then the Qing sent a force to garrison it, adding an additional 42 cannons and 10,000 troops. Gulangyu island’s batteries had 76 cannons including some more modern artillery smuggled over from singapore. The British armada first made contact with Gulangyu island as it protected the approach to Amoy and the Druid, Blonde and Modeste blasted its fortifications from 400 yards away. As was typical of this war, the cannons at Amoy and Gulangyu were antiquated and in fixed positions. To give you a visual idea of the issue, these cannons could not swivel well, they were basically fixed to the ground, greatly hampering range and accuracy. Thus when the British ships began to bombard them they could not effectively return fire. After 90 minutes of bombardment, the Qing cannons went silent and the British began landing troops without any opposition. Major General Gough disembarked from Nemesis by 3:45pm as Amoy’s batteries were neutralized and 26 chinese war junks in the harbor were put out of commission. Despite the ferocity of the British bombardment , Amoy’s fortresses cannons began opening fire upon the troops and Gough personally led a bayonet charge towards the fortresses southern wall. The Qing soldiers on the fort began to fire their matchlocks at the British but were overwhelmed by the enemy's gunfire. Soon many of the Qing soldiers routed and when the Qing commander realized the situation was hopeless he marched straight into the sea committing suicide by drowning himself. The reports going back to Emperor Daoguang were “that the Manchu commander rushed out to drive back the assailants as they landed, fell into the water and died” sort of a positive spin on the story. The British forces scaled the forts walls and opened its gates. Inside the fort the British found a large number of opium pipes lying beside the cannons its alleged. When the British found Amoy’s treasury they found a record indicating that there were thousands of silver taels, but none were to be found. It turned out the Qing officials had snuck the silver out before the British arrived. Pottinger took no time ordering the armada to refit and continue sailing north, now he wanted to make up for Elliot’s giving away of Chusan.  On September 25 of 1841, the armada assembled to attack the fort of Dinghai on Chusan for a second time. Dinghai was much better fortified than Amoy and held more cannons. Dinghai’s garrison was commanded by General Keo who had a large number of Gingalls. Gingalls are quite interesting and a bit comical to look at. Google one up and you will understand immediately, try to imagine a giant gun that takes a tripod and 2 men to fire. The gingall was one of the most used weapons by the Qing during this part of the century and it was not very effective against the British. The defenders of Dinghai put up an impressive resistance as noted by the British. The British sent the 55th foot to assault them and took the Dinghai fort, losing 2 men with 28 wounded. When General Keo knew the British had won the battle he slit his own throat. The British found 100 iron guns, 36 outdated brass cannons and 540 gingalls in the fort indicated the capability of the Qing military. Pottinger wrote back to Palmerston to make his resolve adamantly clear “under no circumstance will Dinghai and its dependencies be restored to the Qing government, until the whole of the demands of England are not only complied with, but carried into full effect”. Catastrophe hit again when the British ship Nerbudda transporting some British and Indian soldiers went aground off Taiwan. The British soldiers fled in lifeboats leaving the Indians behind who spent 5 days on ship until dehydration and starvation forced them to go ashore on rafts. The Qing forces in Taiwan seized them and imprisoned them. In march, an opium ship named the Ann also went aground on Taiwan and 14 of her survivors were imprisoned alongside the Indians from Nerbudda. The Qing officials were desperate for good news and sent reportes to the Emperor that a large naval battle had been won at Taiwan and 2 ships were sunk. Emperor Daoguang was delighted and rewarded the Taiwan officials with honors and silver.   Meanwhile the British armada left a garrison at Dinghai and sailed for Jintai which lies 10 miles east of the mainland. They began to bombard Jintai’s forts on October 10 and it proved to be a difficult task as its forts were atop a large cliff. Around 4000 Qing troops garrisoned the city, quite a few were Mongol bannermen. Major General Gough sent a force of 15000 men to flank the fort on the cliff while Wellesley and Blenhem covered their march with bombardment. By the afternoon the British had 3 men dead and 16 wounded, but as they allegedly killed several hundred Chinese. Jintai was taken by the late afternoon and the Qing commander Yukien attempted to drown himself, but having failed to do so committed suicide by overdosing on opium. The British captured around 150 cannons and noticed amongst the majority which were antiquated, the usual sort they kept finding, a few were state of the art. The Qing were replicating the British style cannons it seemed. Many prisoners were taken, but Gough had to let them go; he simply did not have enough men to spare to guard them. Yet before letting the POW’s go, the British attempted a rather heinous act. The British marines used their jackknives to cut off the Manchu queues of the Qing prisoners as take away gifts. Before too many of these marines were able to do so, to the credit of Gough he ran to the scene to stop the act.   After securing Jintai, the British sent Nemesis up the Yung River and soon discovered it was crossable and that they could navigate it to get to Ningbo. On October 13th, the British armada landed troops on Ningbo 10 miles southeast of Jintai. Ningbo’s gates opened for them without a fight as the Royal Irish band played “saint patrick's day in the morning”. The British found the building that held the prisoners from the Kite and burned down the prison. Pottinger wrote to Palmerston that he “looked forward with considerable satisfaction to plundering Ningbo as a reprisal for the maltreatment there of British prisoners” and that is just what he did. The British looted 160,000 in funds and placed a 10% taxation on its citizens. Pottinger also confiscated provisions, Chinese ships, property and the main Pagoda’s bell as a prize sent back to India. The Qing authorities left Ningbo and the British failed to set up any form of police and thus many looters ran rampant, Chinese and British alike. Gough and Parker were livid at the conditions, the inhabitants of Ningbo had opened the gates without a fight and should be left unmolested. They both argued Pottinger was allowing British honour to be stained at Ningbo.  Now while a lot of these victories seemed easy they were also pyrrhic in nature. Disease continuously reared its ugly head reducing the British troops. Every place they occupied had to be garrisoned and now they were down to 700 able men and had to winter in Ningbo. The humiliated and pissed off citizens of Ningbo began hurling rocks at the occupiers. Soon it became very apparent police were needed at Ningbo and thus a Qing official was set up as the chief of police named Yu Dechang. In reality the British were having Yu Dechang compile a list of the wealthiest residents of Ningbo so they could extort them for more money. Yu was also doing something else, he was spying for the Qing military who was currently massing troops outside Ningbo to retake the city! Emperor Daoguang had taken up action as soon as reports came that Ningbo had fallen. He sent his cousin Prince Yijing to recruit an army to “drive the English into the sea”. Prince Yijing was a 48 year old general and a honored veteran of wars against Muslim rebels in Xinjiang province from a decade earlier. Yijing brought with him quite an unlikely band of literary scholars whose expertise lay in confucian teachings and not the art of war. The scholars also happened to be rampant opium addicts and were deemed by the British later to be “weekend warriors”.  On march 10th of 1842, Yijing had a force of 5000, mostly ill trained intellectual types. When they came to the gate of Ningbo they were met with a head impaled on a pike and a sign reading “this is the head of the Manchu official Lu Tai-lai who came here to obtain military information”. Prince Yijing was enraged and ordered his men to scale the walls and charge the center of the city. However the British had spies of their own who had warned them of the incoming assault force. The British had deliberately left the city's western city gate quasi open in order to give the impression they did not mean to defend it. In truth the western gate had been mined heavily and when the Qing rushed to it, the mines exploded killing many. Over in the southern gate the Qing pushed back some British defenders all the way up to the city center. British soldiers reported that the Qing attacks appeared to be visibly impaired by opium, including their 2nd in command General Zhang Yingyun who was leading the rearguard once the city was breached. In the city center Major General Gough with 150 men and a field artillery piece met Zhang’s force with massive gunfire. The artillery piece, a single howitzer tore the Qing troops to pieces at such a close range. Corpses began to pile apparently 15 feet high blocking the streets if you believe British sources. Not all of the Qing were these intellectual types by the way, there was a volunteer force of 150 aboriginal Chinese from Golden River. This group were not using matchlocks and instead pikes,swords and spears which were their favored weapons traditionally. The 150 unfortunate and very brave souls had rushed the British position and were completely annihilated. The British lost 5 men and reported to have inflicted up to 600 casualties upon the Qing. Bei Qingjiao a literary scholar with the Qing forces reported Zhang to behaving bizarrely during the battle in the city center. Bei reported that Zhang was commanding with an opium pipe in his mouth and collapsed in a narcotic daze. When his men began to rout, Zhang also abandoned the fight by crawling onto a litter and fleeing.  It was also reported the Qing forces had devised a rather comical military tactic during this battle. In order to destroy the British warships, some of the Qing wanted to throw monkeys holding firecrackers at the ships to set them ablaze. This was not the first time the idea was thought of during the first opium war by the way, though there is little evidence it ever occurred. There was also an idea put forward to sent Chinese merchants with smallpox contaminated meat to weakened the British prior to the attack, but General Yijing vetoed this plan deeming it to be too unethical. The battle had a devastating psychological effect on the Qing military. They had suffered nearly 600 casualties and taken nearly no British down with them. The Qing commanders were realizing the British technological superiority was too significant and a defeatist mindset began to set into the Qing military as a whole. For failing to retake Ningbo, Emperor Daoguang sentenced Prince Yijing to death. Prince Yijing would escape death and instead was exiled to Turkestan. When the Qing forces made their retreat from Ningbo and sent over 270 Chinese vessels to blockade Jintai, but it seems the commander of that force, Chen Tingchen did not want to risk an invasion and never landed troops. Instead they found a British shipwreck and salvaged pieces from it to sent to Beijing as proof they had won a great naval victory. Having failed to take Ningbo, the Qing began to poison its food supply which prompted the British to attack a village named Tzeki just up the river in retaliation where many Qing soldiers had fled to. Pottinger returned to Hong Kong in February of 1842 and found the city transformed since he last saw it. Now it really looked like a westernized city, there was a four mile road, 2 dozen brothels and builders busy constructing everywhere. The tea trade was continuing in Canton and so was the opium trade. It was estimated every 4th ship that stopped at Hong Kong was carrying opium at this point. Another 100 ships were sent to China carrying thousands of troops. Gough went from having a force of 3000 to 10,000. By may of 1842 the hostilities would fire up again. On may 18th, the British were sailing further north edging closer to Beijing to put pressure on the Emperor and came across Chapu, a town 75 miles northwest of Chusan island. Major General Gough divided his force of 2220 men into 3 groups with a right and left wing and artillery in the center. The British force landed on Chapu without resistance until they reached a joss house further inland. There were 300 Chinese barricaded inside the joss house who refused to surrender and fired upon the British inflicting casualties. The fight over the joss house went on for many hours as the British stormed parts of Chapu city bombarding its walls with artillery. Gough lost one of his senior officer Lt Colonel Nicholas Tomlinson who died leading a breaching party of the 18th Royal Irish storming the city. Aside from the Joss house fight and the initial breaches the battle went over quite well for the British as the Qing defenders had only seriously guarded one side of the city walls. In Goughs words after the battle “the enemy were completely taken by surprise as usual, they were unprepared for anything except a frontal attack. They gave way on all sides and took to flight, with the exception of a body of some 300 Tartar troops who seized a small joss-house and held it with indomitable pluck and perseverance”.  The Royal Irish were infuriated at the loss of their commander and wanted to kill POW’s, but British officers intervened. Instead the POW’s were subjugated to having their Manchu queues tied up together in groups of 8 to 10 men and marched in public after the city was officially captured. Despite this many POW’s were bayoneted. When the British found the main Qing barracks they found a horrid scene. The Manchu had a military tradition of not being taken alive and a large force of Manchu had committed suicide after poisoning their wives and children. Black and bloated faces were seen alongside soldiers with slit throats. The British reported 13 dead and 52 wounded taking the city while the Qing they claimed lost thousands. Next the British sailed forth to attack Wusong which lay at the mouth of the Yangtze River. By taking Wusong they would be able to cut off the important second capital of Nanking from its riverway. They believed taking Nanking would bring the Qing to the bargaining table and would be easier than an attack on Beijing itself. They could also take Shanghai and cut its tax revenue to Beijing. On June 13th, the British armada made it to Wusong after being fired upon by forts along the Huangbu river, an estuary of the Yangtze which caused 3 deaths. They laid anchor off Wusong and began naval bombardments of its port on June 16th. After a few hours the Qing forts stopped returning fire and the British began landing troops to assault them. As was becoming typical, the Qing defenders had mostly fled during the cannon exchange but some stayed put to meet the invaders such as the Qing commander Chen Huacheng. Chen would go down fighting to the end as the British scaled the fort walls and occupied them. Hundreds of Qing soldiers were killed during the invasion and bombardments and by the late evening Wusong was occupied in full.  On June 19th, the British marched on Shanghai just a few miles south of Wusong. They found no sign of the enemy there, just 2 pieces of artillery left on the city's walls. The invaders scaled the walls and opened the gates as its residents fled the city. The residents of Shanghai bribed the British with 300,000 dollars to prevent looting, but the British officers simply let their men plunder. An eyewitness saw some of this pillaging go down. A wealthy and respected Qing official named Cao was living in a walled home with a courtyard in the suburbs of Shanghai when some British soldiers kicked down his front door. They began to loot the man's entire food supply and demanded of Cao to show them where he was hiding his silver. They put a knife to his throat and shouted “fan ping! Fan ping!” meaning “foreign cakes” an idiom for silver. Despite their belief the man was hiding silver about, they did not find any. Cao and his family lost all their food and to make matters worse after a few days some Chinese looters came by and stole some food Cao’s family had found. Cao was forced to go door to door begging for food to feed his family, but the city had been picked clean. Cao himself wrote “foreigners have contented themselves with loot and rape, but as the city fell without resistance there has been no general slaughter. They are pressing the people into their service to do all their heavy work, such as shifting gun emplacements and gunpowder. They take anyone, buddhist monks, notables, and well known people”.  Despite Shanghai's commercial and strategic importance, the British only occupied it for a week before marching towards Nanking. By taking Nanking they hoped to end the entire war, but between them and Nanking was the walled city of Zhengjiang around 50 miles west of Nanking.  Zhengjiang held around 1583 bannerman and 2700 Green Standard Army troops and by mid july the British were blockading the route between the Yangtze river and the grand canal. On the morning of July 21 the British landed 4 brigades and attacked Zhengjiang from 3 different directions. The 1st brigade of 2310 soldiers and supported by an artillery brigade made a frontal assault attacking a Qing army in front of Zhengjiang’s walls. The 2nd Brigade of 1832 men attacked Zhengjiangs western gate supported by a naval bombardment. The 3rd brigade consisting of 2155 soldiers attacked the northern gate.   At 7am the British 3rd brigade landed at Beigu mountain and its grenadiers charges the north gate as bannermen atop Zhengjaings walls fired down upon them using gingalls mounted on tripods. The 3rd brigade managed to set up artillery battered the defenders atop the walls who in the haste were trying to fire back with their own artillery. After an hour the artillery of the bannermen were knocked out and the British grenadiers bayonet charged the gate and scaled the walls bringing the fight to the wall tops.  The British 1st brigade landed and took some highlands near Jinshan and by 8am began to attack the Green standard army stationed outside the walls of Zhengjiang. When the 1st brigade began to battle the Green standard army, the British 2nd brigade stormed the western gate as the armada naval bombarded its walls. There were many houses in front of the western gate which the British occupied and fired from at the wall top defenders. The bannermen atop the walls desperately fired using gingalls upon the invaders but could not stop the British grenadiers from reaching the gate. British engineers blew up bombs using gunpowder at the west gate and it was soon breached. The Green Standard army occupied with the 1st british brigade saw the city had been breached and fires were emerging. They assumed the city was a lost cause and the commander of the Green standard army ordered a retreat. Within the city the street fighting was fierce and the British third and second brigades managed to fight towards another pincering the bannermen within the city. The Manchu commander of the bannermen, General Hailin ordered the Manchu to kill themselves rather than fall to the enemy. Again families were poisoned and soldiers strangled or slit their throats. General Hailin gathered up all his court papers into a pile, sat upon the pile and lit himself on fire. Pottinger wrote of this scene “he was worthy of a nobler and better fate”. The non Manchu residents of the city did not share this view however as before his death General Hailin ordered all the non manchu residents executed on charges of treason. I am hardly qualified to explain this, but just know the animosity between the Manchu and Han Chinese at this time was particularly bitter. A poet named Zhu Shiyun who lived on the outskirts of Zhengjiang city gave an account of this event. Of General Hailin he wrote “Hailin was in a very excited state. All over the town he arrested harmless people on the ground that they were in league with the enemy. He handed them over to the Prefect to imprison and flog. It was only at the four gates that he had a cannon pointing outwards. Inside the city his whole activity consisted in arresting passersby on suspicion of their being traitors. Whenever women or children saw Manchu soldiers, they fled in terror, upon which the soldiers ran after them and slew them, announcing to Hailin that they had disposed of traitors , for which he gave them rewards. The Barbarians different and the same were now on both sides of the gates”. The British had around 40 dead, a hundred wounded and allege they killed perhaps a thousand Chinese.   In contrast to the Manchu led horror, public opinion in the city improved of the invaders on July 24th when the British hung a rapist and looter from their own ranks. They hung placards to the men warning anyone would face the same fate for such crimes. It should be said, both these men happened to be Indian, a noticeable pattern in this war, the blaming of everything upon Indian soldiers. By August 16, a proclamation was made officially forbidding looting oh and on September the 5th opium was proclaimed fully legal and traded to the residents.  Major General Gough used his artillery to blast holes in Zhengjians walls before taking the army to march onwards, making sure the city could be easily retaken later if need be. With the capture of Zhengjiang, the British gained control over the traffic upon the Yangtze river. The British quickly blockaded the Grand Canal paralyzing the region. The governor of Nanking, Yilibu sent word to the emperor summing up the situation “The Yangtze River is a region like a throat, at which the whole situation of the country is determined. Now they have already cut off our salt and grain transportation and stopped the communication of merchants and travelers. That is not a disease like ringworm, but a trouble in our heart and stomach.”. In addition to all of that, the path to march upon Nanking was now wide open. After that it was Beijing that could be marched upon! Emperor Daoguang appointed Yilibu and a Manchu court official named Qiying to negotiate with the British. The emperor gave Qiying plenipotentiary power and ordered both men to do anything necessary to halt the British advance before it reached Beijing. Meanwhile the British were marching towards Nanking with naval forces sailing the river threatening to bombard the city. Yilibu quickly raised the white flag before a shot could be fired. Unlike previous Qing officials, both Yilibu and Qiying recognized the impending disaster should they embellish reports to the emperor. No they knew they had to tell him straight what was occuring to make sure they were not caught doing anything that would bite them in the ass later so to say. One of their first reports back to Emperor Daoguang to explain the situation in Nanking read “should we fail to ease the situation by soothing the barbarians, they will run over our country like beasts, doing anything they like”.  Yilibu approached the British displaying the typical arrogance the British had become accustomed to in China. Yilibu sent a low ranking soldier to meet Pottinger. Pottinger as you might remember was …well an asshole honesty, a complete sinophobe who knew not much about the rigid Qing protocol and its hierarchical nature, but he knew when he was being insulted. Pottinger declined the low ranking solider and demanded to meet with Yilibu himself, whom he assumed held plenipotentiary power. Pottinger accused the Qing of performing the same ruse they did with Elliot countless times, making promises without the emperors authority so they could just back out of them later. While Yilibu hesitated, Pottinger made a point by ordering attacks on local villages along the Yangtze river. Yilibu did not hold plenipotentiary power however and the Emperor quickly dispatched a seal to give it to him when Yilibu pleaded for it. As Yilibu stalled waiting for the seal, Pottinger brought up the steam warship Queen and trained her guns on the walls of Nanking and began setting up 18 howitzers on the beach to rain hell into the city. Yilibu panicked and sent his subordinate Zhang Xi to meet the British aboard the Queen. Zhang Xi took a very aggressive stance with Pottinger demanding he stop his threatening actions or else. Pottinger replied he would attack Beijing after Nanking fell, a blunt message. Zhang Xi retorted that the British military successes were only due to the kindness and forbearance of the Emperor saying “who cannot bear to kill or injure human creatures. But if pushed too far would arm every inhabitant of the great empire to fight off the invaders”. The interpreter Thom looked at Zhang Xi and objected to saying his message to Pottinger and Zhang Xi screamed while pounding the table with his fists an spitting on the floor “you kill people everywhere, plunder goods, and act like rascals; that is very disgraceful; how can you say you are not rebellious?”. Zhang Xi was escorted off the ship after his outburst which honestly could have made the British attack Nanking at any moment, kinda a loose cannon of an official. Luckily on August 9th, Yilibu received the seal of plenipotentiary power just as the British brought Cornwallis into firing range of the city walls and landed troops to camp outside them.  On August 11, Yilibu offered 3 million off the bat to postpone the British attack upon Nanking, he even said Qiying would bring it himself to Queen Victoria. Pottinger agreed to postpone and begin negotiations. Yilibu then began the classic Chinese ploy of procrastination instead of negotiation. He hoped to weary the enemy down. When Pottinger sent Yilibu a treaty, he pretended to examine it, but in truth was just biding time. Then the British told him they would commence attacks on August 13th. Yilibu was cornered now, he begrudgingly made an appearance aboard the Queen and promised to begin serious negotiations if the British called off the attack. Yilibu and other emissaries met for 4 days traveling back and forth from ship to shore until Yilibu agreed to terms. However despite his potentiary powers, Yilibu argued he still had to send a copy of the treaty to the Emperor for approval. Basically the terms were so terrible he knew he was facing death if he just signed off on them. The British understood Yilibu’s predicament and allowed for this, then they invited him and his colleagues aboard Cornwallis on August 20th to wine and dine them. They served the Chinese tea and cherry brandy and Yilibu and Qiying put on a show of Qing manners by bowing before a painting of Queen Victoria. Macartney, Napier and Amherst probably smiling from their graves. While Yilibu awaited Beijing’s approval, Pottingers spoke to him about the opium trade. At first Yilibu refused to discuss the subject all together, until Pottinger told the interpreter to tell him the meeting would be kept secret. Then Yilibu explained the decades of hardship opium had brought upon the Qing dynasty and suggested a common solution. Why could the British simply stop the production of the crop in its held parts of India? Pottinger replied that the Americans, French or some other nation would simply take up the business and added “If your people are virtuous, they will desist from the evil practice; and if your officers are incorruptible, and obey their orders, no opium can enter your country.”. Yilibu quickly realized the opium issue was a deal breaker and dropped the matter.  Yilibu was under terrible stress, while he was dealing with the British he was simultaneously receiving orders from Beijing to not meet with the British until they sailed away from Nanking. Yilibu ignored these imperial edicts and continued negotiations which was quite brave of him. When the British demanded Fuzhou be opened to British trade, Beijing ordered him not to allow it, but Yilibu ignored that order, also accepting the term.  The result of the negotiations was the Treaty of Nanking and it represented a total diplomatic defeat for the Qing dynasty. The original demand for 6 million in reparations for the 20,000 chests of confiscated opium and the cost for Britain's war reparations ballooned to a sum of 21 million. That was half of China’s yearly tax revenues back then. Yilibu accepted the amount to be paid in installments. The British gained everything they wanted except for the legalization of the opium trade in China. Despite written instructions from Lord Palmerston to “strongly impress upon the Chinese plenipotentiaries how much it would be to the interest of that Government to legalize the trade,” Pottinger did not press upon the issue after receiving a message from Emperor Daoguang through Yilibu “gainseeking and corrupt men will for profit and sensuality defeat my wishes, but nothing will induce me to derive revenue from the vice and misery of my people.”. The Emperor Daoguang refused to agree to a formal recognition of the treaty and sent another letter to Yilibu to give Pottinger “Our nations have been united by friendly commercial intercourse for 200 years. How then, at this time, are our relations so suddenly changed, as to be the cause of a national quarrel from the spreading of the opium poison? Multitudes of our Chinese subjects consume it, wasting their property and destroying their lives. How is it possible for us to refrain from forbidding our people to use it?”. The Qing government did not want to admit publicly that a shocking amount of the Chinese population were suffering from opium addiction. On August 27th of 1842 Beijing approved what it thought to be the complete text of the treaty of nanking. The draft was signed on August 29th aboard the Cornwallis and Yilibu was so sick he had to be carried onto the British ship to sign it. The signatories, Yilibu, Qiying, Parker, Gough and Pottinger gathered in the cabin of Cornwallis as the seals were fixed. A lunch was served afterwards as the Qing banner and Union Jack flew on Cornwallis's masts. Qiying insisted on stuffing Pottinger’s mouth with a candied plum at dessert time stating it was a Manchu custom and symbol of agreement. An English crewmember who witnessed this said “I shall never forget Sir Henry's face determined resignation”. The Qing left after lunch and despite Qiyings playfulness with the plums it masked their despair at the terms of the treaty. The British had agreed to give back Chusan and Amoy after the reparations were paid in full. They demanded access for trade and permanent residence at the ports of Canton, Amoy, Fuzhou, Ningbo and Shanghai. Each port had to have a British consular official and the limited trade through the Cohong system was to be abolished. The pretense that Britain was a tributary inferior nation to the Qing dynasty was to be abolished and now they were to be treated as equal nations. Hong Kong island was to be a permanent British colony and Nanking would be blockaded by Britain's armada until the first reparation payment of 6 million was paid. Yilibu was so terrified of the Emperor he sent an edited version of the Treaty of Nanking to Beijing omitting the points the Emperor and screamed not to allow. The British flotilla at Nanking remained for several weeks until the British crews began to all get sick. By october 12 of 1842 the 6 million was paid and the British fleet departed Nanking. Those shipwrecked prisoners from the Ann and Nerbudda would become unfortunate victims. The Daoguang emperor ordered their execution and on August 10th the captives were taken 3 miles outside the city walls and executed. As reported in the Chinese repository a publication in Canton All the rest—one hundred and ninety-seven [prisoners]—were placed at small distances from each other on their knees, their feet in irons and hands manacled behind their backs, thus waiting for the executioners, who went round, and with a kind of two-handed sword cut off their heads without being laid on a block. Afterwards their bodies were all thrown into one grave, and their heads stuck up in cages on the seashore. Pottinger threatened retaliation for the massacre but the governor of Canton Yiliang said he arrested the ring leaders and they would be punished at Beijing for their crimes. Back in Britain the Treaty of Nanking was hailed,  the Illustrated London News crowned  “it secures us a few round millions of dollars and no end of very refreshing tea. It gives an impetus to trade, cedes us one island in perpetuity, and in short puts that sort of climax to the war which satisfies our interests more than our vanity and rather gives over glory a preponderance to gain,”. The London Times hailed it and the British fleet “early victorian vikings”.  Much like the Treaty, the press made no mention of the reason why the war occurred, ie the illicit opium trade. Now Hong Kong island would fill its function as an offloading point for opium. Despite the Qing governments best efforts, demand in China rose for opium and it continued to flood into China. Many in the British parliament wanted to abolish the trade and many tried. In the end most paid lip service to it. An Order in Council gave Pottinger the power to “forbid the opium traffic in Hong Kong.” Pottinger paid lip service by issuing a lukewarm threat on August 1, 1843: “Opium being an article the traffic in which is well known to be declared illegal and contraband by the laws and Imperial Edicts of China, any person who may take such a step will do so at his own risk, and will, if a British subject, meet with no support or protection from HM Consuls or other officers.” The Opium merchants ignored Britain's sanctions and efforts to stop them were laughable. The Opium trade continued to thrive in China and the end of the First Opium war had done nothing to end the controversy over the illegal trade. Jardine and Mathson both left China and entered parliament as staunch Whig supporters. Their Chinese counterpart Howqua died of diarrhea a year after the signing of the treaty of nanking. Howqua most likely died the richest man on Earth at the time. Lin Zexu was eventually forgiven by the Emperor in 1845 and assigned a new post but died near Canton in 1850 before he could return to service. Emperor Daoguangs wrath over the treaty of Nanking fell unevenly. Qiying was still in his favor, while Yilibu was sent into exile in chains. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.  And so the Qing dynasty sued for peace, but at what cost? The underlying problem had not changed, that of Opium. Could China rid itself of the illicit substance or what conflict rear its ugly head yet again?

Last time we spoke, Lin Zexu’s efforts against opium were not going well enough and he was losing favor with Emperor Daoguang and it seems his aggressive actions had brought war upon the Qing dynasty. The British warships proved too formidable, their cannons superior and the Qing were losing territory such as Chusan Island. Even the mighty Dagu forts were no match for the British warships who sailed through Chinese waters uncontested. Qishan began talks with the British, telling them Lin Zexu might be fired at any moment and that he would most likely be his replacement. Elliot faced a hostage crisis yet again with the captives from the Kite being held in Ningbo and had to negotiate a ceasefire in the meantime, but now Britain's most powerful weapon had just arrived in China, the Nemesis. This episode is the First Opium War Part 2: The Nemesis Terror   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War.   The emergence of Steam power in the 19th century is somewhat comparable to the emergence of nuclear power in the 20th century. Its power would make its worldwide debut during the First Opium War. The 660 ton steam warship Nemesis was launched in 1839 and arrived in China at the height of the Ningbo prisoner crisis. Nemesis had an iron hull giving it outstanding armor for its time. The coal consumption for the Nemesis was an absolute nightmare and this made it journey from Britain to China quite a slow process as it had to make numerous coal stops. Nemesis arrived to Macao on November 25 of 1840 and soon crossed the Gulf of Canton to sent anchor in Danggu, awaiting the arrival of the man of war Melville. Nemesis arrived at the perfect time to intimidate the Qing as Qishan and the 2 Elliots negotiated. The 3 men would meet aboard the Melville outside Canton harbor on November 29th and Qishan offered some promising news. Governor General Lin Zexu had finally been fired by Emperor Daoguang as a result of not fully eradicating the Opium trade. The Emperor had said to Lin Zexu “Externally you wanted to stop the trade, but it has not been stopped. Internally you wanted to wipe out the outlaws, but they are not cleared away. This has caused the waves of confusion to arise and a thousand interminable disorders. In fact you have been as if your arms were tied, without knowing what to do. It appears that you are no better than a wooden image” ouch.  Lin Zexu tried to make his case to the Emperor stating the barbarians were being ruined by dysentery and malaria and predicted they would be unable to maintain the troops so far from their home and soon have to depart. Lin Zexu begged Emperor Daoguang not to give into the barbarians. They would best deploy the military rather than diplomacy. “The more they get the more they demand, and if we do not overcome them by force of arms there will be no end to our troubles. Moreover there is every probability that if the English are not dealt with, other foreigners will soon begin to copy and even outdo them”. Emperor Daoguang angrily replied to this “if anyone is copying, it is you, who are trying to frighten me, just as the English try to frighten you!”.  And so, Lin Zexu left Canton in disgrace, but while enroute to Beijing he was given orders to return to Canton to assist Qishan in negotiations with the barbarians. The 2 Elliots when hearing about Lin Zexu’s dismissal were quite relieved, they assumed this meant the Emperor was planning to make peace. Charles Elliots at this time would also lose the help of his cousin George Elliot as George had developed heart problems and had to sail back to England. For the negotiations at Canton, Elliot wanted to bring some more intimidation so he gathered some warships and more troops at Canton. Qishan began negotiations on December 4th, by apologizing for the cannon attack on the British by the Bogue forts and as I said previously handed over poor old Stanton. Elliot began negotiations by demanding 4 ports be opened to trade, Shanghai, Ningbo, Fuzhou and Amoy. He also demanded the surrender of an unspecified island, reimbursement for the confiscated opium chest and of course reparations for the war itself, quite a large pill to swallow. Elliot was also hoping such demands would be met quickly, because the British began to fear both France and Russia would begin joining into the war and plying for their own share in its spoils. Qishan agreed to pay 5 million over the course of 12 years, Elliot however wanted 7 million in 6 years and the surrender of at least Amoy and Chusan. The men eventually agreed to 6 million, but Qishan refused any territorial demands. Elliot resorted to threats “there are large forces collected here, and delays must breed amongst them a very great impatience”. Soon Elliot began ordering his troops to go ashore and perform military drills and target practice. At the beginning of 1841 negotiations were still stagnant. Then a rumor spread that the Emperor had chosen war and Elliot decided to prepare. On January 5th of 1841, Elliot informed Qishan that if an agreement was not reached within 2 days he would recommence war at 8am on July the 7th. Well no agreement came and Elliot made do with his threat. On the morning of July 7th, a force of 1500, soldiers, marines and sailors aboard Madagascar, Enterprize and Nemesis landed at the mouth of the Canton River. Their escort force 4 sailing and 4 steam warships began to bombard the Chuanbi Fort and the walls of Tyocoktow Fort across from Chuanbi. When the 8000 Chinese defenders in the forts saw the British ships they initially screamed at them and waved flags in defiance while they opened fire from their batteries. However the Chinese cannons were all tied down and could not be properly aimed at the invaders and thus after 20 minutes of firing at the barbarians they stopped. When they stopped firing the British took advantage of the cease fire and 2 companies of marines scaled over the walls of the Chuanbi earthen walls at 9:30am. The muddy flats in front of the fort made dragging the artillery pieces a nightmare as the men looked up at the forts to see Qing soldiers screaming and waving flags at them. Yet the British bombardment was targeting the Chinese cannons and soon they were getting knocked out one by one. Many of the Qing soldiers were told the British killed all their prisoners and thus many resisted to the bitter end. A British officer said of the carnage “a frightful scene of slaughter ensued, despite the efforts of the British officers to restrain their men”. By 11am, the Qing banner was lowered by the British whom raised the Union Jack in its place. The British reported they had killed 600 Qing soldiers and took another 100 prisoner. The British reported 30 casualties of their own, but as they put it, not because of any Chinese defender, no only because of accidental explosions from their own overheated artillery pieces. Many Qing defenders fled the city, but Major Pratt of the 26th regiment flanked their retreat forcing many back into the forts. The British warships continued to shell the city killing numerous defenders. Once it looked like Chuanbi was simmering down, the British ships began to fire upon 11 Chinese war junks anchored at the mouth of the river using Congreve rockets. One British officer who witnessed this stated “The very first rocket fired from the Nemesis was seen to enter the large junk ... and almost the instant afterwards it blew up with a terrific explosion, launching into eternity every soul on board, and pouring forth its blaze like the mighty rush of fire from a volcano. The instantaneous destruction of the huge body seemed appalling to both sides engaged. The smoke, and flame, and thunder of the explosion, with the broken fragments falling round, and even portions of dissevered bodies scattering as they fell, were enough to strike with awe, if not fear, the stoutest heart that looked upon it”. Both the Chinese artillery on top of the forts as well as the Chinese war junks did not return fire. Instead the defenders were fleeing or jumping overboard to get away from the naval bombardments. The British fired muskets at them as they did so killing many. Inside one of the forts many Qing defenders were becoming burned and horribly disfigured because they antiquated matchlocks gunpowder would often explode on them. The British gunfire only added to their misery. A staff officer who took part in the battle wrote later in life “The slaughter of fugitives is unpleasant, but we are such a handful in the face of so wide a country and so large a force that we should be swept away if we did not deal our enemy a sharp lesson whenever we came in contact.”. As the British warships bombarded the Chinese War junks the Chinese captains fell into a rout scattering into Anson’s Bay just east of Chuanbi. There, the nightmare ship, Nemesis went forward by itself attacking over 15 Chinese war junks. An extremely lucky congreve rocket fired from Nemesis hit one of the war junks powder magazines exploding it to pieces. The 14 other war junks witnessing this continued to scatter and many of their crew jumped overboard to escape. Nemesis did not pursue them any longer and instead steamed up river torching a few war junks as it went along and seizing others before rejoining the armada.  3 more fort remained operation near Chuanbi and next day the British began to prepare their ships to bombard them, but a white flag was lifted over them and a messenger arrived telling the British Admiral Guan was requesting a 3 day ceasefire so he could speak with Qishan. Charles Elliot was quite mortified by the massacre of Chuanbi and accepted the 3 day cease fire. Elliots soldiers however were livid with this decision and wanted to simply march on Canton. To alleviate the men, Elliot ordered them to demolish the walls of Chuanbi and the Tycocktow forts. Qishan then met with Elliot to negotiate at the Lotus Flower Wall due south of Canton city. Elliot brought with him a show of force, 56 royal marine, a 15 member fife and drum band and Captain Rosamel commander of a French corvette named Danaide. Inviting the French captain was a diplomatic courtesy and a method of keeping an eye on the French whom the British like I said feared might take a shot at the spoils of war. Qishan performed the customary wining and dining of Elliot and his entourage and eventually they began their diplomacy again. By January 20th they agreed to what has become known as the Chuanbi Convention. The British agreed to purchase Hong Kong island for 6 million and the Chinese would pay 6 million for the war reparations, sort of a swap in other words. Both nations would exchange ambassadors and now contact between the nations would be direct and official, no more tributary status. Above all else trade would resume and the British would hand over all the forts and places they had captured, including Chusan island. Qishan presumed Emperor Daoguang and his Qing court would agree to these terms and even made plans to exhort the 6 million in reparations directly from the Hong merchants to sweeten the deal. Elliot had to assume Britain would be pleased, because messages took a long time to get back home, but in fact Palmerston and others in Parliament were quite livid Elliot did not get the 20,000 opium chest amount and the war reparation amount they had demanded. The British foreign minister said of the Chaunbi settlement “after all, our naval power is so strong that we can tell the Emperor what we mean to hold, rather than that he should say what we would cede”.Emperor Daoguang was so pised off when he found out about the Hong Kong cession he recalled Qishan immediately to Beijing and ordered the execution of Charles Elliot. Elliot would eventually received word from Parliament about the Chuanbi convention and the it turned out the British government refused to ratify the agreement, uh oh. On the same day the Chuanbi convention was signed, January 20th of 1841, Emperor Daoguang ordered Qishan to stop negotiations with the barbarians, because he was sending reinforcements to Canton from the interior. Thousands of Qing troops were enroute under the command of a 70 year old general named Yang Fang. Yang Fang was so old, it was alleged he was deaf and had to give his men orders in writing. The Emperor also sent with him his cousin Yishan as a new diplomat. Charles Elliot was completely aloof at the looming conflict, nor the Emperor's rejection of the Chuanbi agreement. On January 26th Lt Colonel George Burell occupied Hong Kong island in accordance with the Chuanbi agreement. Similar to the Chusan island situation, Elliot allowed opium to be stored on Hong Kong island. In a letter at the time from Matheson to Jardine he mentioned “Elliot says that he sees no objection to our storing opium there, and as soon as the Chinese New Year holidays are over I shall set about building”. Soon Matheson began building an enormous stone fortress in Hong Kong and moved the companies HQ there.  Hong Kong became a brilliant new jewel in the crown of her Majesty. It held a deep harbor and a very small population that would not give too much trouble. The British were overjoyed to leave the malaria dysentery filled nightmare of Chusan for Hong Kong. By February 1st, Charles Elliot proclaimed Hong Kong island an official British territory and its residents subjects under the crown, something the Chuanbi convention never stipulated.  Elliot met Qishan again, this time at a place called Second Bar, a small island 20 miles southeast of Canton to put the imperial seal upon the Convention of Chuanbi. Qishan informed Elliot that he had been fired and that the Emperor was pissed off like hell much to the shock of Elliot. Qing soldiers began to mass around the Bogue and as noted by Commodore James Bremmer in his military dispatch “I must confess that from this moment my faith in the sincerity of the Chinese Commissioner was completely destroyed, my doubts were also strengthened by the reports of the Officers I sent up to the place of meeting, who stated that military works on a great scale were in progress, troops collected on the heights, and camps protected by entrenchments, arising on both sides of the river, and that the island of North Wangtong had become a mass of cannon” Elliot decided yet again to take up arms. On february 26, the Modeste, Druid, Wellesley, Queen and Melville began to bombard the forts on Wangtong and Anunghoi island on the Bogue. There were 3 forts on Anunghoi island holding 42, 60 and 40 cannons atop them each. The warship Blenheim alongside Melville, Queen, and four rocket boats approached the southernmost fort, dropped anchor 600 yards away, and fired their broadsides. The Melville approached five minutes later and within 400 yards of the fort, and fired broadsides in quick succession. A British officer who witnessed the scene said "The firing of these ships was most splendid: nothing could withstand their deadly aim ... One or two shot were sufficient for the 'dragon-hearted' defenders of the north fort, who, 'letting' off their guns, fled up the hills." The 3 forts cannons were stationary guns set at such a high elevation that when they return fired they were only able to hit the topsails of the British ships. The Chinese return fire lasted only 15 minutes,  by 1:20 pm the forts stopped returning fire and  300 Royal Marines stormed the forts. By 1:30 pm, the 3 forts were captured 250 killed or wounded in Anunghoy.  Over on Wangtong island there was 40 gun fort on its western side called Yong’an Fort. Between this fort and the forts on Anunghoi was a large boom chain cable to stop warships and passage could not be made until all the forts were taken. Commodore Bremer aboard his flagship Wellesley alongside 7 other warships began to bombard the fort and its batteries and in less than an hour the Chinese stopped firing back. By 1:30pm Major Thomas Simson Pratt commanded 1037 troops to storm the beach of the island. In the words of British officer Edward Belcher “Opposition there was none. The unfortunate Chinese literally crammed the trenches, begging or mercy. I wish I could add that it was granted”. Belcher also alleges some Indian soldiers would begin executing prisoners when he personally tried to stop them “two were shot down whilst holding my shirt, and my gig’s crew, perceiving, my danger, dragged me away exclaiming ‘they will shoot you next sir!”. There were around 2000 Qing defenders on the island and it is estimated 250 were killed and or wounded. The British claim to have only 5 casualties. When the British and Indian force entered the forts they found that the defenders had most likely fled the moment the battle began. Within 2 hours, the forts on Anunghoi and Wangtong were seized with minimal effort. Charles Elliot stated he had almost died in the battle from a Chinese cannonball that nearly hit him as he sat reclined in a hammock on the deck of his ship. You can’t make that stuff up…or perhaps you really can if you are the British during the 19th century trying to show off. Honestly folks, when I give reports from this war, a lot of it comes from British primary sources and I can assure you they are embellishing the shit out of it. A thousand Chinese were taken prisoner. Admiral Guan’s body lay among the defenders, a bayonet in his chest. The British gave the old warrior a cannon salute from the warship Blenheim when his family retrieved the body and sailed off with it. With the fall of the Bogue forts, the mouth of the Canton River and the gateway to Canton belonged to the British. Lin Zexu wrote of the event "I got home at the Hour of the Monkey [that is 3 p.m.] ... and when night came heard that the Bogue forts and those on Wangtong Island were being invested, preparatory to attack, by the English rebels. I at once went with Deng to Qishan's office and at the Hour of the Rat [that is 11 p.m.] we heard that the Wangtong, Yung-an and Kung-ku forts have fallen. All night I could not sleep." On February 27, Elliot made his way up the Canton River aboard Nemesis when they came across the warship Cambridge which was in trouble. Cambridge had been captured and surrounded by Chinese War junks. When Nemesis alongside some other British steamers approached, the Chinese war junks opened fired on them. When the British ships managed to maneuver into a position where they could fire broadsides they sent a tremendous volley. Added to the shells were congreve rockets which set fires to many of the war junks. The Cambridge was also opening fire upon the British as Chinese crews were operating her. The British bombardment after an hour soon sent the ships scattering about and many of their crews jumped overboard. On the sides of the river were some earthworks defense with batteries and British troops began to land and stormed their positions. Captain Thomas Herbert of warship Calliope said of the event “I landed with the seamen and marines and stormed the works, driving before us upwards of 2 thousand of their best troops, and killing nearly 300”. Lt John Elliot Bingham of the Modeste wrote “As the enemy fled before Lt Stranshams party, they attempted to cross a deep branch of the river in which numbers of them perished and many were shot”. Thus the British claimed to have killed 300 Chinese during this battle near the First Bar Island on the Pearl River at the cost of losing 1 man with a couple wounded. The day after the battle Lin Zexu wrote "I hear that yesterday the English rebels broke resistance at Wu-yung. The regulars from Hunan were stationed there, and had heavy losses, their Commander Hsiang-fu being also among the killed."   After the battle was over the British realized they could not tow the Cambridge, so Elliot ordered the ship scuttled. During the firing upon the Chinese war junks, a British sailor died when his musket exploded in his hands. Elliot awaited some other ships and men before continuing to sail towards Canton.  On March the 2nd, Commodore Bremer dispatched a force to prod Whampoa Island which held a battery of around 25 cannons and had around 250 Qing troops defending it. The smaller naval force of 3 British warships bombarded the island destroying the cannons and defensive structures with ease. The marines who stormed the island reported around 20 dead defenders and lost a man to grapeshot. Lin Zexu wrote in his diary on the day of the battle “I hear that the English rebel ships have already forced their way to the fort at Lieh-te. Early in the morning I went to talk things over at the General office in the Monastery of the Giant Buddha”.  As the armada made its approach to the city the 10,000 civilians fled, including Lin Zexu’s family. An American merchant in Canton wrote of the scene “Canton never looked so desolate. The hatred of those who had not fled registered in their faces. They scowl upon every one of us in a way indicative of a greater dislike than I have ever before observed”. Cantons harbor was too shallow for the Nemesis to dock, so Elliot took her completely alone up the Canton river and back down destroying apparently a few forts and 9 Chinese war junks. If that is to be believed, Nemesis truly lived up to its name wow.  Poor Qishan was again recalled to Beijing to be punished. He was not only recalled, but arrested and cast into chains. He made it to Beijing by March 12th and his entire fortune of 425,000 acres of land, 135,000 ounces of gold and 10 million in cash was taken from him by Emperor Daoguang. Luckily for Qishan his death sentence was reversed by the Emperor to just hard labor at a military encampment near China’s northernmost border with Russia. Lin Zexu did not receive blame for the military blunders and instead remained in power at Canton. The reason as to why this came to be might be because Lin Zexu was as guilty as every other Qing official in sending the Emperor very embellished stories about the war. “Our regular troops sank 2 of their dinghies and shattered the mainmast of one of their warhips after which they retired”. Like the other officials playing broken telephone, Lin Zexu also feared the Emperors wrath and for good reason. By March 13, the rest of the British armada arrived outside Canton and began to blow all the Chinese ships to pieces within the harbor. The armada also bombarded the city's walls knocking out its cannons. On march 19, British marines and sailors landed near the foreign factories district forcing Chinese defenders there to pull back giving no resistance. The next day the British occupied their old English factory and planted the Union Jack back upon its roof.  Our old friend Houqua came to Elliot at the English factory begging for a truce on behalf of General Fang. Elliot greeted Houque kindly and agreed, he also told everyone in Canton that trade was to be restored. The months of the opium smugglers were watering at this, but Elliot then dictated that all the opium found on any British ship was to be confiscated. Elliot was trying to make it known they were here for the tea trade and to show Britain was going to be on its best behavior. Unbeknownst to Elliot, the truce was a feint. For the next few days, the British watched Chinese ships full of Qing soldiers sail past the factories vantage point.  Despite Elliots talk of confiscating all opium, the smugglers were more bold than ever. With the British armada as armed guards, the smuggler ships came in some carrying more than 1000 chests each! Elliot was furious and tried to stop the opium vessels from unloading their cargo in Canton, but the merchants simply ignored him. Elliot feared getting chewed up by members at parliament if he molested the dealers anymore, knowing full well parliament had a ton of opium lobbyists working full time. Its actually scarily like current governments today. Some, albeit I bet a few politicians in the congress/senates/parliaments of large nations today actually want to put a stop to the worlds most horrible troubles, but lobbyists are a powerful force and when your political job is at stack…well like Mr. Elliot, how much do you put your neck out on the line? Also Elliot had greater issues to worry about, when the British took back the factory the Qing officials set a price upon the heads of any British citizen and a king's ransom of 50,000 for Elliot's head.  Ever since the first battle at the Bogue, Qishan and Lin were both sending reports to Emperor Daoguang about how the war was going. Lin Zexu was sending amazing tales of Qing victories, all fabrications. Qishan was sending report, of how corrupt the Qing military had become and how it had fallen to such lengths it could not hope to match the barbarians. Qishan counseled strategic surrender and hinted towards resuming the opium trade. Well we all know what happened to Qishan for his more honest words on military matters. General Yang Fang also urged the Emperor to allow the opium trade to continue arguing that if the British occupied themselves with making money, they would have little time or any desire for war. The Emperor replied to General Fang “If trade were the solution to the problem, why would it be necessary to transfer and dispatch generals and troops?”. Emperor Daoguang ordered General Fang and his colleagues Ishand and Longwen to take back Hong Kong island. By late March, Elliot had decided the next target was to be Amoy, around 400 miles northeast of Canton. Elliot thought it would be a good time to attack Amoy in May, but in the meantime he fell quite ill while in Macao. In the meantime he was receiving intelligence reports from Canton that the city was being surrounded by more and more Qing troops. It seemed General Fang was amassing forces trying to bring the British back to the peace table. Elliot headed the show of military might by putting off the Amoy plans and concentrating on arming Canton. On May 11th, Elliot took Nemesis over to Canton and quickly saw the Chinese were building fortifications outfitted with new cannons. He also saw the Chinese navy was increasing its presence in the area. To that end he sent a letter to the governor asking they cease military preparations but received no word back. On May 21st, Elliot ordered the British and even urged the Americans to leave the factory quarter. All of the British quickly left, just a few Americans stayed and in less than 24 hours the factory quarter was shelled by the Chinese military from the opposite side of the river. The Chinese then began sending fireboats from the river at the nearby British warships. Elliot had Nemesis begin bombarding the Chinese war junks nearby which were using the fireships as cover. The fireships failed to hit any of the British vessels and instead ran into shorelines setting parts of Canton ablaze. Nemesis began firing on fortifications and Chinese artillery positions and by the morning the battle over the sea dissipated.  On May 25th, Nemesis escorting 70 other vessels full of thousands of troops made its way to Tsingpu, 2 miles northwest of Canton proper. Tsingpu had a natural harbor from which the British formed a beach head to assemble its forces and equipment. The military strategy involved multiple ships bombarding differing parts of Cantons defenses and 2 invasion forces. The first force which I will call right force was led by the warship Atalanta consisting of 330 men of the 26th Cameronians, Madras Artillery and some Engineers. They were going to bombard the south walls of Canton while they landed troops at the factory quarter to occupy it. The other force was that of Nemesis which landed at Tsingpu, designated as left force consisting of 6000 men with various troops such as  the 49th foot, 27th Madras infantry, some Bengal Volunteers and 380 Royal marines.  Leading left force was Major General Hugh Gough whom performed a reconnaissance of the area and said “the heights to the north of Canton were crowned by 4 strong forts and the city walls, which run over the southern extremity of these heights, appeared to be about 3 miles and a half distant”. Basically if you had a map, which can be found of this battle the left force has landed northwest of Canton. To its east lies various hills and forts that protect the approach to the large wall defense of Canton city. There were 4 large forts each holding various cannons and troops.  Gough’s force at 3am was being fired upon by the 2 most western forts of the 4. Then the British managed to place their artillery, 12 pounder howitzers, 9 pounder artillery pieces, half a pound mortars and a ton of Congreve rockets. The British began to fire back upon the 2 western first and cover of fire, Lt Colonel Morris of the 49th advanced up a hill towards the nearest fort, while Major General Burrell led the 18th royal Irish to support his flank. While this was occurring, the Qing sent a large force to hit the right flank, but General Gough saw this coming and ordered some royal marines to close the flank up. With their land based artillery and warships bombarding, the left force was able to capture all 4 forts taking light casualties and when they occupied the forts they held a vantage point looking into Canton city.  On may the 25th Goughs force began setting up around these 4 forts, they saw an incoming force coming from the northeast of around 4000 Qing soldiers. They were advancing through an open paddy field and attacked the British 49th at 3pm. The 49th were putting up a good fight, but then General Yang Fang showed up to the scene rallying the troops trying to overwhelm the 49th. Gough quickly ordered the 18th division with some royal marines to reinforce the 49th position and placed Major General Burrell in charge of repelling the enemy. The fighting was intense, but the British force managed to rout the enemy and in turn burnt down their military encampments.  By the early morning of may 26th, Gough had prepared his men for an invasion of Canton’s city walls, but at 10:00am a white flag appeared overhead. Gough sent the British interpreter Thoms to find out what the Qing wanted. The Qing envoy begged for hostilities to end, Gough agreed to a ceasefire, but said through Thoms that he would only negotiate with the commander of the Qing forces in Canton. “"I had it explained that, as General commanding the British, I would treat with none but the General commanding the Chinese troops, that we came before Canton much against the wishes of the British nation, but that repeated insults and breaches of faith had compelled us to make the present movement, and that I would cease from hostilities for two hours to enable their General to meet me and Sir Le Fleming Senhouse.". No Qing commander came forward, so Gough resumed preparations to attack Cantons walls. Then 7am the next morning, just as the British artillery was getting ready to fire, another white flag was raised and some Qing soldiers were shouting the name of Charles Elliot. It turned out the reason they were shouting this was because Elliot had been negotiating with the Qing during the course of the battle. Now since may the 26 Major General Gough was in a standstill position. His forces were occupying those 4 forts north of Canton city’s walls and his transport ships were over at the beach head some 5 miles west of him. So there was Gough with 6000 soldiers just loitering about in the blazing hot sun, basically in the middle of some paddy fields north of Canton. You wont hear from this from my main source which I will add seems to be quite skewed to the British side, but a minor incident occurred. A local villager named Wei Shaoguang accused a British soldier had raped his wife. The local village populace became enraged and soon a crowd of over 10,000 began swarming around the British position. They were armed with pikes, swords and all the common village weapons you can think of. To make matters worse for some of the British, many of their muskets were sodden because of the marshy paddy field geography and were failing to fire when villagers attacked. A 2 hour long siege occurred and the British had to withdraw to one of the western forts which was soon surrounded. Gough sent word to the governor of Canton Yu Baochun telling him if the villagers did not stop the siege his force would commence an attack upon Canton city. Yu tried to stop the villagers, only to be labeled a traitor to the people of Canton. It sounds like a lackluster event, but it actually is the beginning of a larger issue. The villagers had taken matters into their own hands to deal with the foreign invaders because they saw their Qing government appeasing them. This feeling that the Qing were weak or not doing enough would feed into multiple movements that would later break the Qing dynasty. Then on May 29th, General Fang broke the ceasefire and ordered his men to suddenly attack, shouting “exterminate the rebels!”. Fire rafts were launched at the nearby British warships docked at Whampoa, but failed to do any damage. Stinkpots were tossed at British warships and some war junks tried using grappling hooks to board them. Some of Fang’s forces broke into the factory quarter and began to pillage it. The British in response sent ships up the Pearl River to bombard the walls of Canton, but no soldiers were sent in to invade the city. The secret reason as to why was because at this point the British troops were being decimated by dysentery. In reality the British had some 2500 able fighting men to face off against a possible Qing force of 20,000 within Canton city. Luckily for the British their warships bombardments were enough to draw out a truce agreement.  Now the Qing agreed to pay 6 million in the course of 7 days if the British promised not to sack Canton. The Qing military would pull back at least 60 miles from Canton and the British would pull back to the Bogue and occupy the forts there. There still remained major issues, the status of the opium trade and that of Hong Kong island, trade was still not resumed and the compensation for the 20,000 opium chests confiscated. The British knew the situation was tense and ignored these issues for now to allow Canton to normalize again. The British also made sure to avoid mentions of a military victory over the Chinese as they wanted the Emperor to save face and thus be more likely to accept their deal.  I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.  The British attacked  Chaunbi, Bogue, the First Bar island, Whampoa Island and now Canton in their war to bring the Qing government to meet their demands. It seemed by taking Canton a treaty might be formed at long last and perhaps peace could be restored.  

Last time we spoke, Lin Zexu had brought the foreign barbarians to their knees and Elliot was forced to hand over 20,000 chests of opium. Lin zexu destroyed the illicit substance riding his nation of its filth. Elliot made a terrible error when he told the opium merchants the British government would compensate them for the confiscated contraband. This would all lead to Captain Henry Smith of the Volage firing the first shot of the First Opium War. Britain was in a financial bind, they needed their tea fix and China was closing off trade to them. How was Britain going to compensate the opium merchants and open up China to keep the tea flowing? That is when Thomas Macaulay made the suggestion to Lord Palmerston, a rather out of the box idea. Why not make China pay for it all. This episode is the First Opium War Part 1   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on the history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War.   Lin Zexu’s attempt to send a letter to Queen Victoria proved to be a failure, no one cared. But back in China Lin Zexu’s war against Opium earned him a promotion. He went from high commissioner to taking Deng Tingzhen’s title as Governor-General. This seems to have bolstered Lin Zexu’s resolve to deal with the foreign barbarians as he wrote at the time “Only by knowing their strengths and their weaknesses can we find the right to restrain them”. Lin Zexu shared his countrymens contempt for the foreigners, but he knew he had to learn more about this enemy in order to defeat them. Lin Zexu was a scholar and had a practical mindset for how to go about the task. Lin Zexu began by buying the British warship Cambridge for use to the Chinese navy and anchored it around the mouth of the Canton River. The only problem was that Elliot made sure to order all of Cambridge's cannons removed before it was sold and the Chinese sailors were unable to properly sail the vessel, thus it was literally towed to the canton river.  By spring of 1840, there were only a few small limited battles between the Chinese junks and some British vessels still attempting to smuggle opium into canton. Elliot decided the first course of action was to map the Yangtze river so he could provide good intelligence to the incoming British force. He sent a ship from Jardine Matheson & Co called the Hellas, unbeknownst to Elliot, Matheson told its captain Frederick Jauncey to try and sell opium while they navigated the Yangtze to hedge his profits. The Hellas ran into trouble on May 22nd of 1840 when Captain Jauncey ran into what he originally thought were just a few Chinese merchant ships, but were in fact 8 war junks. They opened fire on Hellas and attempted to ram and board her, but Hellas was able to keep the fire fight at a distance until some strong wind picked up allowing Hellas to make an escape. Captain Jauncey earned a broken jaw and almost lost an eye during the battle and a few of his crew were hurt, but there were no fatalities. By the end of May the Hellas limped back to Macao for some medical treatment. On June the 8th, a Chinese fleet of fireships loaded to the brim with gunpowder were sent into the British ships anchored at Capsingmum some 45 miles east of Macao. Many of the British vessels fled for their lives, but the warships, Volage, Druid and Hyacinth rushed forward to stop the fireship attack. They used grappling hooks to tie up the fireships from a distance and towed them away from the rest of the British flotilla thus saving them all. The next day, the long awaited British force Palmerston promised finally arrived in Chinese waters. There was a scarcity of sailors hindering what could be amassed for hte China expeditionary force, due to the ongoing wars and other operations against the French in the mediterranean sea and the forces of Mohammed Ali in Egypt. By the end of June 17 men of war had assembled including 3 line of battle ships, the Wellesley, Melville and Blenheim. The East India Company also lent a hand providing 4 armed merchantmen steamers, the Enterprize, Madagascar, Atalanta and Queen. Following behind the force was 27 troopships carrying the 18th Royal Irish, the 49th Bengal Volunteers, the 26th Cameronians,a corps of Bengal engineers, and another corps of Madras sappers and miners. On its way to catch up to this force was British most devastating weapon, a brand new ocean-going Iron warship, the first of its kind named Nemesis. She was launched in 1839 and deployed to China as her first operation. She was powered by 2 60 horsepower Forrester engines and armed with 2 pivot mounted 32 pounders and 6 6pounder guns. She had watertight bulkhead, the first to be used for a warship at the time enabling her to survive a lot of hull damage. It goes without saying this one warship will have a daunting part to play in this story and the Chinese would nickname her “devil ship”.  The British armada did not just bring military assistance, it also was secretly carrying more opium, because of course why not. Over 10 thousand chests were snuck away aboard the ships ready to flood the Chinese market. The large British naval presence would allow the smugglers to offload their opium at Lintin during broad daylight with impunity. The armada gathered itself at Singapore to devise a strategy going forward. There in Singapore, the marines practiced amphibious assaults while Chinese war junks in the distance observed from a distance. By June 1 of 1840 enough warships had gathered at Singapore to launch the invasion of the Qing dynasty. So on June 16 the first ship, a steamer named Madagascar entered the Gulf of Canton followed a bit later by a large part of the armada. Aboard the Wellesley, captain Elliot met with the commander of the expeditionary force, Commodore Sir J. J Gordon Bremer and they discussed strategy. Jardine had made a proposal, to commit some warships to blockade the entire eastern and southern coasts of China and seize the island of Chusan. Jardine argued they should also blockade the mouth of the Bei He River which flowed into the Yangtze, the waterway for food and other shipments directly to Beijing. Chusan island was a critical depot for the Qing, more than a quarter million ton of grain pass through it to go to Beijing to feed the capital. Depriving the capital of a major food source and revenue would bring the Chinese to a peace settlement and thus a British victory.  The British Admiralty’s Sir John Barrow thought Jardine’s proposal was too much, threatening the Qing capital would just result in the Chinese digging in deeper to defend themselves and not bring them to the peace table. Barrow argued they should focus around the gulf of canton, shell the city and seize Hong Kong. Charles Elliot argued a middle ground: take Canton then sail up the Bei He river to threaten Beijing. Elliot also argued they could instead attack Shanghai because attacking such a prominent city would make the Qing lose face and intimidate them. Another man who had just arrived was Elliot’s cousin, Admiral Sir George Elliot who had been given co-plenipotentiary powers. He brought with him a peace treaty with orders to make the Qing government agree to every article of it and to continue the way until it was done. Sir George Elliot arrived in the later part of 1840 and ordered a blockade of the Gulf of Canton using 5 warships while he and the rest of the armada sailed north. The British merchants were disappointed, they expected a direct assault upon Canton, they had hoped to open the city back up for trade. Both Elliot’s got aboard the Wellesley as the armada made its approach towards Chusan. George Elliot also had with him a letter from Palmerston to inform the emperor Britain intended to blockade and seize various Chinese ports as a response to the Qing siege of the Canton factories. Palmerston also cheekily added that if the Emperor wanted to stop the opium trade he should probably convince his people to stop smoking opium. At the end of the letter Palmerston added that to avoid “unpleasantness” the Emperor was invited to send a delegation to a shipboard meeting with the two Elliots who most likely would park their warships at the mouth of the Bei He River. The Elliots gave the letter to a Captain named Thomas Bourchier whom went ashore with a white flag at Namoy just 300 miles north of Canton. As Thomas entered the harbor some Qing officials came aboard. Thomas explained to them that the armada meant to bombard the city if they did not respect the white flag. As he explained this to them, along the coast a ton of Chinese began to form a crowd near his boat so he sailed off. With his ship a few hundreds yards away from the shore he waited to see what the Chinese would do. Then Thomas noticed cannons being mounted on a nearby fort. Thomas sent his translator named Robert Thom on a small raft with a large placard repeating what retaliation the Chinese could expect if they fired upon his ship. Thom also began to shout the orders at the crowd along the beach, but they simply screamed insults in return. Then some of the people on the beach began to swim out towards Thom’s boat and some arrows and gunshots were fired at him. Suddenly one of the cannons from the fort fired and some nearby chinese junks joined them all aiming for poor Thom. Thom dashed back to Captain Thomas and reported to him what had happened. Captain Thomas responded by sending another letter explaining that the British government had no quarrel with the Chinese people, only their emperor. He sent the letter with a courier in another small raft and as it approached the shore the mob rose up yet again and soon gunfire was going off. It is alleged after this Captain Thomas literally threw a message in a bottle before sailing off towards Canton.  By July 1st the armada anchored in the harbor of Dinghai on Chusan Island. Dinghai held around 40,000 inhabitants within a 5 sided 22 feet high wall city. It held many towers and was surrounded on all 4 sides by a canal. The city had 16 hundred defenders, but in reality they were all just some fishermen, sailors and quickly raised up militiamen armed with spears, bows and some matchlocks. There were also 12 chinese war junks that had followed the British armada keeping a safe distance. The British noticed one of the Chinese war junks had a banner indicated a high Qing official was aboard and they signaled they wanted to talk. The Chinese war junks invited a British delegation aboard their flagship. Commodore Bremer went aboard with his interpreter and met with the Qing commander of the Chusan garrison. Bremer did not mash words he was quite blunt demanding the “surrender Chusan or face the consequences”. The Qing host was not intimidated however and sent the British back to their boats. When the British were back aboard their vessels, instead of blasting the chinese war junks, well they simply invited the Chinese aboard the Wellesley to wine and dine them. In the 1997 movie “the opium war” this scene is quite well done, I highly recommend watching it. So the Qing officials dined and one Qing officer even analyzed some of the 74 guns aboard Wellesley. That officer was quoted to say “it is very true you are strong and I am weak. Still I must fight”. After dinner, Commodore Bremer demanded their surrender again and gave them 24 hours to comply. The Chinese in the meantime ran ashore and began to stuff a ton of sandbags with rice and other things to strengthen the defenses around Dinghai’s walls. The 24 hours passed and Bremer brought the Wellesley closer to the shore, but he had to wait for some more reinforcements to arrive to launch an amphibious assault. By 2pm on July 5th, 6 British warships arrived to the scene and Bremer fired a single cannon targeting a tower on a small fort. The Qing fired a single cannon in response, which led Bremer to start shooting volley’s every 10 minutes. As the maelstrom was going on, Lt Colonel George Burrell led the 18th Brigade in an amphibious landing. Suddenly the Chinese stop firing just as the 18th brigade landed ashore. The British took the situation by storm and began bombarding the Chinese war junks to pieces and Dingshai’s fort towers. Lord Jocelyn, a military secretary said of the scene. “The Crashing of timber, falling houses and groans of men resounded from the shore. Even after the bombardment ceased, a few shots were still heard from the unscathed junks. We landed on a deserted beach, a few dead bodies, bows and arrows; broken spears and guns remaining the sole occupants of the field”. The 18th brigade found no resistance on the beach. The Qing defenders had fled almost as soon as the first cannons had gone off. A Qing commander on scene, Brigadier Zhang had refused to give up the fight, but had both his legs blown off by cannonade and had to be whisked away on a litter. The local magistrate and some of his subordinates watched in horror as the defenders departed and they all committed suicide.  A detachment of the 18th brigade set up 8 9 pounder artillery pieces and some howitzers on a hill which had a vantage point overlooking the city of Dinghai. They then began to shell the now defenseless inhabitants forcing countless to flee for their lives. The British reported not a single casualty during the volley exchange nor the beach assault. Lord Jocelyn described the planting of the Union Jack by the Joss house in Dinghai “the first European banner that has floated as conqueror over the flowery land”.  The city of Dinghai was a mile from the shoreline and Colonel Burell slowly marched his men to its formidable walls as artillery rained hell upon them. The residents of Dinghai responded with their own artillery forcing Colonel Burrell to hold back his men from a distance and wait it out until the next day to assault the city. During that lull the British soldiers found some samshu in a local fishing village and proceeded to get drunk as hell and looted the fishing village during the night. An Indian soldier said of the incident “A more complete pillage could not be conceived. The plunder ceased only when there was nothing to take or destroy”. The artillery was going on throughout the night and at around midnight of British 9 pounders hit a gunpowder deposit inside Dinghai turning the city into an inferno. The next morning the British saw most of the defenders were fleeing and sent a detachment of 12 men to approach the south wall to prod it. There was no resistance so the men began to climb the rice bag defenses that had been piled almost 2 stories high in front of the wall. Within minutes they were over the top and could see the city that once held 40,000 people was all but deserted. Lord Jocelyn said of the city “The main street was nearly deserted, except here and there, where the frightened people were performing the kow-tow as we passed. On most of the houses was placarded "Spare our lives;" and on entering the jos-houses were seen men, women, and children, on their knees, burning incense to the gods; and although protection was promised [to] them, their dread appeared in no matter relieved.”  The British reported that perhaps 2000 Chinese died, which is complete nonsense, the Chinese state something like 25 died so the actual number is somewhere in between, quite a large range I know. The British themselves might have lost up to 19 men. They found a ton of antiquated weapons and armor as they looted the city such as padded cotton jackets which displayed the disparity between the 2 forces. Robert Thom who witnesses the looting said “No one has been killed in cold blood that I am aware of, and only one or two cases of rape occurred perpetrated it is said by the sepoys”. By the way a lot of the primary sources for this war will lay blame on the Indian soldiers for misconduct and take it was a grain of salt. I am not saying it did not happen, it most certainly did, but the idea that the British redcoats were not taking part in such ventures seems dubious.  By Jul 11th, Jardine and Matheson reached Chusan and found out Admiral Elliot was forbidding their opium ships from landing on the island. Yet they pressed their team of smugglers to persist and against Elliots wishes unloaded opium. Chusan would become a storehouse for opium and by November of 1840 43 opium smuggling ships were using Chusan as an offloading point. 12,000 chests of opium would be brought to Chusan by the end of the year.  Chusan island would also bring quite a lot of misery to the British. Colonel Burrell refused to allow his troops to occupy the abandoned city of Dinghai fearing repercussions from the Chinese and instead kept his men in a particularly malaria infested paddy field. With the scorching heat and an order that all men keep their top buttons on their uniforms fastened almost 500 men would die to malaria and dysentery. A lot of variables were at work, bad provisions, too much Samshu, stagnant water and the most evil culprit, malaria invested mosquitos took a heavy toll on the British. By October, only 2036 out of 3650 troops would be fit for duty.  By december more than 5000 men were admitted to hospitals and 448 deaths would occur. If anyone knows the story of Japan’s invasion of Taiwan in the 19th century, it really reminds me of that ordeal. Taking an island by force and with incredible ease, only to fall victim to brutal mother nature. On july 27th, Elliot had gathered many warships at Dinghai and felt he had enough firepower to proceed 500 miles north to Beijing. A week after Dinghai fell, Beijing got the word. However this is where a large problem would emerge for the Qing dynasty. The Emperor was given word through Qing officials, and if the news was bad, the officials would fear enraging the Emperor and more often than naught falsify what they told him. In this case the officials downplayed the severity of the incursion. They told him of alleged weaknesses of the foreign invaders. The governor of Jiangsu Province lying at the mouth of the Yangtze River, Yukien told the Emperor “take our fort at Woosung. From the bottom upward there is the stone base, then the clay base, and finally the fort itself. It is even elevation far above the level of the barbarian ships. If they shoot upward, their bullet will go down and consequently lose force. Moreover the barbarians are stiff and their legs straight. The latter, further bound with cloth, can scarcely stretch at will. Once fallen down, they cannot again stand up. It is fatal to fighting on land”. Yukien would also make remarks about how the barbarians lacked bows and arrows. While this might come off as humorous, I bring it up for important reasons. The Emperor will continuously be given these sort of reports, downplaying of events such as battles, made up stories about victories over the British and much more. The Emperor will be reacting accordingly based on the information he is given and this will be quite the crux of the entire war.  The British armada approached the mouth of the Bei He River in a course of 10 days and was only 75 miles southwest of Beijing. However at the mouth of the Bei He River lied one of the Qing dynasty’s most formidable defenses, known as the Dagu forts. 2 Dagu forts guarded the mouth, though to Elliot they looked pretty decrepit and deserted. Elliot was still trying to find a Qing official who would take Palmerstons letter to the Emperor and at the mouth he saw several Chinese war junks. Elliot sent a man with the letter to the war junks and the commander of the warships replied that he would send the letter to a higher ranking Qing official who was only a short distance away. Thus Elliot waited to see what would occur and it turned out the Qing official was Qishan, the governor of Chihli province. Qishan sent word to Elliot that his letter was sent directly to the Emperor, but that Elliot would need to wait for a reply.  On May 13 of 1840, one of Qishans subordinates came aboard the Wellesley providing the British with food and water and this was followed up for several days with more gifts. Then Elliot was told the Emperor had officially received the letter, but it would be regretfully another 10 days or so for the Qing court to discuss with the Emperor the letters contents. Do not forget, the story I spoke of about the malaria and dysentery outbreak on Chusan was raging by this point and thus Elliot decided it best to scatter the armada in search of cleaner water because the Chusan wells seemed to be the culprit at the time. Some of the ships went hundreds of miles away in search of water and as this all occurred, 10 days had come and gone. When all of the armada regrouped with their fresh water reserves, Elliot decided they needed to speed up the Qing courts process. Elliot ordered the warships Madagascar and Modeste to begin firing at some forts on Chusans outskirts, but before the shelling could begin a messenger from Qishan suddenly appeared. Elliot was invited to meet with Qishan in 3 days time. The meeting would be on july 30th and the location was a fort in southern Chusan. Qishan brought gifts and food with him for the British and had a flotilla built up so the British would not have to walk in mud to the fort. Elliot, Qishan and Jocelyn had a large dinner and then they discussed the Palmerston letter for over 6 hours. Qishan during the meeting made a mention of the precedent set by the Macartney and Amherst missions, that of the tributary system. Elliot insisted both men were not tributaries, but ambassadors holding equal status to the Emperor. Qishan could feel the tension in the room and changed the subject, he pointed out that the occupation of Chusan island was unacceptable for the Emperor. Elliot understood and said the British occupation was temporary, they were merely using it as a base of operations. Then the largest looming subject emerged, Opium. Qishan demanded a promise from Queen Victoria that Britain would stop exporting opium to China. Similar to Lin Zexu, the Qing had a difficult time understanding the representatives of authority for other nations and assumed Queen Victoria held a similar position to their Emperor. Elliot said plainly that he did not have the authority to grant such a concession and then made the remark “if the Chinese wanted the opium trade to end, they should stop using it”. Elliot also made a remark that most of the Opium was coming from other sources outside British influence, but he had little evidence to support this. Qishan swallowed this resentfully but did not quibble over it. Instead Qishan moved to the subject of reparations as Palmerston had demanded compensation for the 20,000 seized opium chests and for war reparations for Britain who was invading China! Qishan flat out called these demands ludicrous, when he said this, Elliot began to write something on Palmerstons letter and when Qishan asked him what he was writing Elliot replied “I am writing what is your opinion on the matter, because many of the Emperor other officials might have differing ones”.  Qishan then began to explain to Elliot that Lin Zexu had fallen out of favor with the Qing court and that Qishan agreed with the British that Lin Zexu had mistreated them and employed unnecessary violence. Qishan made a remark that the Emperor was most likely going to fire Lin Zexu and punish him. It seems Qishan was hinting to Elliot that he might be replacing Lin Zexu as his successor and with it plenipotentiary powers. So you get the idea here, Qishan is basically hinting while nothing can be done right now, perhaps when he is in charge he will help the British out. Qishan also kept stating that the British should go to Canton, as it was the center of foreign trade and a much more logical and practical place for them to go to further negotiations. But both Elliot and Qishan knew why he was stating this repeatedly, he wanted the British to get as far away from the Emperor as possible.  George Elliot informed Charles Elliot that he felt the armada was quite vulnerable sitting in Bei He Bay and urged him to end the negotiations and leave. Likewise upon hearing the news that Lin Zexu was going to be dismissed soon, Charles Elliot agreed and they too the armada and sailed away. This rather abrupt partie however gave the Chinese the impression the barbarians were done with the war all together. As you can imagine many Qing officials began telling Beijing this. As you can also imagine the British departure was only temporary. By September of 1840 the British armada re-emerged at the mouth of the Bei He River. The Elliots had order the armada to up the pressure on the Qing and Charles Elliot had written a note to Palmerston at this time “It is notorious that the Daoguang Emperor entertains the utmost dread of our enterprising spirit”. What he meant by this, was by sending periodic naval patrols he was trying to scare the shit out of Beijing. Back over in Canton, despite the incredible efforts of Lin Zexu, the opium trade was still rearing its ugly head. Since Jardine & Matheson were now able to shove their contraband on Chusan island it began to flood right back into the Canton market. By the fall of 1840 6500 chests had gotten through the Canton trade from Jardine & Matheson Co alone. Many hundreds of others were flooding in from the other independent smugglers and despite the severity of punishment for using the substance, there was still an enormous demand. The Elliots of course banned the trade of opium on Chusan, but they were not morons, they knew it was simply going to Canton in the end. Of course they were allowing the trade to go on, they were after all quite broke. The Elliots had no other way of raising money to continue the war effort other than relying on the sale of opium. Both Elliots understood the fiscal dependency they had on the opium smugglers and the prohibition of its sale on the island of Chusan was merely symbolic, a way of keeping face, so typically british. Thus vessels were allowed to offload opium near Chusan with zero interference from the British armada, which in turn was patrolling the waters thus protecting the opium dealers in the end. The hope in the end was by symbolically banning the substance at Chusan, perhaps this would alleviate the Emperor while simultaneously allowing the condonation of revenue for the war effort by allowing its trade to ports like Canton.  Over in Beijing, Emperor Daoguang hesitated over Lin Zexu, he was not yet comfortable dismissing him. This embolden Lin Zexu, whom began to crack down even more so on the Chinese opium consumers. Lin Zexu put out an edict limiting the amount of time opium addicts had to wean themselves off the drug “while the period is not yet closed, you are living victims. When it shall have expired, then you will be dead victims”. Yet despite his efforts Lin Zexu could do little against the opium vessels which were being protected by the British armada making patrols in the Gulf of Canton, Amoy, Chusan and the Mouths of the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers. Then to the horror of the Chinese the British began seizing Chinese ships along the coast and taking their cargo to sell and finance the war effort. Imagine how cash strapped a nation has to be to start performing this sort of looting. Between June and July of 1840 the British armada had seized 7 large trading vessels plundering their cargo. In retaliation the Chinese raised a price for the heads of any British military personnel at 100$ for a soldier taken alive, 20$ for a corpse, $5000 for a British captain and for a British ship 10,000$, cha ching. Things got out of hand quite quickly, Chinese desperate to make some coin turned to attacking European and American civilians such a missionaries. Gangs of Chinese would hunt them down beating them nearly to death. On August the 5th, Vincent Stanton a tutor of a British merchants children alongside a missionary named David Abeel made the terrible decision to go swimming in Macao’ bay. Stanton was kidnapped and brought to Canton. Until this point Macao was seen as the last safe spot in China for foreigners, but the kidnapping of Stanton broke that. Adding to everyone's fears, 8 Chinese war junks docked at Macao sending the Portuguese colony into a frenzy.  It turns out Stanton's kidnapping was masterminded by Lin Zexu, it was psychological warfare. He was not able to go after the British warships, but he was able to target anyone on land. The Governor general of Macao, Pinto pleaded with Lin Zexu to return the man, but it came to nothing. The British felt they had lost face, Stanton was one of theirs and they had even tried allowing the Portuguese aid the situation to no avail. 2 weeks after Stantons kidnapping the British had had enough. 4 British warships from the Armada were sent to Macaos Casilha Bay alongside 400 soldiers. The British warships opened fire upon the Chinese war junks whom returned fire. However the Chinese war junks cannons were old and obsolete, they could not match the range the British were firing from. The Chinese crews began to panic when their return fire was literally only matching half the distance of the British and soon jumped ship. Meanwhile the british warships simply continued to rain hell upon the war junks. As noted by British officer “The [Chinese] junks, which were aground in the inner harbour, were utterly useless, for none of their guns could be brought to bear, though several of the thirty-two pound shots of the ships found their way over the bank, much to the consternation of the occupants of the junks." The Chinese crews tried to establish a defense on the coast, but the British soldiers overwhelmed them with musket fire. The Chinese war junks still intact made a break for it, as the rest of the Chinese fled into the fortifications. The British warships battered the walls of Macaos fortifications until their batteries stopped returning fire and the British and Indian soldiers soon scaled the walls. By 5pm the Chinese routed inside the Macao fortifications as the British set fire to multiple barracks. In the end the Chinese suffered upto 60 dead with 120 wounded and the British reported only 4 wounded, but take the number with a grain of salt. In Beijing Qing officials told Emperor Daoguang there had been a major victory at Macao and that many British were dead and multiple British warships laid at the bottom of Casilha Bay. These Qing officials were court officials who were received false reports from the military at Macao. Its sort of like the game broken telephone, where every link embellishes the story to make it more and more positive. All the Chinese soldiers began to abandon Macao and no more Chinese War junks came to its harbor. In the eyes of the Portuguese and British they had saved Macao, in the eyes of poor Stanton…well he was imprisoned in Canton.  The Stanton kidnapping distressed the foreign community in China, but there was another incident that scared the shit out of them. A french missionary named Father Jean Gabriel Perboyre was illegally operating in Hubei Province and got captured in September of 1839. He was tortured and interrogated for over a year and on September 11th of 1840 he was executed publicly at Wuchang. The priest was killed by strangulation, but the Qing authorities decided to place his body on a cross after his death. This set a panic into the foreign community as others were likewise captured and killed and the British on Chusan island were falling victim to malaria, dysentery and starvation, because all the food on Chusan had dried up. They began to eat moldy rice from Chusans stockpiles and bread made from worm ridden flour stuck aboard their ships for quite a long time. It is alleged that the pickled beets and pork on the British warships was so rancid even the iron-stomachs of the British couldn't tolerate it. The drinking water likewise was a source of disease, contaminated by the local sewers. The interpreter Thom wrote a letter to Matheson stating “even the natives hold their noses because of the waters smell. Unless we can manage to get the canal and town cleared out, I fear that we shall be getting some contagious distemper among us. The climate moreover is moist and mosquitoes swarm in amazing numbers. Let no man come here without mosquito curtains else he will bitterly repent of it”. The British did not realize the mosquitoes were the culprit of their malaria nightmare as the belief at the time for europeans was that malaria came from rotten vegetables. The dysentry killed more people than the malaria however, coming from the horrid food and water situation. 12 soldiers died in August, the next month 24, while 250 were hospitalized and by mid september a third of the force was too sick to fight. Being a specialist in the Pacific War I do have to say what amazing parallels this will play out for the Japanese and Americans in the island hoping warfare. Not fun to battle the elements, malaria and a terrible provision situation.  Then there was horrible incident when a commercial ship called the Kite ran aground on a sandbank on september 15th. The Captain named John Nobles lost his 5 month year old baby, and he, his wife and 26 crew members clinging to the boats wreckage until a Chinese war junk captured them. All of them were put in chains and imprisoned at Ningbo. They were placed in wooden cage, the wife of John Nobles stated “mine was scarcely a yard high, a little more than three quarters of a yard long, and a little more than half a yard broad. The door opened from the top. Into these we were lifted, the chain around our necks being locked to the cover. THey put a long piece of bamboo through the middle, a man took either end, and in this manner we were jolted from city to city to suffer the insults of the rabble, the cries from whom were awful”. Some of captured crew were beat to death, 3 men died of dysentery and those who were Indian amongst them were treated extra harshly. One of the English prisoners believed the Chinese treated the Indians worse, because they ate their rice with their fingers which angered them.  When Charles Elliot heard the news of the captives from the Kite he was mortified, particularly because one of the prisoners was a woman! He went to Ningbo aboard the Atalanta to negotiation their release and was immediately told, all the prisoners could go if the British gave back Chusan. The British did not say no, but did nothing to indicate they would hand over Chusan, so the Chinese began to threaten to kill the prisoners. This prompted the Charles Elliot to demand a meeting with Qishan at Chinhai only 10 miles away from the prison at Ningbo. Elliot stated to Qishan if the prisoners were not handed over he would end the peace talks outright. Qishan played some hard ball demanding Chusan returned, but eventually a compromise was made. Elliot agreed to stop British ships from seizing Chinese vessels and blockading the ports and in return the Chinese would still hold the prisoners, but they would improve their living conditions. To show good faith, Qishan released poor old Stanton from his prison in Canton and handed him over to Elliot. The situation did not satisfy the British, but while they danced around with diplomacy, more and more troops from India were being brought to Chusan and the most fearsome weapon Britain had at its disposal had just arrived, the Nemesis.    I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.  Lin Zexu’s efforts against opium were not going well enough and was losing favor with Emperor Daoguang, the British were winning battles and taking territory. How will the Qing Dynasty rid themselves of the invaders? Join us next time to find out. 

Last time we spoke, the British government was walking a tight rope between getting their tea fix and not being banned from trade with China. When Britain ended the East India company’s monopoly over the China trade, they assumed they could not be implicated in the illegal opium trade and they were soon proved very very wrong. Britain had managed to fix their silver problem, but at the cost of draining China’s silver and that tight rope they were walking, well they fell. China was becoming chaotic again, revolts were likely to be on the horizon. The Qing dynasty had had enough of the situation and began to crack down in the 1830’s more and more so. Now China is sending one man who had proven he knew how to stop the opium trade and soon he would wage war on the illicit trade.   This episode is Lin Zexu vs big opium   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on the history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War.   Lin Zexu gave the strongest and swiftest voice of approval and he was no ordinary official. Lin Zexu was the son of a schoolteacher and proved to be a great student. He passed the brutal competitive examination in Beijing in 1811 at the age of 26 emerging top of his class. Working as a judge in the 1820’s he earned a reputation for fairness and the nickname “Lin, Clear as heaven” or “Lin the Clear sky” which was a testament to his incorruptibility. Over the years of his work he earned great renown as a pragmatic administrator deeply versed in how to deal with water management and flood relief. He was a rare official who could be relied upon to put the welfare of the people ahead of his own gain. He was frankly, incorruptible and because of this, in 1838 he was Emperor Daoguangs favorite minister and reached a rank comparable to Deng Tingzhen in Canton while being 10 years younger than him. He was a beacon of honesty and virtue in a time when the Qing government was full of corruption. One and a million as they say.    Lin Zexu’s primary concerns had always been domestic, he had no dealings with foreigners as that was exclusively a Canton issue. Foreign relations were very far from his mind and this shaped his way of thinking. His main concerns were with the Chinese, not the foreigners when tackling the problem of opium. Lin Zexu was quite conservative and his support for suppressing opium was based on his abiding faith in moral suasion. When Huang Juezi made his proposal it marked a turning point for Lin Zexu. He seized on the proposal almost like a religious crusade and immediately offered the Emperor a detailed action plan. He recommended the confiscation and destruction of opium pipes and other equipment for using the drug. Local moral campaigns, education campaigns to teach the evils of opium to the people and active suppression of opium dens and corrupt officials. He also recommended medical treatments to help addicts wean off opium. He described various elixirs used to combat opium addiction.   One thing of interest to me as my first degree is in neurobehavioral science, Lin Zexu talked about giving patients a mix of small amounts of opium combined with herbs that would make the patients sick. This idea has been used in the field of addiction and can be effective. The Idea is based on operant conditioning, by linking to the act of taking opium with a negative stimulus you might get the patient to be more and more reluctant to take the drug. I will attest this in practice is a hit or miss depending on the drug or action. Anyways Lin Zexu’s action plan was quite formidable and was hitting the issue at the source at multiple angles.    After sending his action plan to the Emperor, Lin Zexu took the initiative to test it out in his provinces of Hunan and Hubei. In august of 1838 he launched the campaign first setting out to hospitals to treat addicts. Then he jailed dealers, issued proclamations condemning the use of the drug and ordered local officials to round up and destroy whatever opium or opium using equipment they could find. Reports began to pour into Beijing about the success of Lin Zexu’s plan. Tens of thousands of pipes were and ounces of opium were confiscated. Mind you 10 thousands ounces of opium was around 10 chests worth, during a time when 30,000 chests were coming into China annually. The pipes and opium were burnt publicly, which was a crucial element to the plan as they needed to prove to the public they indeed were destroying the substance, otherwise the public would assume they were taking it for themselves! Lin Zexu’s reports to the Emperor were increasingly triumphant and their tone pressed the urgency to unleash the action plan outside Hunan and Hubei. In September of 1838 Lin Zexu declared opium to be the largest problem the Qing dynasty was facing. “Before opium was widespread, those who smoked it only harmed themselves. The punishments of canning and exile were enough to keep them in line. But when its evil influence has penetrated into the whole country, the effect is tremendous. Laws should be put into rigid enforcement. If left in a lax state, then after a few decades, there will be no soldier in this Central Empire to fight against invaders, nor money to bear the military expenses. I have the fear, that if the evil be suffered to grow at this critical moment there may be no more chance for remedy”.    In October of 1838, the Daoguang Emperor was leaning heavily towards initiating the suppression campaign while some of his officials still believed he might legalize opium. Those same officials were feeding Charles Elliot stories that at any moment the substance would be legalized and this influenced his actions. Then on November the 8th a Manchu official named Qishan who was the governor general of Zhili province reported the largest drug bust in the history of the Qing empire to that point. The confiscated opium was found in Tianjin, not too far away from Beijing. Qishan stated the opium had come from Canton through the Cantonese traders who managed to ship it north through various means. The major drug bust indicated to the Qing court, perhaps they needed to perform the same action in Canton. Emperor Daoguang then made the decision to summon Lin Zexu to Beijing in December of 1838. After the meeting, Emperor Daoguang tasked Lin Zexu with a mission to obliterate the opium trade in Canton. Lin Zexu would travel south as an imperial commissioner, holding the power to act on behalf of the Emperor, answerable to no other local officials. He would have command over all naval forces at Canton and Deng Tingzhen would give him support. Thus in early January of 1839, while Charles Elliot expected legalization of opium to be declared at any moment, Lin Zexu made his way to end the illicit trade once and for all.   Charles Elliot was being fed false information about the ongoing court battle over the opium question in China and he worried about his lack of authority over the British subjects in Canton. If the opium smugglers provoked a crisis under his watch, he was placed in quite a predicament. The British traders and Chinese did not actually know what Elliot’s authority was and on many occasions tried to pry the information out of him. The English newspapers for example repeatedly asked him to clarify what his authorization was, but he refused to ever answer.  Elliots became increasingly concerned with British sailors getting into fights with local chinese and organized a naval police force to deal with the issue. Yet when he began doing this he was scolded by Palmerston for overstepping his authority. “You have no power of your own authority to make any such regulations. The establishment of a system of police at Whampoa within the dominions of the Emperor of China was in violation of the absolute right of sovereignty enjoyed by independent states”.    By the early winter of 1839 it seemed governor general Deng Tingzhen’s ongoing efforts to crackdown on the Chinese opium smugglers was working. As noted by William Jardine “Not a broker to be seen, nor an Opium pipe; they have all vanished. The authorities are seizing smokers, dealers and shopkeepers innumerable. We must hope for better times and brisker deliveries”. Up to this point Deng Tingzhen limited his actions towards the Chinese and did not target any foreigners. Occasional shots were fired between government boats and foreign smuggling vessels, but nothing had gotten out of hand. Then on December 3rd, a small drug bust was performed and 2 Chinese workers were caught smuggling opium for a British merchant. In response to the incident, Deng Tingzhen decided to make an official statement to the foreign community. On december 12 a small force of Qing soldiers went to the gates of the foreign factories and hammered a wooden cross on the gate indicating they were about to execute a convicted Chinese opium dealer. The site of the execution was to be in front of the foreign factories, obviously Deng Tingzheng was sending a message to the foreigners, that they were responsible for the man's execution.    Its hard to know who acted out first. Elliot was at Whampoa and did not witness the event to come and those involved on the British side said they had no involvement. Its been theorized British sailors may have perpetuated it, regardless some foreigners decided that the execution in front of their homes was too distrubed and began to tear down the gallows being erected. The local Chinese soldiers did nothing to resist, some even began to help tear it down. A crowd of Chinese formed to watch the event and its remained peaceful, until some rowdy British began shoving their way through the crowd. These British hit several Chinese with sticks and some threw rocks, as you can imagine soon fights began and a full riot burst. Several thousand Chinese came and began pelting the foreigner with rocks prompting the Chinese soldiers to intervene and escort the foreigners back into the factories. In the end the gallow was torn down, but the convicted Chinese smuggler was executed elsewhere.    Palmerston demanded to know what had occurred, he was furious the British subjects had the audacity to get involved in Chinese affairs. “On what grounds did the traders imagine themselves entitled to interfere with the arrangements made by the Chinese officers of justice for carrying into effect, in a chinese town, the orders of their superior authorities”. Elliot was quite shaken by the situation. He knew he had to do something to thwart any further incident, but he had no real authority to do anything. He wrote back to Palmerston “that the danger and shame of the opium trade had reached a point where it was falling by rapid degrees into the hands of more and more desperate men”. Elliot then decided to take firm action, on december 18 he issued a proclamation ordering all British vessels carrying opium to depart the inner waters of Canton immediately. He had no authority to confiscate their cargoes, nor to arrest them and thus he fell back on the authority of the Qing government. If any British vessels refused, he would personally turn them over to the Chinese “Her Majesty’s Government will in no way interpose if the Chinese Government shall think fit to seize and confiscate the same”. Simultaneously he wrote the governor of Canton pledging his support for the campaign against opium.    The opium traders were all very very pissed off. The superintendent, Elliot was supposed to protect them! James Matheson complained to the British press “that Elliot had adopted the novel course of assisting the Qing government in this, against his own countrymen! It appears to be the intention of Captain Elliot to offer himself as a kind of chief of the chinese preventive service”. Another execution of a convicted chinese opium smuggler took place in february of 1839, this time it was done much faster and with a large guard. William Jardine left Canton in late January of 1839, leaving Matheson to watch over the business. Enroute to Canton was Lin Zexu who was being counseled by many Qing officials. Qishan warned Lin Zexu not to start a war against the foreigners. Another official Gong Zizhen who was prolifically anti opium, advised that if Lin should try to shut off the source of opium directly at Canton, then both the foreign and Chinese dealers might start a revolt and China might not have sufficient military power to control them both. He recommended a gradual approach, first take action to reduce imports and only against the Chinese merchants and consumers while simultaneously increasing the military defenses at canton. He argued that China’s existing naval forces could not possibly match the British and that efforts should be made to increase coastal and inland defenses. With all that being complete, in time they would be able to shut off the foreign merchants completely. Enroute to Canton, Lin Zexu visited Bao Shichen a official who had written since the 1820’s on the subject of shutting down foreign trade to prevent the drain of silver from china. Bao Shichen told him “to clear a muddy stream you must purify the source. To put a law into effect you must first create order within”. Lin Zexu took this to mean he should first begin arresting all the government officials who had violated the ban on opium. Then he must completely shut off the flow of foreign opium imports coming into Canton. Bao Shichen would later state that Lin Zexu misunderstood him completely and that shutting down foreign trade was too dangerous.    In March of 1839, Canton was anxious about Lin Zexu’s arrival. Everyone knew the great powers invested upon him, but nobody knew how he would use them. He arrived on March 10th and immediately struck hard. He began with mass arrests of the known Chinese smugglers and put up proclamations announcing his mission was to destroy the opium trade in its entirety. He ordered marchants to abandon the trade and for users to hand over their pipes to be smashed. Thousands of pounds of opium and tens of thousands of pipes were confiscated. In 3 months after his arrival, he would arrest 5 times the amount of people that Deng Tingzhen had done in his 2 year reign. As things were going along successfully with the Chinese affairs, Lin Zexu then decided to address the foreign merchants. On march 18 he issued an edict ordering the British merchants to surrender all of their opium to him and gave them 3 days to comply. The Hong merchants as the traditional mediators between the foreigners and the Qing government bore the heaviest blame and Lin Zexu began interrogating them all. Many were brought before him on their knees under threat of execution if they should lie.    The foreign merchants initially made no efforts toward surrendering their opium, they all wanted to see how far Lin Zexu would actually go. Lin Zexu was not accustomed to being disobeyed and quickly lost his patience. By March 19 he announced that no foreign merchants would be allowed to leave the Canton factories until they gave up their opium and signed papers stating they would never trade the drug again in China under penalty of death. Boom. If they continued to defy him after the 3 day, he would execute Houqua and other Hong merchants on the morning of March 22. The Hong merchants all panicked and pleaded with the British merchants to help. The British caved in someone and agreed to hand over 1000 chests of opium on the morning of march 22. Word came that the amount of chests would not be enough and thus the British simply held back.    Houqua and some other Hong merchants were paraded around the Canton square with iron collars and chains. Lin Zexu threatened to execute them if British merchants did not hand over the opium, but the deadline had passed and many were suspicious if Lin Zexu was bluffing. One person who did not think Lin Zexu was bluffing was Elliot who was in Macao when he heard of the situation. Elliot feared the British merchants would all be put on trial and executed. Elliot resolved to save them by standing up to the imperial commissioner, but also while trying to appease him. Elliot wrote to Palmerston “to save the merchants a firm tone and attitude was all that he needed to efuse the unjust and menacing disposition of the Imperial commissioner, but that he would also appease him by using his best efforts for fulfilling the reasonable purpose of the Qing government”.    Elliot arrived at the Canton factories at sundown of March 24 in a rowboat in full captain's uniform with a cocked hat and his sword in hand. He proclaimed to the merchants “given the imminent hazard of life and property and the dark and violent natures of Lin Zexu’s threats, they should begin immediate preparations to evacuate the Canton factories. If Lin Zexu refused to grant them passage from Canton to Macao within 3 days, Elliot would conclude that the Chinese intended to hold them hostage. So long as their proceedings were moderate, defensible and just I will remain with you to my last gulp!”. That night Lin Zexu ordered all the Chinese staff in the factories to leave. The cooks, linguists, porters, servants and such all packed up and left. Then Lin Zexu shut off all supplies from entering the factories and surrounded them with soldiers. The foreign factories had become a prison for roughly 350 people, not all of whom were British. There were Americans, Parsis, some Dutch alongside the British. Lin Zexu was careful to order all guards to not provoke nor molest the foreigners, he wanted everything to be peaceful. Nobody was going to starve however, provisions were plentiful in the factories, however the merchants found cooking for themselves disastrous. One report came from the Americans who said Robert Frobes attempt at ham and eggs came out a hard black mass approximating the sole of a shoe.    Elliot was terrified they were all going to starve or be executed. Elliot resolved that they had to cooperate with Lin Zexu and hand over all the opium for if they didn't, he feared they would all be executed. In the name of her majesty, Elliot ordered everyone to surrender the opium to him and in return he would sign a promissory note guaranteeing that the British government would pay them its fair market value. The offer seemed too good to be true to the merchants. The Qing authorities could at any moment seize all the opium by force and with it their tremendous losses. James Matheson said “our surrender is the most fortunate thing that could have happened”. Throughout the afternoon on march 27th, the merchants brought Elliot statements of the amount of opium under the control of their firms and he in turn signed notes of guarantee payments by the British government. All told the amount was 20, 283 chests with a market value of roughly 10 million dollars. There was one glaring problem with this solution, Elliot had absolutely no authority to do it.   Elliots decision would turn out to be the crux of many events to come. Elliot had no authority nor any instructions to do what he did. It seems in hindsight it was a rash decision made in panic. From Elliots point of view he had to immediately save the lives of the British subjects and the overall trade relations between Britain and China. After making the choice he wrote to Palmerston “I am without doubt, that the safety of a great mass of human life hung upon my determination”. All the merchants who went along with it knew full well Elliots did not have the authority to purchase 10 million dollars worth of opium on behalf of the Crown, but because he had been so ambiguous in the past about his authority, they could all play coy that they went along with it believing he did have the authority. The signed document would give them a strong case against the British government for compensation if and when it came to that. Facing the choice of having their contraband seized by Elliot or Lin Zexu, it was a no brainer they had better chances dealing with their own government to get reimbursement. Both Elliot and the traders assumed there would be a compensation of sorts and with it the termination of the Indian Chinese opium trade for good. They had no idea how events in Britain would unfold as a result of all of this.    And so Elliot wrote to Lin Zexu informing him he would be surrendering all of the opium, which would be the single largest seizure of opium recorded in Chinese history up to that point. Lin Zexu wrote to the emperor on april 12 1839 after the seizure detailing how enormous the success was. He got them to seize all the opium in a short time and they made little conflict over it, hell no military force was really necessary “naturally they were cowed into submission”. Lin Zexu recommended they show benevolence towards the foreigners, to forgive them of their past crimes and send them a large gift of livestock, since he imagined they were starving and they no longer had their trade to support them. Yet Lin Zexu did not immediately release them, Elliot was livid! Lin Zexu told Elliot they could only be granted to leave once ¾’s of the opium had been collected a process that would take weeks, possibly months. Elliot sent a secret dispatch to Palmerston begging him for a naval fleet “it appear to me, my lord, that the response to all these unjust violences should be made in the form of a swift and heavy blow, prefaced by one word of written communication”. Elliot further argued for naval blockade of Canton and the Yangtze River, the capture of Chusan island all followed up by a northern expedition to demand the “disgrace and punishment” of Lin Zexu and Deng Tingzhen. Emperor Daoguang should be forced to apologize for the “indignities heaped upon the Queen and to pay an indemnity to satisfy British losses. The Qing government must be made to understand its obligations to the rest of the world.    It would take 6 weeks for all the opium to be collected and the Qing officials expected the opium to be sold off to reimburse the countless Chinese traders that had lost out. Emperor Daoguang however ordered Lin Zexu to destroy it all, and that is just what he did. I would like to mention at this time, I covered what is to come, the first Opium war on my personal channel, its a 45 minute or so documentary so please check it out it would mean a lot to me. But what I also want to let you know is there was a British/Chinese movie made on the Opium war called…the Opium War haha, which came out in 1997. I won't sugar coat it, not a amazing film by any measure, but the scene where Lin Zexu destroys the opium is quite impressive and does more merit to the story then me narrating it, so check it out if you would like! Over the course of 3 weeks in June, Lin Zexu destroyed the opium at a specially built site near the Tiger’s Mouth. An american missionary named Elijah Bridgeman witnessed it and there are artist renditions of the event. In rectangular pools around 7 feet deep the opium balls were crushed and tossed in. Chinese workers would stir the thick opium filled water into a froth then cover it all with lime and salt for a few days before casting it out to sea.   Lord Palmerston learnt of the confiscated opium from the traders themselves before Elliots letter arrived. The letter that informed Palmerston was from James Matheson who was launching a campaign to make the government pay up. Suddenly petitions from all the merchants poured into Palmerstons office. A bunch of drug dealers were shaking down the British government to pay for their lost drugs. There was another major problem, since march of 1839 all trade with China had halted and there was no way to tell when it would open back up. Ships full of cotton textiles were stuck at Macao and tea shipments were stuck in Whampoa. All the non opium traders were petitioning Britain to do something and fast. Collectively the domestic manufacturers of goods that went to Canton held significant political power, much greater than the opium claimants. They demanded “prompt, vigorous and decided measures to reopen Canton and put the regular China trade on a more secure and permanent basis”. What they wanted was a treaty, done via force if necessary.   William Jardine arrived in Britain in September right as the news from Canton was spilling in and began a lobbying campaign. For the british government the talk of the opium trade was embarrassing and they wished to make the entire matter disappear as quickly as possible. However the amount of money owed to the opium traders was enormous and the Treasury of England was in no state to compensate them. Palmerston was in a terrible situation and he brought the issue of China to a cabinet meeting at Windsor castle on October 1 of 1839. He was being bombarded by business lobbyists demanding action, Elliots letter pleading for help and the English press. Britain was involved in a war in the Ottoman Empire against Russia, with a dispute between Maine and New Brunswick and an invasion of Afghanistan thus all the ministers did not want to distract themselves too much with the China problem. Palmerston offered a quick solution, he tossed in front of the cabinet several maps of the Chinese coast and explained how a small British squadron could blockade China’s crucial ports and rivers to force the Qing government into submission. The plan was almost identical to a plan formulated by James Matheson in 1836 after Napiers death. The Prime minister Lord Melbourne was not so much concerned with the military aspect of the plan, but how were they going to pay the 10 million to the opium merchants, they had no financial resources to spare. They did not want to take on anymore government debt, the debt was already high after the Napoleonic wars. Also it was going to look terrible bad that the British government was paying off drug dealers. Then the solution came, the brand new secretary at war, Thomas Macaulay made a suggestion to Palmerston, a rather out of the box idea. Why not make China pay for it all.   Palmerston put forward Macaulay’s idea and the cabinet agreed boom. The matter was settled, a naval squadron, not too large would be dispatched to obtain reparation from China for Lin Zexu’s taking of Elliot and the other British subjects hostage. On may 21st of 1839, Lin Zexu finally allowed the foreigners to leave Canton and Elliot ordered all British subjects to abandon the factories and go to macao. Despite this more tense events would follow.    In early July there was a drunken melee in Hong Kong harbor. The comprador of the British ship Carnatic was arrested and the sailors of the Carnatic demanded his return, but the Chinese refused. Thus 30 sailors on July 12th from the Carnatic and Mangalore, both ships owned by Jardine Matheson & Co went ashore and to the village of Jianshazui on the Kowloon Peninsula. They all proceed to get drunk off Samshu, a fortified rice wine and vandalized the local temple and beat to death a man named Lin Weixi. Elliot was livid when he heard the news, he was trying to bide time in the hopes Britain was sending reinforcements. He immediately tried to rush to Jianshazui to bribe the family of the victim, but the bribery was to no avail. When Lin Zexu heard of the affair he demanded that the culprits be handed over for Chinese justice. At this time Lin Zexu he had just received new regulations from the Emperor that formully mandated the death sentence for opium users in China and for the first time also for foreigners who sold opium.The British assumed it was a death sentence to give the men up. Lin also put up postings that if any Chinese killed a foreigner unjustly they would be executed. Instead of giving up the men, Elliot called for a court of inquiry and charged 5 British sailors with riot and assault, but brought no murder or manslaughter chrages. Lin Zexu accused the British of denying China’s sovereignty by issuing a court of their own.   Elliot then invited Lin Zexu to send government officials to observe a new trial for the said sailors, but Lin Zexu refused and promulgated an edict that forbade anyone from giving food or water to all the British citizens in China under penalty of death. The situation was growing more and more tense and Lin Zexu tossed Elliot a rope. On August 17 he ordered Elliot to hand over the murderer without specifiyng the perpetrators identity. Thus the idea was that Elliot could simply send whomever he wanted and the matter could be settled. From Elliots point of view however, to handover any British citizen would cause an uproar back home and he refused to do so.     On August 24, an English passenger aboard a boat near Hong Kong was attacked at night. The Chinese stripped the man naked, cut off his ear and stuffed it in his mouth. Rumors began to spread that Lin Zexu was amassing thousands of soldiers to invade Macao. Then the Portuguese governor general of Macao, Don Adraio Accacio a Silveira Pinto told Elliot he had been ordered by the Chinese to expel the British from the colony. He also told Elliot that the Chinese were secretly forming a military force to seize all the British in Macao. That very same day 2 ships belonging to Jardine Matheson & Co arrived to Macao, the Harriet towing the Black Joke. Living up to its name, the Black Joke was covered in blood all over her decks and her crew was missing. The crew of the Harriet reported that unidentified Chinese had boarded the Black Joke as it passed the island of Lantao and massacred the entire crew except for a single sailor they had rescued. Governor Pinto was so alarmed by this development he simply ordered the British to leave immediately.   Elliot finally took action. Elliot ordered all the British women and children to depart aboard some merchant ships and sail to Hong Kong Island. With no more hostages at stake Elliot now felt free to make a counterattack if necessary, but for now he would bide his time hoping that Britain was sending a squadron. His hopes were raised when a warship from India arrived, the Volage which held 26 cannons, she also brought with her news that another warship, the Hyacinth and 18 gunner was on its way shortly. Thus Elliot and all the men boarded the ships and sailed to the Kowloon peninsula and set up a flotilla just above Hong Kong island.   Lin Zexu got a report of the exodus of Macao and felt he had finally won and wrote to Emperor Daoguang “no doubt they have on their ships a certain stock of dried provisions; but they will very soon find themselves without the heavy, greasy meat dishes for which they have such a passion”. On September 1 the Emperor sent Lin Zexu a letter asking if the rumors were true that the barbarians had purchased female children and used them in diabolical rites. Lin Zexu replied that the foreigners employed Chinese adults as plantation workers and miners and a few children, but he did not believe that any black magic was involved in their employment. The Emperor also asked if the confiscated opium contained human flesh which he theorized might explain the illicit drugs preternatural addictive powers. Lin had heard these ridiculous rumors before, but he could not contradict the Emperor as it amounted to Lese Majeste, so he replied that the opium may have contained flesh of crows that second handedly eat human flesh.   After dealing with the Emperor letters which said a lot about the perspective of Beijing on the matter, Lin went to Macao to thank the Portuguese governor for his help. Then Lin Zezu learnt of the British flotilla at Hong Kong. Lin Zexu began to issue orders forbidding the supply of food or water to British ships under the penalty of death. Again the Chinese staff were removed and Chinese war junks began to surround the kowloon peninsula and Hong Kong harbor. Signs were raised stating that the wells and streams had been poisoned.   Elliot tried one last ditch effort at diplomacy and took 3 ships, the 14 gun cutter Louisa, the 6 gun schooner Pearl and the 18 gun Volage to Kowloon to demand provisions. They soon ran into 3 anchored Chinese war junks who were blocking them from landing. Elliot sent an interpreter to demand they be allowed food and water. The Chinese captains refused to comply and Elliot said if they did not comply by 2pm that day he would be forced to bombard them. 2pm came with no indication of provisions being sent and no response from the Chinese. So Captain Henry Smith of the Volage fired on the nearest Chinese war junk and the first shot of the First Opium War had been made.   According to Adam Elmslie a young superintendent clerk was witnessed the event Henry Smith ordered the volley and “The Junks then triced up their Boarding nettings, and came into action with us at half pistol shot; our guns were well served with grape and round shot; the first shot we gave them they opened a tremendous and well directed fire upon us, from all their Guns (each Junk had 10 Guns, and they brought all these over on the side which we engaged them on) ... The Junk's fire, Thank God! was not enough depressed, or ... none would have lived to tell the Story.—19 of their Guns we received in [the] mainsail,—the first Broadside I can assure you was not pleasant.”   Thus the outdated cannons aboard the Chinese war junks were aimed too high completely missed all the British ships. The ships continued to exchange fire and the shore batteries opened fire to support the war junks. By 4:30pm the British had used up almost all their ammunition and made a getaway with the war junks in quik pursuit. Adam Elmslie had this to say when the fire fight recommenced.  “The junks immediately made sail after the Louisa and at 4:45 [pm] they came up with the English vessels. We hove the vessel in stays on their starboard Beam, and the 'Pearl' on the larboard [portside] Bow of the van Junk, and gave them three such Broadsides that it made every Rope in the vessel grin again.—We loaded with Grape the fourth time, and gave them gun for gun.—The shrieking on board was dreadful, but it did not frighten me; this is the very first day I ever shed human blood, and I hope it will be the last”. During the second engagement the Chinese war junks retreated to their previous positions and the 3 British ships returned to the flotilla causing a stalemate. The captains of the Chinese war junks sent word to Lin Zexu of a great naval victory over the British claiming to have sunk a number of enemy ships and inflicting 50 casualties. The truth was there were no British casualties and no ships sunk however, in fact the Chinese had 2 killed and 6 wounded. Captain Henry of the Volage bagged Elliot to let him attack the Chinese war junks near Hong Kong harbor certain of victory, but Elliot refused fearing the outbreak of a wider battle and wanting the foreign ministers approval first before escalating things anymore. Despite the reported victory of the Chinese war junks, food and water was sent to the British ships. Lin Zexu was facing a personal and painful problem, an excruciating hernia. Chinese doctors were trying to help him to no avail, so Lin Zexu visited the office of one Dr. Peter Parker, no not spiderman, this was a Yale educated missionary. Parker fitted Lin Zexu with a truss that helped with the pain. After this Lin Zexu began reviewing the military situation at hand, at this time he wrote a poem about the battle of Kowloon “A vast display of Imperial might had shaken all the foreign tribes/And if they now confess their guilt we shall not be too hard on them.”. The Chinese began to war game while at Hong Kong the Hyacinth arrived to reinforce Elliots Flotilla. Lin Zexu continued to demand the surrender of the sailors who killed Lin Weixi, but as time went on the anger caused by the event had dissipated. Then a sailor allegedly drown from one of Jardine Mathesons & Co’s ships and the Chinese volunteered to let that dead sailor be identified as the murderer, case closed.  Yet trade between Britain and China did not resume and Lin Zexu kept demanding all those who wished to trade in China sign the contract promising not to deal opium under penalty of death. Elliot told the traders not to sign the waivers and to simply sit tight for the time being as he waited for a British fleet. Some of the traders undercut his orders however and went ahead and signed the waiver and thus were allowed to trade legal cargo. One of these traders was Captain Warner of the British cargo ship Thomas Coutts and Lin Zexu was so impressed by the man he asked him to take a letter back to Britain for Queen Victoria. The letter was a remarkably frank document that explained the situation in Canton. It described all the evils of the opium trade and how it was hurting China and the response the Qing government was making to the opium crisis. It also stipulated how they could amend the situation to get rid of the opium menace and resume legal trade. Captain Warner alleges he made good on the promise to bring the letter, first to Lord Palmerston, but his office refused to receive the letter, and there is little evidence Queen Victoria read the letter in question. The Times of London did publish the letter however, it seems Captain Warner must have simply given it to them in the end. When Lin Zexu found out another British warship had joined the Flotilla he took action. He suddenly proclaimed the corpse of the drowned sailor was no longer sufficient for the murder of Lin Weixi and renewed his demands for the murders to be handed over. Failure to comply would result in the expulsion of the entire British colony. In the fall of 1839, 38 British trading vessels and 28 trading companies aboard them remained in Hong Kong harbor. Elliot begged the governor of Macao to let them come back, but he refused fearing the Portuguese would be dragged into what looked like an impending war. Then on October 20th, Elliot received a letter from Palmerston informing him that early next summer, 16 British warships with 4000 men were enroute to rescue the flotilla and to sit tight. However in the meantime more captains were signing the waiver and at the end of October Lin Zexu ordered all British ships to leave within 3 days time. Elliot set sail aboard the Volage with Hyacinth backing him up, for the Bogue as the British called it, it is also known as the Humen, it is a narrow strait in the Pearl River Delta. When Elliots ships reached Chuanbi near the mouth of the river on November 2nd, they came face to face with a Chinese fleet consisting of 15 war junks and 14 fire ships commanded by an old and revered Admiral named Guan Tianpei. Elliots ships came to a halt when he ran into Guan's fleet and they began to exchange a series of messages trying to ferret out the intentions of the other. Guan threatened to seize either ship if it was holding the murderer of Lin Weixi “All I want is the murderous barbarian who killed Lin Weixi. As soon as a time is named when he will be given up, my ships will return into the Bogue. Otherwise, by no means whatsoever shall I accede”. Elliot failed to persuade Guan that he was no threat and the admiral fleet began to maneuver into a position to attack the 2 British Warships. As this was occurring, the Royal Saxon arrived on the scene on its way to Canton. Elliot was anxious to not allow another Captain to sign the opium waiver and fired a warning shot across the Royal Saxon’s bows to prevent the ship from entering the river. Guan proceeded to anchor hit ships in between the British warships and the Royal Saxon. Captain Smith pleaded with Elliot to allow him to attack before it was too late and Elliot gave in. The 2 British warships closed in and began to fire their broadsides. The stationary guns aboard the Chinese war junks could not be aimed effectively and fired right over the British masts. One lucky British volley hit a war junks magazines causing it to explode tremendously and sink. This caused the Chinese captains to panic as the Volage continued to score hits at point blank range. 3 more junks were hit and sunk and some of the crews aboard other ships literally jumped overboard. The entire Chinese fleet baegan to scatter and flee, all except for one ship, Admiral Guan’s which suicidally stayed to return fire. Guan’s ship posed a minimal threat and Elliot impressed by the old Admiral’s courage, ordered Smith to stop the barrage and allow the damaged flagship of Admiral Guan to sail off. The Chinese fleet had 1 junk exploded, 3 sunk, countless damaged and the Volage sustained light damage to its sails while Hyacinth’s mast received a hit from a 12 pound cannon ball. 15 Chinese sailors were dead with 1 British wounded. The battle of Chuanbi was over and the way to Canton was now open. News of the sea battle reached England and the government remained in denial about the cause of the conflict IE: the opium trade. A group of lobbyists led by William Jardine began to pelt the British press to save the opium trade while simultaneously demanding the British government reimburse the opium merchants. Parliament began to debate how to go about the situation and there emerged an anti-war camp and a war camp. One anti war advocate, Sir William Ewart Gladstone said   “Does he [Macaulay] know that the opium smuggled intoChina comes exclusively from British ports, that is, from Bengal and through Bombay? That we require no preventive service to put down this illegal traffic? We have only to stop the sailing of the smuggling vessels…it is a matter of certainty that if we stopped the exportation of opium from Bengal and broke up the depot at Lintin [near Canton] and checked the cultivation of it in Malwa [an Indian province] and put a moral stigma on it, we should greatly cripple if not extinguish the trade in it. They [the Chinese government] gave you notice to abandon your contraband trade. When they found you would not do so they had the right to drive you from their coasts on account of your obstinacy in persisting with this infamous and atrocious traffic…justice, in my opinion, is with them [the Chinese]; and whilst they, the Pagans, the semi-civilized barbarians have it on their side, we, the enlightened and civilized Christians, are pursuing objects at variance both with justice and with religion…a war more unjust in its origin, a war calculated in its progress to cover this country with a permanent disgrace, I do not know and I have not read of. Now, under the auspices of the noble Lord [Macaulay], that flag is become a pirate flag, to protect an infamous traffic.” Palmerston blamed the purchasers of the opium and not the sellers and that the effect of halting the opium exports to China would just drive Turkey and Persia to sell it instead. “I wonderwhat the House would have said to me if I had come down to it with a large naval estimate for a number of revenue cruisers…for the purpose of preserving the morals of the Chinese people, who were disposed to buy what other people were disposed to sell them?”   After 3 days to debate the house of commons voted on April 9th of 1840 271 vs 262 to proceed for war. On 20 February 1840 Palmerston sent 2 letters, 1 to Elliot and 1 to Emperor Doaguang. The letter to the Emperor informed the Qing dynasty that Britain had already sent  a military expeditionary force to the Chinese coast. These measures of hostility on the part of Great Britain against China are not only justified, but even rendered absolutely necessary, by the outrages which have been committed by the Chinese Authorities against British officers and Subjects, and these hostilities will not cease, until a satisfactory arrangement shall have been made by the Chinese Government. Palmerston’s letter to Elliot instructed him to set up a blockade of the Pearl River and forward the letter from Palmerston to Emperor Daoguang. After that Elliot was to capture the Chusan Islands, blockade the mouth of the Yangtze River, start negotiations with the Qing officials. Palmerston also issued a list of objectives that the British government wanted accomplished, with said objectives being Demand to be treated with the respect due to a royal envoy by the Qing authorities. Secure the right of the British superintendent to administer justice to British subjects in China. Seek recompense for destroyed British property. Gain most favoured trading status with the Chinese government. Request the right for foreigners to safely inhabit and own private property in China. Ensure that, if contraband is seized in accordance with Chinese law, no harm comes to the person(s) of British subjects carrying illicit goods in China. End the system by which British merchants are restricted to trading solely in Canton. Ask that the cities of Canton, Amoy, Shanghai, Ningpo, and the province of northern Formosa be freely opened to trade from all foreign powers. Secure island(s) along the Chinese coast that can be easily defended and provisioned, or exchange captured islands for favourable trading terms. It was left to Elliot as to how these objectives would be fulfilled, but noted that while negotiation would be a preferable outcome, he did not trust that diplomacy would succeed, writing; To sum up in a few words the result of this Instruction, you will see, from what I have stated, that the British Government demands from that of China satisfaction for the past and security for the future; and does not choose to trust to negotiation for obtaining either of these things; but has sent out a Naval and Military Force with orders to begin at once to take the Measures necessary for attaining the object in view.   And so because of a drug cartel, run by some ruthless characters like Jardine & Matheson, Britain choose to go to war with the Qing Dynasty and begun a century of humiliation for China. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.  The incorruptible Lin Zexu was the perfect man for the job of putting an end to the opium problem. However the nefarious opium dealers would not go down without a fight and in the end this all would result in the first opium war. Buckle up it's about to get messy.   

Last time we spoke about the numerous attempts of Britain to open the markets of the Qing dynasty. First we talked about the disastrous and quite embarrassing Macartney mission to China which would begin a series of more and more bad relations. After Macartney’s mission came a significant increase in opium export to China via India on the part of the East India company. The British were literally and economically dependent on Chinese tea and were beginning to use nefarious methods to get their fix. Then came the Amherst mission which was even more of a catastrophe than the Macartney mission, the man did not even get to meet the Emperor. And so the Canton system of trade went unchanged, but for how long could this system manage the ever increasing demand from the British for more trade? Events are about to unfold which will see a entire nation swept up into a drug cartel.   This episode is how to start a drug cartel in the 19th century   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on the history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. The year was 1830 and the 13 factories of Canton were rustling with business. The rules that governed the hundred or so foreigners who populated the factories were as strict as ever. After the Amherst mission George Staunton remained in Canton and took up a job working for the East India Company. What had changed the most since Staunton had come to Canton as a little boy was that competition was increasing. By 1830 the private traders taking up residence in the Canton foreign factories increased and they came from numerous nations such as India, Armenia, Britain, America and such. They were all competing with the East India Company which held a monopoly over British trade in Canton, but the private British traders now outnumbered the company 2 to 1. All of the private traders resented the company, as one scornful American put it “by its improper interferences and assumptions of superiority the company has earned the same dislike and unpopularity which a despotic and tyrannical government has entitled it to, in all other places where its influence extends”. The company was a mammoth, many of its armed vessels were at Canton, but it had become sluggish and slow to react. The trade between India and Canton which was making private merchants filthy rich was not being carried on the company’s ships, the reason being that that cargo was opium.    Some private merchants built ships and anchored them 60 miles away from Canton on some outlying islands, not daring to come any closer to the port. They would station their “receiving ships” there at places like Lintin Island far away from the Canton authorities and these ships would act as floating warehouses for drug deals. Foreign vessels came from India with cargoes of opium and would stop at Lintin, offload their chests and then proceed to Canton with their cargo contained no contraband and thus clean for inspection. Their captains came to port and met with Hong merchants, though some dealt with black market merchants. After agreeing on a price, the foreign merchant took their payment for the opium and the Chinese dealers sent their own boats to Lintin to retrieve the shipments. The warehouse ships anchored at Lintin did not own the cargo, they were merely holding it for other unknown merchants who assumed the risks of getting it there. The Chinese smugglers then took the responsibility for the illicit drugs when they smuggled it into China. The Chinese smugglers also bribed government officials to ensure no inspections would be made at Lintin island or that such inspections would be announced in advance. One captain of a warehouse boat, Robert Bennet Forbes earned 800,000 dollars of today’s currency per year for these operations.   The opium grew magnificently well in India and the East India Company would go bankrupt without the profit it gained from the illicit trade. Although the East India Company consistently avoided carrying opium to China on its own ships, that did not mean it did not take part in the trade network. The company dominated the opium supply within India and held auctions in Calcutta where it would sell to the smugglers. Everyone got a piece, the East India Company, the foreign smuggler and the Chinese merchants. The proceeds after all when said and done was payments of silver which were handed over to the East India Company’s treasury whom would give the smugglers in return bills to use in India or Britain. Thus the company would enjoy a constant flow of silver.   Now the East India Company did its best to contain the cultivation of opium in India, but as time went by Indian entrepreneurs realized the massive gains that could be made and began to produce opium and ship it to ports on India’s coast. The East India Company needed to keep a tight lid on how much opium made it to Canton to ensure prices remained high and that the Qing dynasty did not crack down on the trade. But in their efforts to thwart the opium cultivators trying to compete with them, they ended up simply increasing production exponentially. The company literally began to buy out its competitors to try and control the production of opium, but by that point the price per chest of opium had dropped to nearly half its value. This would have a disastrous side effect. Up until this point in the 1820’s, opium remained an expensive luxury good, but with the price of it dropping soon the non wealthy in China began to purchase it and the trade expanded. By 1823 opium surpassed cotton as the largest Indian export to China. By 1828 opium was looking like the only commodity left that could reliably secure a profit for merchants in the area. 10,000 chests of opium made its way to Canton in 1828. By 1831 nearly 20,000 chests reached Canton, quadrupling the trade over the course of a decade.  Those chests did not include another 8% coming from Turkey via American smugglers, nor western Chinese grown opium. Those nearly 20,000 chests, 18956 to be more precise were worth nearly 13 million at the time, making it the most lucrative commodity trade in the world.    The independent traders, IE: smugglers formed their own community in Canton that rivaled the East India Company’s factory. Their leader was the infamous William Jardine, a Scot with a degree in medicine from Edinburgh. Jardine had come to Canton as a surgeon's mate for the East India Company in 1802. When he graduated to full surgeon he was given a small space in the ship to carry his own cargo. He soon found that an illicit trade in Canton would provide him more profit than his work in medicine. Thus in 1817 after working 15 years for the company he quit to become a free merchant. After 3 years of his new life as a trader he ran into a fellow scot of higher birth named James Matheson who had like him begun the illicit business. The 2 men complemented another, Matheson was 12 years younger, more outspoken and temperamental and quite a good writer. He also had social connections back home in Britain and a lot of money. Jardine was more reserved and had a better head for business, but it was Matheson who was more willing to take big risks. In 1823 Matheson tried to sell some opium in Canton and failed horribly, but his family’s wealth kept him afloat. In 1828 the 2 purchased a firm called Magniac & co and would rename it in 1832 to Jardine Matheson & Co. Stands to this very day.    Their company began doing business with opium merchants in Bombay and elsewhere in India. They settled down to live in “creek factory”, just 2 doors down from the East India company factory. They opened a newspaper called the Canton register which began a campaign to abolish the East India Company’s monopoly in Canton. To allow their illicit business to work, Matheson got an appointment as a Danish consul and Jardine a Prussian consul. They both mingled with many of the big smugglers in Canton like a Parsi named Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy and competed with other companies such as the Russel & Co. The Russel & Co was an American firm which would end up handling 1/5 of the Indian opium coming into Canton, so do not believe this was exclusively a British enterprise.   On the other side of this, the Qing government efforts to suppress the illicit trade were infrequent and half hearted in part because many officials were themselves involved in the business. Officials along the coast and those in Canton were many of the former corrupt officials that worked under Heshen and thus were not strangers to working the system. Despite its official illegal status, the Canton opium trades flourished. A Hong merchant named Wu Bingjian, but known to the foreigners as Houqua rose to prominence. As stated by Thomas Forbes in 1828 “Houqua as a man of business I consider the first in the country”. Houqua was the most influential trader in Canton. He was in his mid 60’s, had drooping eyes, a pointed goatee and a long neck. Houqua handled all the business of the East India Company’s factory in Canton along with other factories. He was revered by the foreign community for his honesty and business sense. Teas marked with his imprimatur were considered the best quality in the world. Houqua became a household name even in Britain and America and as it happens was likely the richest man in the world at one point. In the 1830’s the Americans estimated Houqua was worth perhaps 26 million. Houqua lived on an island across from Canton and in a spare office there John Murray Forbes worked for Houqua as his secretary. Forbes at the age of 18 would be chartering multiple ships loaded with Houquas tea and would receive a generous 10% commission.    Now going back in time, in 1820, Emperor Jiaqing died and Emperor Daoguang took the throne. In 1810 Emperor Jiaqing revived his grandfather Emperor Yongheng’s opium ban and by 1813 despaired at how it was spreading amongst the elite, even within his own palace. Apparently imperial guards and Qing officials in the palace were abusers of it. After his death, Emperor Daoguang carried forward his fathers opposition to opium. He said early into his reign “Opium is a great harm to the customs and morals of the people”. He ordered an end to the coastal drug smuggling, targeting corrupt officials who were allowing opium to come into China. “If there are traitors who try to collect taxes off opium to enrich themselves, or wh personally smuggle it into the country, punish them immediately and severely in order to expunge this massing of insects”. The same year he made these edicts a large number of scholars from coastal provinces showed up to take the civil service examination in Beijing only to die of convulsions from opium withdrawals over the 3 day test. How many addicts there were is hard to estimate. In 1820 with nearly 5000 chests being imported each year that would support roughly 40,000 habitual users, less than a hundredth of a single percent of the population. But by 1830 opium usage was exponentially increasing, the Daoguang emperor’s initial concerns became full on alarm. He wrote an edict in January of 1830 “Opium is flooding into the interior, the multitude of users expands day by day, and there are more and more people who sell it; they are like fire and smoke, destroying our resources and harming our people. Each day is worse than the last”. The reports pouring in from provinces were shocking. From Zhili province a report read “there are opium smokers everywhere, especially in the government office. From the governor general all the way down through the ranks of officials and their subordinates, the ones who do not smoke opium are very few indeed”.   In response the the growing reports, in 1831, the Daoguang emperor order greater efforts be made to suppress the opium smuggling. Yet despite his orders, Beijing was unable to exert control over the provinces so affected because the local kingpins were proving themselves to be better providers for the locals than the central government. It was the kingpins employing people, providing income, security and by far could strike fear upon the populace if they were angered. When government officials would show up to crack down in the provinces, village mobs would attack them and turn them right back. This made Daoguang and his court tred very carefully as they understood how a full on rebellion was very possible. Thus Daoguang advisers cautioned any general campaign to stamp out opium smoking, do not go after the petty commoners suffering from financial hardships and addiction, but instead focus on hindering the smugglers.   Between 1831-1833 many minor conflicts occurred that would have amounted to nothing if it was not for the efforts of independent opium dealers looking to get rid of the East India Company. Of particular note was Jardine Matheson & Co who constantly wrote back to London the problems arising from allowing the company to hold a monopoly. Eventually the efforts of the smugglers paid off as in 1833 it was put to a vote to terminate the company's monopoly. By the autumn of 1833, news reached Canton that the East India company’s monopoly would not be renewed when its charter expired the following May. Not only would it lose its monopoly, the East India Company would also no longer be allowed by the British government to continue its trade with China. The East India Company that had dominated trade for more than 2 centuries in Canton would vanish.   The Hong merchants were quite apprehensive at the news, it was not clear to them how the trade would now function. The Viceroy of Canton ordered the British to appoint a “tai pan” a chief executive who would be held accountable by Chinese officials for British trade conduct in Canton. The British government recognized the need to replace the role of the East India company with an alternative arrangement and agreed to create 3 superintendents of trade, a Chief superintendent, supported by 2 subordinates. “The Chief superintendent of trade would preside over a Court of Justice with criminal and admiralty jurisdiction for the trial of offenses committed by his majesty's subjects in the said dominions  or on the high sea within a hundred miles from the coast of China”. Now if you read that closely you realize, Britain just stipulated claims of extraterritoriality within the territory of the Qing dynasty.   Jardine and Matheson both worried the position of the superintendent would fall to George Stauton who arguably was the most qualified person for the job. But Staunton was an East India company man and they both worried he would bring with him the same bureaucracy that impeded upon the dealings of the independent merchants. Jardine and Matheson also took a hardline against Stauton between 1831-1833 trying to get the company abolished, he most likely would now return the favor. But to their joy, Staunton did not get the job, it went instead to William John Napier. Napier was a tall, redheaded and gallant captain of the Royal Navy and a veteran of the Napoleonic wars and fought in the legendary battle of Trafalgar. His qualifications and expertise in the trade of China amounted to nothing at all. Napier had zero experience in diplomacy, nor trade and he knew nothing about China. The cherry on top of all of this was that he was a proponent of free trade. He was to put it frankly, absolutely perfect for the smugglers.    For Napier it seems he fantasied about the power he might be capable of wielding in China, a country he understood to be “an enormous Empire of 40,000,000 that hands only together by a spiders web. What a glorious thing it would be to station a naval squadron along the coast and how easily a gun brig would raise a revolution and cause them to open their ports to the trading world”. Napiers ambitions were known to some, such as Earl Grey who sent him a private letter politely asking Napier to “exercise the most careful discretion in all your dealings with the Chinese. Given the suspicious character of the Qing government and the Chinese people, nothing must be done to shock their prejudices or to excite their fears”. Lord Napier was expected above all to keep the peace at Canton and to do no harm to the trade relations between Britain and China. Earl Grey had told him in person “persuasion and conciliation should be the means employed rather than anything approaching to the tone of hostile and menacing language. In the very worst case, should this not work, you are to show submission for a time and wait for new instructions from Britain”. Thus Napier was forbidden from pursuing any aggressive action. Napier also received instructions from Lord Palmertson at the foriegn office which likewise told him much of what Earl Grey said. Palmertson said the highest priority was to avoid any conflict with the Chinese. It was desirable to establish a line of communication with Beijing, but Napier was not an ambassador and should not go to Beijing even if opportunity arose because he “might awaken fears, or offend the prejudices of the Qing government”. Palmertson also asked Napier to find out if it was possible to make a survey of the Chinese coast, but not to make a survey. Lastly Palmertson instructed Napier not to negotiate with the Qing officials at Canton. If the opportunity presented itself, Napier was to write back home and await instructions. Just before departing, Napier would ask to be supplied with plenipotentiary powers just in case an opportunity to meet the Emperor arose, and was flat out denied this.    Napier sailed off from Plymouth on February 7 of 1834 on the 28 gunship Andromache, taking with him his wife and 2 daughters. While enroute, Napier read all that he could of the 2 previous missions particularly Amherst's notes about the status of China. Napier was excited to read about how Amherst described China as a nation oppressed by an alien dynasty and that the Han people wanted free trade. He became more and more convinced that his idea of sending a single squadron could force the Qing government to open every port in China to britain. He arrived at Macao on July 16 of 1834 and had instructions from Lord Palmertson to go straight to Canton and announce himself directly. This was an error on Palmertsons part as he obviously did not know that all foreigners were supposed to first go to Macao and await Chinese authority to come to Canton. This mistake would lead to terrible results.   OnJuly 23 Napier sailed for Canton and got to the city on July 25. He went to the factory compound at Canton and read aloud his commission to all the British traders.Then he wrote a letter to announce his arrival to the governor general.   The governor general was Lu Kun who refused to accept the letter because Napier had come to Canton unannounced without applying for a permit to enter Canton. Lu Kun said he had no idea why Napier was here, only that he had arrived on a warship and claimed to be in charge of British trade. Lu Kun was aware that Napiers arrival meant the East India companies role was ended in canton and that a new set of regulations for trade were going to be needed. However Lu Kun did not have the authority to establish any new regulations himself without orders from the emperor. So ironically both these men have the same issue. Lu Kun asked Houqua to meet with Napier to sound out the business and report back to him so they could inform Emperor Daoguang. On July 26 Houqua met with Napier and explained that the governor general required a Taipan to communicate and do trade, as they had done in the past. Napier brushed this off and said he preferred to communicate directly with the governor general. Napier ignored Houqua and sent a delegation of british merchants through canton to deliver his letter to Lu Kun. No Qing officials would dare accept the letter and Houqua pleaded with Napier to give him the letter so he could deliver it. Napier was insistent to directly address Lu Kun and refused. The next day, Houqua advised changing the letter into a petition implying Napier into a supplicant status. This greatly pissed off Napier. To add to Napiers anger, Lu Kun did not know what title to use for Napier so he wrote the term “yimu” meaning “headman” which was used for tribal chiefs and Napier’s staff translated this out of context to mean “barbarian eye”. This came off as derogatory for the British.   Napier was making a large error, he thought he was dealing with China, but in reality he was only dealing with a single individual. That single individual, Lu Kun was in a position that should he disappoint the Emperor he would lose his job. All Lu Kun cared about was following protocol and not accidentally setting any new precedents. He had no authority to negotiate a new system of trade and to even border on that was to lose his job. Any of the former East India company veterans or many of the independent merchants could have easily explained this to Napier, but they didn't. Napier did not trust the former company staff and the independent merchants were vying for new trade negotiations. Napier ended up listening to the council of fellow Scots, Jardine and Matheson. Jardine and Matheson had gone to work on Napier from the very beginning helping him establish himself in Canton.   By august 9th, Napier still was unable to get his letter delivered and was becoming furious. Napier wrote to Palmersson complaining about the situation and that the Chinese were demanding he leave Canton and return to Macao. Napier went on to showcase his personal views “His majesty's government should not be ruled by the ordinary forms prescribed among civilized people. Lu Kun is a presumptuous savage. He was an alien Manchu, like the Daoguang emperor himself whom were nothing more than intruders in the country. The real people of China, the Han Chinese all wanted British trade, it was just this illegitimate government that was holding them back. The Manchus may have been fierce and strong once upon a time, but now after generations of rule they were a wretched people, inconceivably degraded, unfit for action or exertion. The British would be best off using its military power to force the Manchu government to open China’s ports once and for all”. So in only 3 weeks the man sent to maintain peaceful trading relations was basically calling for war. On August 23 some Qing officials showed up sent by Lu Kun asking when Napier was going to return to Macao and Napier responded he would go entirely according to his own convenience.    Napier felt the trade relations were now threatened and decided to take his case to the people. Napier was certain the independent merchants and local cantonese would rally to him because they all wanted free trade. He began creating posters declaring how“He had been insulted and humiliated by the corrupt governor general Lu Kun whose ignorance and obstinacy were allowing the Hong merchants to shut down Britain’s trade at Canton.Thousands of industrious Chinese who live by the European trade must suffer ruin and discomfort through the perversity of their Government. The only thing his people want is to trade with all China, on principles of mutual benefit, and that the British would never rest until they reached that goal”. The next day another poster went up, this one made by the Qing “a lawless foreign slave, Napier has issued a notice. We know not how such a dog barbarian of an outside nation as you, can have the audacious presumption to call yourself superintendent”. The poster also suggested cutting Napiers head off and displaying it on a stake.   On the evening of september the 4th, as Napier was eating dinner with some guests, servants rushed in to warn him that armed men had appeared at the front gates. Napier went to the gates to see Qing soldiers had surrounded the factory building and an official was nailing an edict from the governor general to the factory wall as he announced the official shutdown of trade and ordered all Chinese employees of the factory to vacate immediately.  Soon all the Chinese staff, servants, porters, guards and such left the factory, leaving Napier with just a handful of companions. Napier heard someone in the crowd say he was going to burn down the factory that very night and Napier knew action had to be taken.    Napier called upon his 2 nearby gunboats, Andromache and Imogene, both 6th rate Royal Navy frigates with 54 guns between them. Napier believed under the circumstances he had sufficient reason to defy his orders from Britain and ordered the gunboats to force passage through the Tiger's Mouth.  They were to deal with whatever resistance was made upon them and to take up positions in Whampoa and protect British subjects and their property. After ordering the ships off he addressed a letter to Lu Kun and the Hong merchants declaring “you have opened the preliminaries of war. His imperial majesty will not permit such folly, wickedness, and cruelty as you have been guilty of, since my arrival here, to go unpunished”. Unfortunately, the British governments actual response to Napiers call for war would not reach Canton until it was far too late. The British governments response was of course, to tell him to back down and to follow instructions and behave. “It is not by force and violence that his majesty intends to establish a commercial intercourse between his subjects and China”.    The 2 warships forced their passage through the Tiger’s Mouth and exchanged fire with the Chinese forts that guarded it. Napiers 2 frigates unloaded more than 700 rounds into the Chinese forts, 2 British sailors were killed with 5 wounded.The forts were hammered into silence and thus ended what is called the Battle of the Bogue. The Chinese forts lacked the firepower that the British cannons held. The 2 warships proceeded to Whampoa, but the Chinese built heavy obstacles upriver, such as a large cable drawn across the river with hundreds of fire rafts loaded with gunpowder and a fleet of war junks to try and block the passage towards Canton. The 2 warships were not able to get close enough to Canton to be visible from the factories in it. The shock and awe that Napier had wanted to inflict did not come to fruition. The British merchants refused to followed Napiers lead, most simply wanted trade to resume, not a war. Jardine and Matheson were some of the very few who supported Napiers hardline stance, but most asked Napier to obey Lu Kun’s orders and to go to Macao immediately. Many of the merchants began to petition Napier complaining how much financial losses he was causing them. Meanwhile Lu Kun made it clear he had zero problems with the merchants, it was Napier alone as to why trade was shut down and that normal commerce would resume the second he left. Napier felt betrayed by his own people and was humiliated.    Napier was quite alone in the empty factory building, out of reach from his 2 gunboats and the Qing were making sure no provisions reached the factory. He realized the consequences if British trade suffered serious harm from his personal actions and coincidentally he was beginning to become quite ill. Thus Napier backed down, on september 21 he ordered the 2 gunboats to pull out and he left Canton a broken man. Trade resumed to normal a fews days after his departure. Britain's first chief superintendent of trade, a proud veteran of Trafalgar and the Napoleonic wars had been brought to his knees by Lu Kun. After a 5 day trip under heavy Qing military escort, Napier arrived in Macao pale and feverish. He died 2 weeks later.   The British public did not mourn the loss of Napier. The Duke of Wellington summed up their views by stating “the attempt to force upon the Chinese authorities at Canton an accustomed mode of communication with an authority of whose powers and of whose nature they had no knowledge had failed, as it is obvious that such an attempt must invariably fail, and lead again to national disgrace”. Jardine and Matheson alongside 85 other independent merchants all signed a petition to the new King of England William IV, demanding revenge for Napiers humiliations. Within China the situation was getting worse. Patronage, bribery and embezzlement were becoming the norm among civil officials. Opium was weaving its way through the fabric of Chinese society. In spite of Daoguang’s edicts to control the illicit drug the trade was growing exponentially. A major north south land transport route for opium emerged through Hunan province and with it some uprisings sprang up. The Qing government sent military forces to pacify the uprisings but ironically the soldiers that were sent were heavy users of opium and performed terribly. Forces which were sent to opium heavy regions would fall victim to the substance. The Chinese economy was falling into a depression. Grain prices deflated, driving down the income of farmers. Unemployment rose and the Qing government tax revenues were declining. Soon it became expensive to maintain public works like flood control which led to shoddy construction giving way to destructive episodes of flooding. With the flooding came agricultural failures and with that famines.   China’s monetary system was collapsing, a major problem was the side effect of the opium trade, the exportation of silver. The Hong merchants paid for the opium with silver, but could not accept silver as payment for tea or silk because it would indicate that they had exported silver in the first place which was illegal. Thus silver was pouring out of China and not coming back in and on top of this, since the 1820 the worlds supply of silver had been coming from mines in Mexico and Peru, but national revolutions in Latin America had shut down those mines. The combination of these 2 factors had a disastrous effect on China.   Silver was the international currency, but copper coins were an important part of China’s internal economy. A tael of silver was worth 1000 copper coins during normal times, moving such a large amount of copper was logistically unstable thus silver played a crucial role in China’s economy. Silver was the basis of tax payments, a medium for all long distance trade conducted within China and abroad. But copper was used as a medium for the local economies, the marketplace and menial wages. The income and savings for all the lower classes of China, farmers laborers, craftsmen was all paid in copper. As silver flooded out of China it became more and more valuable and this skewed its exchange with copper to the point of absolute mayhem. By 1830 a tael of silver was worth 1365 copper coins and soon it rose to 1600, then to 2000 by the late 1830’s. With the inflation came a need for higher taxes, but the lower class could not afford to pay them.   The Qing court debated many ways to remedy the situation. Some said they should merely open ports to appease the traders, some went as far as saying they should simply lift the illegal status of opium so it could be traded accordingly and proper taxes could be levied. In the end Emperor Daoguang increased his hardline stance against opium. Now commoners and soldiers convicted of smoking opium would be punished with 100 lashes and 2 months in the cangue (plank of wood with their hands and neck inside). Even family members of opium users could be punished, such as a father failing to control his children from smoking it.    Now when Britain got rid of the East India Company’s monopoly, the responsibility for the conduct of British opium traders in China shifted from the company to the British government itself. The government of Britain tried to pretend the trade did not exist, but the public was learning more and more about it, especially after the Napier affair. Back to Jardine & Matheson’s petitions to the king, they demanded a full fledged ambassador, backed up by a war fleet, to demand reparation for China’s apparent crimes. More and more letters came to Britain demanding war like action and that just a small force of 2 frigates and 3 or 4 armed vessels could blockade most of the sea trade for the Qing empire. “Intercepting its revenues in their progres to the capital, and taking possession of all the armed vessels of the country”. Such actions they argued would not see full scale war, it would just lead to more amenable trade relations. The new man to replace Napier was a longtime East India company man named John Davis. And to their misery he immediately rejected their demand for reparations and was adamantly against their free trade movement. Davis subscribed to the idea that China trade should be conducted with caution and respect. As Jardine & Matheson continuously called for war, Davis sent word back to Palmersson in Britain to ignore them. Davis was far more optimistic that Britain could find a peaceful way after the embarrassing Napier situation. Jardine & Matheson would not quit, and Matheson went back to Britain to drum up support for a punitive expedition against China.   While Matheson held no significant influence over the British government, fortunately Lady Napier did whom he was pushing to rally support for the cause. He used Lady Napier to gain an audience with Lord Palmerston, but as much as he tried to persuade the man, Palmerston like many other officials believed the Canton trade would regain its balance naturally with time and noninterference. Before leaving to go back to China in 1836, Matheson created a hundred page pamphlet titled “the present position and prospects of the British trade with China”. The piece argued for the necessity of a british naval expedition to open China or trade would simply come to an end.    Back in Canton, Davis appointed Charles Elliot as secretary to the committee of superintendents. Charles Elliot was a light haired, thin lipped captain in the Royal Navy. In 1830 he was appointed protector of slaves in British Guyana where his job was to investigate the most abusive practices of the British plantation owners and represent the interests of the slaves who suffered under them. The experience hardened Elliot into an abolitionist. Lord Palmerston saw him as a convenient person at the right time to take up the cause in China against opium and had sent him alongside Napier. Eliot was a calculating man, obsessed on how his actions would be interpreted back home in Britain, angling to improve his career. Davis took a strong liking to Elliot, he was flexible and not as headstrong as Napier. Davis also knew he was not expected to hold his position long, the chief superintendent should not be a former company man. Davis wanted to save face and resigned preemptively. When he resigned he lobbied for Elliot to be made the new superintendent. And thus Elliot got the job to his surprise.    Elliot would likewise have a new governor general to deal with, Lu Kun died and was replaced by Deng Tingzhen. They started of on the right foot, Elliot presented his credentials as the new superintendent of trade at Macao and asked for permission to come to Canton. His polite and respectful approach was approved by the emperor and he was welcomed to Canton and took up residence at the old British factory. In Chinese he was referred to as Lingshi “consul” a respectable title that could not be confused with barbarian eye. In november of 1836, just 5 months after Elliots arrival, the Daoguang Emperor issued an edict banning both the importation and use of opium throughout China. Deng Tingzhen proclaimed “The smoke of opium is a deadly poison. Opium is nothing else but a flowing poison; that it leads to extravagant expenditure is a small evil, but as it utterly ruins the mind and morals of the people, it is a dreadful calamity.” The crackdown was immense, Qing forces under Deng chased down Chinese smugglers and destroyed their transport ships. They went after dealers on land breaking the supply lines leading the Chinese smugglers to demand higher and higher fees from the foreign traders to transport the opium.   Jardine wrote letters back to Bombay stating the once flourishing opium traffic was falling apart “the Drug market is becoming worse every day owing to the extreme vigilance of the authorities, and we see no chance of amendment”. Though Elliot hate the opium trade he knew it was a evil necessity for Britain and feared an outbreak of violence between the Chinese government forces and the increasingly desperate British opium traders. Because the traders were resorting to more dramatic actions Elliot feared the honest traders in canton would soon face consequences because of the opium traders. Then the Hong merchants sent word to Elliot from the Emperor urging him to banish the British opium traders vessels from Canton, but Eliot pleaded that his government never gave him such authority. Elliots orders the Foreign Office were to make sure Britain’s drug of choice, tea, made it safely out of China and into the teacups of English drawing rooms for the ritual afternoon tea”. They were also to ensure the safety of British subjects in China. Without any authority to stop the opium smugglers he sought action that would at least thwart violence. Elliot wrote to Palmerston in 1837 asking if Britain could make a diplomatic intervention in China to reduce the risk of losing the tea commerce.   Elliot, Deng Tingzhen the Chinese and independent merchants all were under the belief the Emperor was on the verge of declaring opium legalized. Indeed Deng and many other high ranking Qing officials had pressed the case for legalization for quite awhile and the Emperor had been showing a lot of interest in it as a solution for the silver crisis. Elliot proposed sending another ambassador accompanied by a peaceful naval force to argue in favor of legalizing opium.  His thinking was that by displaying power, but not guns blazing, could in a respectful manner impress the Qing the importance of the tea trade to both nations. Elliot also had a lot of suggestions for the ambassador. For one that he should inform the emperor that half of the opium was coming from free areas of India that Britain did not control. Also that if Britain stopped its opium traders, other nations would simply fill its space. In light of such logic the only outcome had to be legalization of opium.   Palmerston was aghast, Elliot of all people who was so against the illicit trade was now arguing on the side of the opium smugglers? Palmerston could not agree to such an idea to argue the cause of the smugglers to the emperor no, instead he proposed a “china courts bill” that would grant Elliot formal legal authority over the British subjects in China. He foresaw the creation of a British court of law in Canton, under the superintendent with jurisdiction over all British subjects 100 miles of the Chinese coast. Thus Elliot would have authority both in civil and criminal disputes. Palmerston hoped Elliot would be able to keep the free traders in line and banish the worst offenders, thus appeasing the Chinese. Palmerston never thought such an act would be seen by the Chinese as interfering with their own jurisdiction and authority. The bill was a complete breach of Chinese sovereignty, and thus when it went through parliament it was utterly destroyed.    Meanwhile back on the Chinese side, Deng Tingzhen was continuing to make progress at crushing the opium trade. But then in 1838 a Qing official named Huang Juezi submitted a new method of crushing the opium trade and stopping the loss of silver. His proposal “thus, the way to defend against this calamity, lies not with foreign merchants but with the wicked chinese”. He argued it was impossible to block the opium by embargo and it risked foreign trade. To go after the traffickers had proven to be ineffective, because of the extremity of official corruption. Thus they should target the Chinese consumers. As he summed it up “if there were no common users of opium in China then there naturally would be no dealers, no traffickers and no international smuggling trade to drain silver out of China”. It was going to be an exceptionally harsh policy, but Emperor Daoguang was intrigued and brought the proposal to the court.   The majority of officials were against it, but the vast majority were also against legalization. One official who was for Huang Juezi’s proposal was Lin Zexu the governor general of Hunan and Hubei provinces. Ah yes, for my Chinese listeners or those familiar with Chinese history, one of the most famous figures has emerged onto the stage.  I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.  The British were walking a tightrope between getting their tea fix and not being banned from trade with China because of the Opium smuggling. Silver was flooding back into Britain while being drained from China and enough was enough for the Qing dynasty, now they would wage war on the illicit drug.  

Last time we spoke, the Qing dynasty had enjoyed the first half of the 18th century with relative ease and prosperity, however the end half and emergence of the 19th century would not be so fruitful. The White Lotus Rebellion of 1794-1804 took root during one of the most corrupt ridden times in Chinese history. One of China’s most corrupt figures and one of the richest men in history, Heshen was executed by the new Jiaqing Emperor. Then the Jiaqing Emperor had to quell the White Lotus menace which cost the empire a possible 100 million taels of silver. Despite being successful, the White Lotus rebellion would spread a seed of destruction for the Qing dynasty that would grow overtime and bloom into multiple revolts and rebellions. Now we look to another aspect of China during the early 19th century, its struggle against the looming threat of western greed.    This episode is the A West meets East story   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on the history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War.   #11 The West meets East failure   Now while the last podcast highlighted the corruption of Heshen and his long lasting effect on the Qing dynasty during the late half of the 18th century, I intentionally avoided speaking about something. That something was the envoys sent by Britain to China to open up trade relations. The rationale was that I wanted to highlight why the White Lotus came to be and the British envoy stories would have derailed it, but in actuality, the corruption, White Lotus rebellion and British envoys all simultaneously play a very important role in the downfall of the Qing Dynasty. So let us go back in time a bit to begin what is quite honestly the emergence of one of the largest drug cartel stories of all time.    Lord George Macartney was a well seasoned diplomat with an extensive resume and a reputation for getting things done. He had that classic story of being raised in poverty, but rising to the top. He began his career as a barrister in England before entering the foreign service. He was no aristocrat, came from no significant family, thus earned his way through merit. His skills and intellect eventually landed him the appointment as an envoy to the Qing Dynasty to establish a British embassy in China. Up to this point in his life, everything he did was a success, but China would prove to be a hard nut to crack. In 1764 Macartney was knighted at the young age of 27 and sent as an envoy to russia. It was a rather scandalous rumor that he was sent as the envoy not merely for his skills and intellect, but because of his good looks as it was believed it would sway the Empress, Catherine the Great to the interests of Britain. After 3 years in Russia, Sir Macartney returned with the Empress's good affection, symbolized in a gem-studded snuff box. This bolstered Macartney into the social circles of the elites and by 1767 he was elected to Parliament and soon appointed the Chief Secretary of Ireland. After some years of service within the United Kingdom, Macartney sought out more adventure and took up a post as governor of the Caribbean Islands in the West Indies. He was soon awarded with the title of Bron and in 1780 received the appointment as governor of Madras India. He worked that office 6 years and became a viscount. Then in 1793 he sailed for one of the most illusive and exotic lands, that of China.   Viscount Macartney was given a simple orders from George III: establish a British embassy in the capital and get permission for British ships to dock at ports besides Canton. Now you might be asking, whats the problem with Canton? Nothing, except for foreign barbarians it was the only port of access for all of China at this time. For those who have never heard of this, the Canton System which began in 1757 was a trade system of the Qing dynasty. The Qianlong Emperor faced numerous problems when he inherited the empire, one being the threat of foreign trade. While trade obviously is a beneficial thing, it can sometimes cause harm, as such the Qing dynasty had some worries about trade with foreign lands. For one thing, the intrusion of missionaries had caused some pretty brutal conflicts in China. After this Emperor Qianlong ordered his court to make some changes to foreign trade to thus stop more conflicts from occurring. He bottled necked all foreign trade to go through Canton and they were to deal exclusively with a group known as the Cohong merchants. The Cohong were granted a monopoly over the foreign trade, but were also the primary representative link between the Qing government and the outside world. There were strings attached of course, the Cohong merchants were to take on full responsibility for any foreign persons connected with a foreign ship that did trade. The Cohong were of course expected to pay taxes to the Qing government for all the trade being done, but by far and large they were able to control how they would levy such taxes. A perfect recipe for corruption.    A event occured known as the Flint Affair, a situation in which a Englishman named James Flint serving the East India Company was repeatedly warned to remain in Canton, but in 1755 he went against the Qing administrative warnings and tried to establish trade in some ports in Zhejiang. He was caught and deported to Macau where he was imprisoned for a few years. The situation prompted Emperor Qianlong to enact 5 measures against the foreign barbarians who wished to trade. 1) Trade by foreign barbarians in Canton is prohibited during the winter. 2) Foreign barbarians coming to the city must reside in the foreign factories under the supervision and control of the Cohong. 3) Chinese citizens are barred from borrowing capital from foreign barbarians and from employment by them. 4) Chinese citizens must not attempt to gain information on the current market situation from foreign barbarians 5) Inbound foreign barbarian vessels must anchor in the Whampoa Roads and await inspection by the authorities   Trade with China was beginning to really boom, but it was being frustrated into the bottleneck of Canton. The British were very eager to open up more trade with China and Macartney had instructions to offer something to the Chinese to open up trade. He could offer to end the importation of opium from British held India, something that was officially illegal in the Qing dynasty, but in reality the Qing could not stop the illicit smuggling of it into China.    On the morning of september 26, 1792 the HMS Lion a 64 gun ship of the line, cast off for China. When Macarney landed on the coast of China, all of his retinue and baggage were transferred to Chinese junks by the order of Emperor Qianlong before he was allowed to travel up the Bei He River enroute for Peking. His ship had a large sign tacked to its mast by the Qing officials with large black letters reading “tribute from the red barbarians”. Remember at this time in history, China was basically the pinnacle of civilization at least from its viewpoint. China had felt superior to the rest of the world for quite some time. Gunpowder, paper currency, eyeglasses and the printing press all were developed in China long before the west had acquired such things. As such the emperor of China did not receive ambassadors per say, as exchanging emissaries would denote equal rank amongst nations, for which China had no equal. Those who did come as emissaries were treated as tribute bearers and identified as foreign barbarians. From the perspective of the Chinese, foreign barbarians did not come to negotiate or make dealings, they came as subjects to pay homage and tribute.    Macartney believed he was bringing gifts from one sovereign nation to another, but the Qing considered him to be a vassal paying tribute. The gifts he brought were the best of British technology: telescopes, brass howitzers, globes, clocks, musical instruments and an entire hot air balloon complete with a balloonist. That one always puzzled me by the way, did that mean the balloonist was just going to be some sort of lifetime servant? In all Macartney brought over 600 gifts for Emperor Qianlong and this all required an astonishing 99 wagons, 40 wheelbarrows drawn by over 200 horses and 3000 people. Macartney was instructed to display the gifts at the Emperor's summer palace before he would be given any chance at seeing Emperor Qianlong. The Qing court apparently were not that impressed with most of the gifts, though they did admire the wood pottery and were particularly interested when Macartney ignited sulfur matches. Unfortunately the hot air balloon never got a chance to take off. The viceroy of Pechili told Macartney that he would not be meeting the emperor in his palace, but in a yurt outside the Imperial hunting lodge in Rehe of the tartary lands. They would pass through the great wall and Macartney was astonished by it stating it to be “the most stupendous work of human hands, probably greater in extent than all of the other forts in the world put together. Its construction was a sign of not only a very powerful empire, but a very wise and virtuous nation”. They traveled into Manchuria until they reached the Emperor’s summer quarters on september 8th. The journey had nearly taken a year since they departed England in 1792 and the success or failure of the embassy would be decided in the matter of just mere days. They stopped a mile from the imperial summer residence to make themselves presentable.    Macartney had prepared a colorful and grandiose outfit for the occasion as described by his valet “A suite of spotted mulberry velvet, with a diamond star, and his ribbon, over which he wore the full habit of the order of the Bath, with the hat and the plume of feathers, which form a part of it”. So try to imagine a man dressed up like a peacock, certainly it was going to leave an impression, which is what he wanted. The entourage formed a makeshift parade formation with as much British pomp that could be mustered. The British soldiers and cavalry led the way on foot followed by servants, musicians, scientists and other gentry. The parade arrived at 10am to their designated quarters, with no one at all to greet them. Macartney was bewildered, he had expected this famed Manchu man named Heshen to meet them. However Heshen was nowhere to be found, Macartney deduced he must be delayed for some reason and so they all simply waited. 6 hours passed by as they all stood there in formation waiting with no sign of an imperial official, thus they lost heart and went into the assigned residence to eat. In the end Macartney was forced to go find Heshen himself, quite an uncomfortable start to the venture. Over the course of several days the mountain of British gifts were exchanged. They presented things such as rugs to the Emperors representatives and in turn were given luxurious fabrics such as silk, jade, porcelain, lacquerware and large quantities of the finest tea, oh tea will play quite a role in all of this rest assured. The British tried to awe them with the products of their science, but soon were realizing something was not right.    You see this entire process was confused. For the British they were trying to impress the Chinese to gain the ability to negotiate for more advantageous policies in the future, IE: gain the approval to open a permanent embassy in the capital. But for the Chinese the situation was literally just trade, they were trading goods they assumed the British would want to take home and sell. Nations like Vietnam and Korea would regularly come to pay tribute to the emperor for his approval which legitimized their governments. They came and performed the famous “kow tow” before the Emperor. For those who don’t know the “kow tow” is a ritual of 9 kneeling bows to the ground in 3 sets of 3 in the direction of the emperor. The envoys from places like Vietnam or Korea did this readily as their nations were official tributaries to China and thus the Emperor was the overarching figure for their nations as well as their own emperors. But when Macartney showed up he knew nothing of this entire process. Initially Macartney did not even realize he was supposed to prostrate himself before emperor and when this was explained to him he was unwilling to do it. Because despite the great admiration he had for the Qing Empire, he thought he was an envoy between 2 equal and sovereign nations, he assumed the King of England was on equal footing with Emperor Qianlong. Macartney had never done anything like the kow tow for his own king why should he for a foreign king?   So Macartney expected what he considered a mere ceremony to be waved off and submitted a request for that to be so, which he alleged later he received approval for. But when he arrived at Jehol, Heshen denied ever seeing this request and insisted Macartney must perform the kow two before the emperor. Qing officials at the scene assured Macartney that it was just “a mere exterior and unmeaning ceremony” urging him on. Things began to get messy, Macartney said he would kow tow readily if a Qing official would do the same before a portrait he had brought of King George III. No Qing official would do it, so Macartney tried to compromise, what if he simply bent the knee and head once before Emperor Qianlong. To Mccartneys relief the proposal was accepted. A few more days went by, then on September 14th he was informed he could meet the emperor.   Macartney got into his peacock suit and his entourage marched behind Macartney who was carried on a litter until they made it to the Emperor's ceremonial tent. Macartney entered, carrying a jeweled encrusted golden box containing a letter from King George III. In his own account, Macartney stated he knelt on one knee as agreed and presented the emperor the box and the emperor did not seem in the slightest to have made any commotion about the ritual not being performed. Macartney said “Emperor Qianlong’s eyes were full and clear and his countenance was open, despite the dark and gloomy demeanor we had expected to find”. Do not forget as I mentioned in the previous episode, at this point in time the Emperor was its pretty safe to say, very senile. The letter from George III was translated into Chinese carefully by European missionaries who made sure to take out any potentially offensive references, like for example anything about chrisianity. The letter spoke about how Emperor Qianlong “should live and rule for 10s of thousands of years and the word China was elevated one line above the rest of the text whenever it appeared and the name of the emperor was elevated 3 lines above the rest. The letters translation thus had been done in such a way it really did not conform to the letter between 2 equals anymore. Meanwhile while Emperor Qianlong read this, Macartney was simply awed by the tent they were in. In his words “the tapestries, carpets and rich draperies and lanterns were disposed with such harmony, the colors so artfully varied. It was as if he was inside a painting. The commanding feature of the ceremony was the calm dignity that sober pomp of asiatic greatness, which European refinements have not yet attained”. Macartney also went on to mention that he was also not the only envoy present in the tent. There were 6 Muslim enovys from tributary states near the Caspian sea an a Hindu envoy from Burma and they had allow performed the kow tow.    Emperor Qianlong asked Heshen if any of the English could speak Chinese and the son of British diplomat George Staunton stepped forward. The 12 year old boy named George stepped towards the throne and according to his diary “I spoke some Chinese words to him and thanked him for the presents”. Emperor Qianlong was apparently charmed by this and took a purse from his own waist to give to him as a token of his esteem. That little boy became the first Englishman after James Flint to cross the wall of language between Britain and China and it would shape his life after. After the meeting, Macartney and his entourage were allowed to stay in Jehol for a few days and were fortunate enough to partake in the emperor's birthday banquet. On September 21st, disaster struck when a member of Macartney's entourage died, a gunner named Reid. It was the day before their departure date and apparently Reid had eaten 40 apples for breakfast, which I have to say is one of the most bizarre rationales for a death I've ever heard. Regardless, the Qing assumed off the bat the man died of some contagious disease and urged them all to leave with haste.    Meanwhile in Peking, the Balloonist/scientist Mr Dinwiddie had been busy prepared all the scientific instruments for demonstrations awaiting Emperor Qianlong’s return from Jehol at the end of september. He had begun filling a grand hall of the imperial palace outside the city of Beijing with globes, clocks, telescopes, the air pump for the balloon and such. He had signed a contract basically stating he could never return home and would be stuck as a foreigner in a small part of Beijing. Regardless he got everything ready for the emperor's visit. When the emperor came on October the 1st he showed no particular emotion as he toured the hall according to Dinwiddie. Upon looking through a telescope for roughly 2 minutes the emperor alleged stated “it was good enough to amuse children” and simply left. Heshen and other Qing officials came to see the wonders and showed a bit more interest. Unfortunately the hot air balloon demonstration was to be the grand finale in the course of a few days but never came to fruition, because all of a sudden on October the 6th the Emperor ordered all the British to leave. Everything was hastily packed up and every man by October 7th was being pushed out as the embassy mission was sent away from Peking. Once on the road out of Peking it dawned upon them all the embassy mission was a failure. As one British servant put it “we entered Peking like paupers; we remained in it like prisoners; and we quitted it like vagrants”.    Macartney had no idea how much he had offended the emperor with his negotiations. Back on september 10th, 4 days before they met the Emperor, Qianlong was always fuming mad about the English ambassadors dragging of the feet about the kow tow. In fact at that time Emperor Qianlong simply told his officials he would keep the promise to have the meetings, but as far as he was concerned they best be gone afterwards. Qianlong prior had planned to have them stay a long time to enjoy the sights of Jehol but “given the presumption and self important display by the English ambassador, they should be sent from Jehol immediately after the banquet, given 2 days to get to Peking to pack up their belongs and go. When foreigners who come seeking audience with me are sincere and submissive then I always treat them with kindness. But if they come in arrogance they get nothing”. On October 3rd, just a few days before they were ordered out, Macartney received the official response to King George III’s letter, unfortunately it was in Chinese and he was unable to translate it for some time. It stated that the request for the British ambassador to remain at the capital was not consistent with the customs of the empire and therefore could not be allowed. And here is the kicker in regards to trade and the gifts he said “I accepted the gifts not because I wanted them, but merely, as tokens of your own affectionate regard for me. In truth the greatness and splendor of the Chinese empire have spread its fame far and wide, and as foreign nations, from a thousand parts of the world, crowd hither over mountains and seas, to pay us their homage and bring us the rarest and most precious offerings, what is it that we can want here? Strange and costly objects do not interest me. We possess all things. I set no value on objects strange or ingenious, and have no use for your countries manufactures”. Oomphf there was a second little part after that went “we have never needed trade with foreign countries to give us anything we lacked. Tea, porcelain and silk are essential needs for countries like England that do not have such things and out of grace the dynasty had long permitted foreign merchants to come to Canton to purchase these goods. To satisfy your needs and to allow you to benefit from our surplus. England is but one of many countries that comes to trade in Canton and if we were to give Britain special treatment, then we would have to give it to all the others as well”.   Macartney was furious and wrote extensively enroute back home. “Can they be ignorant, that a couple of English frigates would be an overmatch for the whole naval force of their empire, that in half a summer they could totally destroy the navigation of their coasts and reduce the inhabitants of the maritime provinces, who subsist chiefly on fish, to absolute famine? We could destroy the Tiger’s mouth forts guarding the river passage to Canton with just half a dozen boardsides and annihilate the Canton trade that employs millions of Chinese”. Yet despite all his military bravado talk, if Britain were at this time to make any aggression against China it would immediately result in them shutting down their trade. If that was allowed to happen both the economies of Britain and British held India would suffer tremendous economic damage. Thus Macartney knew the best course of action was to be patient and try try and try again.   So the Macartney mission ended in embarrassment. Macartney would tell those back in Britain “The empire of China is an old crazy first-rate man of war, which a fortunate succession of able and vigilant offers has contrived to keep afloat for these hundred and fifty years past; and to overawe their neighbors, merely by her bulk and appearance. She may perhaps not sink outright, she may drift some time as a wreck, and will then be dashed in pieces on the shore; but she can never be rebuilt on the old bottom”. Very dark and ominous words indeed. Prior to Macartney’s report those had this perception of China to be the model of stable and virtuous government. But Macartney ranted that “the tyranny of a handful of Tartars over more than 300 millions of Chinese. And those Chinese subjects would not suffer the odium of a foreign yoke for much longer. A revolution was coming”. Macartney would elaborate further on what he believed to be the socio-political situation in China. “I often perceived the ground to be hollow under a vast superstructure and in trees of the most stately and flourishing appearance I discovered symptoms of speedy decay. The huge population of Han Chinese were just recovering blows that had stunned them they are awaking from the political stupor they had been thrown into by the Tartar impression, and begin to feel their native energie revive. A slight collision might elicit fire from the flint, and spread the flames of revolt from one extremity of China to the other. I should not be surprised if its dislocation or dismemberment were to take place before my own dissolution”. Please take note this is all coming from a bitterly anger man who, yes traveled the country for months, but he had not seen the interior of China. He could not speak or read the language and knew nothing of the culture. And yet he was almost 100% prophetic in what would occur.    Now as I went into with the past episode, the Qianlong Emperor was very old and going senile. When Macartney met with him, Qianlong had just turned 82 and had ruled for over 58 years an incredible reign. And despite the show the emperor had put on about never needing western trade, in reality he was deeply fascinated by western inventions. He cherished his collection of 70 British clocks and wrote poems about them and about western telescopes. Likewise he kept multiple western art pieces and employed many westerners in his court. Above all else he understood the value of China’s foreign trade at Canton, because a significant portion of the tariff income fed his imperial household. The canton trade was also a primary source of silver import of which China was the largest importer of silver since the 1600s. Foreigners came and were forced to trade with silver if they wanted tea or porcelain. Tea, Tea is the crucial component of this story.   In 1664 King Charles II received 2 lbs of black, strange smelling leaves from China. Less than half a century later, tea became Britain's beverage of choice with an annual consumption of 12 million pounds per year. By 1785, Britain was importing 15 million lbs of tea per year from China. The people of Britain were literally addicted China’s tea, which might I add is a mild stimulant. More so the British government became economically dependent on tea and the Exchequer levied a 100 percent import tax upon it whoa. Although China purchased some British goods like clocks, it was nothing compared to the British need for tea. Between 1710 to 1759 the imbalance of trade was enormous, literally draining Britain of its silver, because that was after all the only form of payment China accepted. During this time, Britain paid 26 million in silver to China, but sold only 9 million in goods.    Now lets talk a bit more about how this trade was being down in Canton. It was the East India Company who was given a monopoly over the tea trade in China. I mentioned the Cohong or sometimes called simply Hong merchants. They were directly in charge of the Canton trade, holding a monopoly over it. All western trade had to come through them, if you were a foreign ship, your cargo had to be guaranteed by a Hong merchant before it could sail up river to port Canton. Only a Hong merchant could rent you a warehouse or arrange for you any and all purchases for tea, silk and such. Personal relationships were thus key and having a friendship with any Hong merchant was immensely valuable. Hong merchants were accountable for the conduct of all foreing personnel. If some foreigner got drunk and beat up a local, the Hong merchant was held responsible, and this did in fact happen often. The Hong merchants were a small group, typically no more than a dozen any given time. As you can imagine with such a small group controlling the full trade between China and western nations, the opportunities for both sides merchants to become abundantly rich was enormous. However there was a ton of risk for the Hong since they took all the risk. Regardless the Hong merchants were some of the richest men in China, but they also went bankrupt regularly. Why was this, well because of their access to capital it made them primary targets for other government officials to squeeze.    You see despite their monopoly on the trade, the Hong merchants were almost always in a precarious situation. Their appointment and finance was done via the Hoppo. Also the social status of merchants within traditional confucianism was very low and the Hong merchants were at the mercy of other Qing officials. This led the Hong merchants to be forced to pay numerous bribes to said officials. More often than naught to get an appointment as a Hong came with a literal downpayment for the officials who got you the job! The Hong merchants were squeezed left right and center by countless officials in a pecking system built upon corruption and greed.    The senior superintendent of foreign trade at Canton was a Imperial customs commissioner known to the westerners as the “hoppo”. The hoppo reported directly to the board of revenue in Beijing and it was the Hoppo who was responsible for ensuring a proper flow of tariff income back to Beijing. The position of Hoppo was one of the greatest opportunities to get filthy rich.   Before the White Lotus rebellion the Qing silver surplus was a whopping 70 million taels, but over the course of the war it is estimated the Qing treasury would pay something like 100 million taels in silver. Then came another disaster.    The Napoleonic wars had a tremendous impact on the world, not limited to just the war itself. As the war grinding on, Britain was pressed for funds to finance its war against France and this led them to squeeze the East India Company harder. The British government began raising its tax on the company’s tea in 1795, then again in 1802 where it reached 50%, then again in 1806 to a whopping 96% and by 1819 it would be 100%. The growing British tax on the company’s tea led it to become a possible 1/10th of Britain's national revenue. As you can imagine with those numbers, the importance of maintaining the trade with Canton became a matter of national interest.    While the Qing dynasty spent millions of taels mobilizing armies to quell the white lotus rebellion, the British likewise spent millions during its war against france. Britain would spend around 12 times more than its previous 22 year war with France and ran up a monstrous national debt. By the time Napoleon was defeated, Britain had doubled the size of the royal navy and it was the most powerful maritime force in the world. Britain acquired more territories to expand its enormous empire. By 1820 the British Empire would control roughly a quarter of the world's population, almost rivaling China. The emperor of China, Jiaqing was forced to slash the budgets of things such as the military after the internal rebellion was over. In expectation for an era of peace for the empire, the emperor effectively had to mortgage the future improvement of China’s military to simply stabilize the country.   Now Britain's tea fix needed to be met, but its silver was depleted. The Napoleonic war and the American revolution had drained Britain of its silver reserve, how was Britain going to get the tea? The British needed to find something the Chinese were willing to pay for in silver and the British would find what that in Opium. The British were not the first importers of Opium into China. Arab merchants had been selling opium cultivated in what is modern day turkey since the middle ages. It was primarily used for medicinal purposes, such as being used as a constipation drug to stop diarrhea, quite a useful thing to have to fight off dysentery which reeks its ugly head during times of conflict. In 1659 the East India Company began to export it in limited quantities from Bengal India. The East India Company had a monopoly over the trade with India and tried to prevent the business of opium importing to China since it was illegal and could interfere with the company's legitimate trade. However to get tea required silver and when the silver began to dry up the East India Company’s tolerance for the illicit business began to loosen.    In 1782 the East India Company turned its eyes away and allowed the export of 3450 chests of opium. Each chest for reference weighed around 170 lbs, about the size of a small footlocker. 2 ships carried the illegal cargo and enroute 1 of them was captured by the French with the other arrived in Macao. The Chinese merchants refused to purchase the illegal contraband until the price was dropped to 210$ per chest. To break even the British needed to sell a chest at around 500$, it was a complete disaster. The British merchants ended up dumping most of their cargo at a loss in Malaysia for a price of around 340$. There were no eager buyers for opium in China in 1782 and this showcases the lack of users or better said addicts. Nonetheless the Qing government made a decree in 1799 condemning the illicit trade “foreigners obviously derive the most solid profits and advantages, but that our countrymen should pursue this destructive and ensnaring vice is indeed odious and deplorable”. The East India Company proclaimed it was forbidding British ships to carry the illicit cargo, because remember they had to make sure the Canton market remained open to britain. Yet this did not stop the East India company from selling opium within India to independent British and Indian merchants who in turn might smuggle the drugs into China. Its not the East India company after all and the company could see no other way to acquire silver to buy the tea Britain needed.    In 1773 opium earned the company 39,000 pounds, in 1793 opium earned them 250,000 pounds. The idea was working and the trade imbalance was soon shifting. By 1806 to 1809 China would pay out 7 million in silver for opium. During the first 2 decades of the 19th century opium addiction grew in China at a slow pace. The East India Company kept the price of the illicit substance artificially high, which meant only the upper class in China could afford it. The East India Company was doing its best not to antagonize the Qing government, IE: not rubbing their nose in the illicit trade, thus it did not increase imports and lower prices. Around 5000 chests were being sold per year and this stabilized the trade imbalance between Britain and China, no longer was Britain simply losing its silver to China, nor was China being depleted dry.    Then a technological innovation in Britain completely shattered the equilibrium. The invention of the steam engine in the previous century resulted in the mechanized production of cotton. Soon England had flooded the market with mass produced textiles and the surplus of this found its way to a very eager Indian market. Those merchants paid for the product in cash, but how do you think they got the cash? Bingo opium cultivation and with it the need to sell more of it. So as a result more and more opium began to flood into China, but it still had to go through the bottleneck of Canton.    Problems began to occur which affected the Canton trade. The Napoleonic wars began to send ripples throughout the world and one place that was affected was Macao in 1808. The British in Canton heard rumors that France was sending troops to occupy Macao. The British wanted to preemptively respond and sent a naval fleet under Rear Admiral William Drury in September of 1808. Drury sent a letter informing the Portuguese governor at Macao that he intended to occupy the city to which the governor refused him and began to appeal to the Chinese governor general for protection. On september 21st Drury landing 300 marines who quickly seized the shore batteries at Macao with no resistance being made by the Portuguese. However the Chinese governor general ordered a shutdown of the British trade in Canton, uh oh. The East India company had to pull full cargo ships out immediately and abandon their factory in Canton. Drury in response brought an additional 700 marines from India to occupy Macao. The Chinese governor general warned Drury if they did not withdraw, the fleet and all British residents in Macao would be cut off from food supplies. Drury panicked, he had not intended to start a war, nor were his orders remotely authorized to do so!   When Emperor Jiaqing got news of the British invasion of Macao he was furious to say the least. Emperor Jiaqing issued an edict to the governor general in Canton “such a brutal eruption at Macao indicates an affrontery without limit. To invoke such a pretext is to freely insult the Chinese Empire. It is important in any case to raise considerable troops, attack the foreigners, and exterminate them. In this way, they will understand that the seas of China are forbidden to them!”. So the governor general ordered 8000 troops at Canton to man the coastal forts in the vicinity in preparation for war. Drury got the news of this and knew the Canton trade could be shut off for good stating “it would exclude the English forever, from the most advantageous monopoly it possesses in the Universe”. So Admiral Drury backed down, refusing to risk war with China. Drury took the marines out, but left some ships in the hope trade in Canton would soon be restored. And thus 6 days later the Qing governor general restored trade in Canton, phew crisis averted.   Another rather unusual conflict occured when a British christian missionary named Thomas Manning attempted to enter into China by land. Manning had tried asking the Hoppo for permission to visit Beijing as a scientist envoy but it was refused as the Emperor had plenty of western scientists at his disposal. The frustrated Manning then began to climb aboard East India company ships going around Vietnam, to see if he could find a way to sneak into China via Vietnam roads. This did not pan out so he struck out at another place to get into China, Tibet. Manning went to Tibet pretending to be a Buddhist lama from India and would you believe it he got an audience with the Dalai Lama on december 17 of 1811. He climbed hundreds of steps and met with the Dalai Lama whom he described “His face was, I thought, poetically and effectively beautiful. He was of a gay and cheerful disposition; his beautiful mouth perpetually unbending into a graceful smile, which illuminated his whole countenance. Sometimes, particularly when he had looked at me, his smile almost approached a gentle laugh”. After meeting the Dalai Lama, Manning hoped to be granted permission to make the 1500 mile journey to Beijing, but this would not occur. In the holy city of Lhasa he was apprehended by the local Qing officials and quasi imprisoned until Emperor Jiaqing could be informed and send orders as to what to do. Orders finally came in February of 1812 to deport Manning and raise border security in response to this incursion.    Then in 1813 problems reeked their ugly head yet again for British-Chinese relations. The Emperor had reduced the number of Hong merchants that the British were allowed to do business with. The larger issue at hand was the War of 1812 which brought with it conflict between Britain and American ships around the waters of Canton. At this time the Americans were second only to the British in the size of their commerce in Canton. The US lacked cruisers to convoy their merchant ships and thus began arming the merchants ships into privateers. The US ships also tried to simply avoid the British by not landing at the same time intervals, but all of this would not avoid conflict. In march of 1814 the British frigate Doris captured a 300 ton American privateer, the USS Hunter and took her to Macao as a prize. 2 months later the Doris hunted down the USS Russel up the Pearl River near the Whampia anchorage just a few miles shy of Whampoa city. They fired upon another while another US ships the Sphynx was boarded and captured. More raids continued from both sides and the conflict greatly angered the Chinese authorities. Eventually the Qing governor general cut off supplies and suspended trade with both nations demanding they behave themselves.    The British merchants in Canton complained they had nothing to do with the Royal Navy, but the Chinese authorities would not hear it. Some minor conflicts occured in Canton and the British felt they had been wronged. The East India Company began to demand the British government send an embassy to remedy the entire situation. So Britain answered the plea and sent another embassy mission in 1816. Lord William Pitt Amherst, Earl Amherst of Arracan was born in 1773 in Bath. His father was General William Amherst and his uncle was Field Marshall Sir Jeffrey Amherst who had a distinguished military career including being the governor general of British north America after defeating Nouvelle France in 1760. Little Williams mother died and the widowed father would take care of William and his sister for awhile until in 1781 when he also died. William would end up living with his uncle in the Amherst estate in Montreal where I happen to live near. William would eventually go to oxford and became an accomplished linguist learning several languages. Eventually he landed a job as ambassador to Sicily and by the end of the Napleonic wars he was made a Privy Councillor. He proved to be able enough and was soon sent as Ambassador with Plenipotentiary to negotiate with the Qing Dynasty in 1816.    The China Amherst encountered in 1816 was very different compared to the one Lord Macrtney had visited. The Emperor was Jiaqing, the dynasty had quelled the White Lotus Rebellion, quite a few smaller revolts and had a real problem with pirates along the coast. Emperor Jiaqing had a loose hold over the empire and was not about to let some foreign power further threaten it.    Amherst was a bit of an odd choice to lead the mission. He was considered a dull, but well mannered man who was not very talented in public speaking. Neither brilliant nor particularly handsome, just hailed from an excellent family. Amherst brought with him 2 familiar faces, the former little boy who had courageously spoken to Emperor Qianlong, George Staunton, who was now an adult. George had been working for the East India Company in Canton and had mastered the Chinese language and learnt much of its culture. The second ws Thomas Manning after his great Tibet adventure. Amherst’s departure would be 6 months after the Duke of Wellington’s victory at Waterloo in June of 1815. Thus Amherst would be coming to China to inform them that the nearly continuous warfare between Britain and France for the past 22 years had finally come to an end. Amherst was instructed to make it clear to the Chinese that Great Britain was now the unrivaled dominant military power in Europe. The Amherst mission also was to remedy the Canton situation, but the perspective from Britain was quite off. They thought Emperor Jiaqing knew relatively not much about the ongoings in places like Canton, and if they simply came and complained about mistreatment that he would just offhand discipline the officials in Canton and place the British in a better position.The Emperor however was hardly oblivious to the ongoings in Canton, in fact he was paying a ton of attention to it. The Emperor had ordered investigation into the Canton situation over the past few years Emperor Jiaqing was particularly taking an interest into George Staunton who he viewed as a potential trouble maker in China, because the man had vast knowledge now of the language and culture and might induce more westerners to do the same. For certain the emperor was not pleased at all to find out Thomas Manning was coming as he had deported him and it was to be presumed Manning should never step foot back in China ever again. So the entourage was already doomed to fail.   As the entourage made their way, Amherst reported that the Qing dynasty seemed to have declined significantly compared to what Macartney had reported long ago. The entourage had learnt of the White Lotus rebellion and how suppressing it nearly bankrupt the Qing government. The entourage became rather bold and instead of waiting at the island of Chusan, Amherst ships, accompanied by 2 East India Company surveying vessels divided themselves into task forces and went to work dropping the embassy team off  at the White River. Soon some of the vessels began to explore the river networks going as far north to where the Great Wall meets the coast of Manchuria, sailed around the Liaodong Peninsula and parts of the Yalu river, very bold moves. They also took notes of the villages, populations and geology of their ventures. They particularly noted down the lack of military installations.    Both the Amherst mission and the Qing court intended to use the Macartney mission as a precedent, but neither communicated how they should go about it. What really loomed over the entire affair was the issue of the Kow Tow. Now Amherst was coming into this with less radical requests than Macartney. They were not asking for a permanent ambassador at the capital, nor the opening of new ports. They just wanted some kind of provision for direct communication between the East India Company staff in Canton and a high ranking official in Beijing in order to circumvent the troubles they had been having with the Hoppo and governor general of canton. They also wanted to be allowed to do business with others aside from the Hong merchants. Officials from Beijing met with Amherst as soon as the British ships anchored at the mouth of the white river in early august. They escorted him along the way, but also asked him to Kowtow in front of a piece of yellow silk that represented the emperor. They wanted to see that the man understood how to do the kowtow. Amherst was given instructions from the British government simply to do what he thinks best in the situation of the kow towing issue, but to make sure the mission was a success. Thus the first time he was asked to do it he refused and stated that since Macartney did not kow tow why should he. The Qing officials were confused and said as far as they knew Macartney did kow tow to the emperor in 1793. Then they reminded Amherst the Emperor Jiaqing was present in 1793 and would have seen it occur, best he kow tow as well. George Staunton told Amherst they were mistaken and that he never saw Macartney kow tow. As you can imagine it was now a case of Emperor Jiaqing’s word against Staunton, a man the emperor did not like. Amherst was in a bad situation, so he simply stated he would do the kow tow when the time came, but stressed he would do it on one knee and not two. He tried to compromise by offering to kiss the emperors hand which utterly disgusted the Qing officials. The highest ranking Qing official escorting the foreigners was Heshitai, brother in law to Emperor Jaiqing. He told Amherst he had to bow on both knees or he would be expelled from the capital without audience.   The entourage made it just a mile outside Beijing where crowds of spectators began assembling on the sides of the roads to see their approach. They made their way to the eastern gate at night and the massive walls astounded them. They road in springless wooden carts, a quite uncomfortable ride at that. Amherst was told his audience would take place immediately and in fact he was actually late for it. Amherst panicked he was not ready, he was fatigued and unkept, his baggage had not even arrived yet which held his coronation robes for the occasion. He did not even have the letter from the prince regent to be given to the Emperor! Heshitai told him he had to go now, but Amherst refused. Amherst demanded they be given time to clean up, gather their baggage and rest. Heshitai eventually got another Qing official to grab hold of Amherst and dragged him to see the emperor.    It is here we get many conflicting stories about what goes down. In a classical one it is said, the Qing officials grab Amherst in the middle of the night when he is disoriented and try to force him to kow tow in a private room, hoping the half asleep man would just do it. Apparently Staunton grabs Amherst by the elbow before he can do the deed and they suddenly leave the place before seeing the emperor. A lot of unanswered questions to be sure. In another story the try to get Amherst to go see the emperor, but he simply refuses and him and his entourage basically fight their way out of their lodgings and leave on the evening of November 13. Regardless what is important to know is the British entourage and Emperor Jiaqing have no idea whats going on at all, they are both at the mercy of reports from the middle men, IE:  the escort officials like Heshitai.   During the slow journey back south to Canton, one of their ships, the Alceste had bombarded a Chinese fort guarding the Tiger’s Mouth river entrance to Canton! Dozens of shots were fired and it is said 47 Chinese soldiers were killed. The Alceste had returned from surveying the Pearl river when the captain Murray Maxwell requested permission to sail up to the Whampoa anchorage so it could make repairs on the ship before picking up Amherst’s entourage on their way back. Maxwell alleges he was taunted by the Qing representative to the governor general who told him that Amherst had been sent away from the capital without an audience. Murray Maxwell was thus denied permission to go to the Whampoa anchorage and was forced to wait on an outlying island. After a week of waiting, Maxwell had had it and decided to force up the river without permission. As soon as the Alceste began sailing it was confronted by a Chinese fleet and soon a fire fight. The Alceste began blasting away the Chinese coastal defenses, working her way up the river channel to get to Whampoa anchorage.    Both the British entourage and Emperor Jiaqing were mystified as to what happened. The Emperor sent his personal doctor to see to Amherst whom he had assumed must be very sick for missing the meeting only to find out the man was perfectly healthy. After some investigation the Emperor realized the entire debacle was the fault of the escorting officials, above all Heshitai! It turns out the Emperor had been lied to by the escorting officials and fed false reports. The British blamed the emperor for the entire misadventure. The Emperor was livid by everything, but there was a saving grace to the embarrassment on his nation's part, the embarrassment of the Alceste ordeal. When the Alceste made it to Whampoa the governor generals welcomed the ship as if nothing had ever happened. The Emperor sent conciliatory edicts and gifts for the King of England. The Emperor also sent a letter to the king, but he had written it before his investigation of all the matters and thus wrote that he blamed Amherst for the entire ordeal.   The mission was a catastrophe. Trade would continue unaffected, but now both nations had been humiliated. Now the Chinese would look with more suspicion at the British and the British hopes for extending trade outside the canton system were dashed. As quite a fitting end to the entire ordeal, the Alceste which was carrying Amherst and his retinue back to England slammed into a rock and sank. England's response to the Amherst mission was disappointment. The entire situation aided one group of people in Britain, those who sought to abolish the East India Company’s monopoly over the China trade. One major critic of the Amherst mission was Napoleon Bonaparte exiled on Saint Helena in 1817. He thought it was ridiculous that such an ordeal came about because the British fretted over kow towing. But he ended his statements with this “It would be the worst thing you have done for a number of years, to go to war with an immense empire like China, what might happen if the dragon, as it were, should be awakened? You would doubtless, at first, succeed…but you would teach them their own strength. They would be compelled to adopt measures to defend themselves against you; they would consider, and say, ‘we must try to make ourselves equal to this nation. Why should we suffer a people, so far away, to do as they please to us? We must build ships, we must put guns into them, we must render ourselves equal to them.’ They would get artificers, and ship builders, from France, and America, and even from London; they would build a fleet,and, in the course of time, defeat you.”    I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.  The attempts at opening up more trade with China were disastrous and embarrassing for Britain. She needed her tea fix, but her silver reserves were depleted and thus the East India Company began to deal in opium. How could this possibly all go wrong?

Last time we spoke, the Qing Dynasty faced the last real death throes of the Ming Dynasty. What is known as the Revolt of three Feudatories resulted in a war against Wu Sangui, Geng Jingzhong & Shang Zhixin. One by one each warlord fell to the Qing dynasty’s vast armies and with each defeat brought more territory and populace under the Qing yolk. However one last major enemy loomed, the Kingdom of Taiwan established by Koxinga. Koxinga’s descendent Zheng Keshuang would eventually be defeated and with his submission it seemed the Qing Dynasty would have eternal peace. However, the Qing’ enemies remained within and outside its borders at all times. Holding the new empire together would not be easy. The Qing empire, much like the great wall of China could be destroyed, brick by brick and only time would tell how that wall would hold.    This episode is the White Lotus Rebellion   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on the history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. The revolt of the 3 feudatories had ended, Wu Sangui, Geng Jingzhong & Shang Zhixin were all defeated. The grandson of Koxinga, Zheng Keshuang was defeated, Taiwan was conquered and brought under the fold of the Qing dynasty. The Qing also managed to defend its borders from the external threat of the Tsardom of Russia. The Russians had ventured into border skirmishes around the Amur River valley, first in 1658 with the Battle of Hutong, in which a force of Manchu and Koreans overwhelmed a force of 500 Cossacks aboard 11 ships, sending them fleeing to Albazin. Albazin was a Russian settlement on the Amur River right along the Qing Dynasty’s border and it remained a point of conflict in the late 17th century. Since their defeat at the battle of Hutong, the Russians began a campaign of persuading nearby populaces to their cause rather than the Qing which became such a nuisance by 1685 that the Qing sent a force to lay siege to the settlement. In just one day the settlement garrisoned by 450 men surrendered, however a year later the Russians would return to the settlement looking to re-establish themselves. The Qing yet again besieged the settlement in 1686, however this time it was much bloodier. The Qing threw around 3000 men at Albazin which was garrisoned by 800, by the end of the ordeal it is said just 24 men survived within Albazin and the Qing lost perhaps 1500 casualties. In the greater scheme of things, it was just a small border clash, but the result was rather significant. The Russians had been acting rather boldly, because of all the strife going on between the Qing and Ming, but now that the Qing had consolidated their new empire they were more than capable of defending any encroachments, especially those in Manchuria,their native homelands. After defeating the Russians again at the Siege of Albazin, the Qing government sent letters to the Tsar suggesting they sign a peace treaty, because for quite a long time now, the Qing were dealing with an age old enemy, the Mongols, to be precise the Dzungar Mongols. Emperor Kangxi wished to rid the Russian nuisance from the Amur area which was the northern border so he could focus his army on the north-western problem that was the Dzungar Mongols. The Russians knew they could not hope to defend outposts as far as the Amur region and the idea of peace talks perked their interests as trade would be far more beneficial to them then border skirmishes. A treaty would be signed called the Treaty of Nerchinsk, which established trade between the 2 empires and relative peace for quite a long time. This was also the first treaty between the Tsardom of Russia and the Qing dynasty, so a bit of legitimizing for the new-ish regime.   The Qing would have a hell of a time with the Dzungar Mongols which accumulated into what is known as the Dzungar-Qing war which almost went on for a hundred years. By the time the Qing would effectively end the wars with the Dzungar mongols, and all culminated in what is known as the Dzungar genocide. By the end of the wars in the 1750’s it is estimated that around 80% of the Dzungar population, something like 500-800 thousand people were killed. During the early 18th century, the Qianlong Emperor gave a directive stating “"Show no mercy at all to these rebels. Only the old and weak should be saved. Our previous military campaigns were too lenient. If we act as before, our troops will withdraw, and further trouble will occur. If a rebel is captured and his followers wish to surrender, he must personally come to the garrison, prostrate himself before the commander, and request surrender. If he only sends someone to request submission, it is undoubtedly a trick. Tell Tsengünjav to massacre these crafty Zunghars. Do not believe what they say."”. As you can imagine such directives led to the massacres of countless people. On Top of the killings, the remaining Dzungar peoples were forcefully relocated to places all over China. Reports from a QING scholar named Wei Yuan who lived almost 100 years after the events state that 30% of the Dzungar people were killed by the Qing military, 40% died of disease such as a smallpox epidemic, 20% fled to other places like Russia and modern day Kazakhstan. There are quite a few historians who argue the Qianlong Emperor simply engaged in a genocidal campaign. Regardless after this rather horrible and bloody ordeal, for the most part the Qing dynasty undergoes a period of relative peace, and I mean the word peace should be taken with a grain of salt, for all Chinese history I don’t think there is a single year some revolt or rebellion is not occurring.    When Emperor Kangxi took the throne from 1661-1722 this began what is called the Qing Golden Age. His successor Emperor Yongzheng continued the golden age from 1723-1735 and was further succeeded by Emperor Qianlong who would rule from 1735-1796 which is seen as the peak of the Golden age. During this period China annexed most of Mongolia, northeast China, Xinjiang, Tibet and Taiwan, aside from Taiwan, its basically the borders of the very China we know today. China at this time amounted to over 32% of the worlds industrial output, its population soared past 100 million for the first time in history and soon grew to an enormous 300 million, hell I live in Canada and we barely have 38 million right now! Despite being such a colossus, China for the most part was quite isolated in its market. China allowed foreign trade through places like Macau, but it was quite limited in scope. Eventually it would be expanded upon.   When the Qianlong Emperor took the throne he began numerous projects including the Ten Great Campaigns, which was a series of military campaigns that enlarged the empire to the extent I had mentioned previously. He put together the largest collection of books in Chinese history to that point known as the Siku Quanshu, “complete repository of the Four branches of Literature”. The exploration of the new world also brought riches in the form of new foods to China. The potato and peanut dramatically improved food supplies allowing for China’s population to boom.    Now the upcoming episodes are going to specifically look at the emergence of European powers mingling with China. But this episode is going to be directed at an internal story, and one that is not often talked about. Stating that I will be glossing over some very very important events such as the journey of James Flint and the mission of Lord George Macartney, but rest assured those stories will be the very forefront after this one.   In the spring of 1794, the HMS Lion departed from Macau for its long voyage back home to England and a rumor spread amongst its crew that in the mountainous counties of Shanxi province, that a “true master” had appeared. This so-called Master was said to be marked with the character for the sun upon his left hand and the character of the moon on his right. Together these characters formed the character “Ming”, dun dun dunnnn. According to another rumor, a giant boulder in the village of where this master was born had suddenly split open revealing a hidden scripture inside thar read:  “A black wind will blow for a day and a night. It will destroy men beyond number. White bones will be piled into mountains, and Blood will flow to become an ocean”    It was the telling of an apocalypse, and rumors sprang all through China that the only way to escape the destruction was to memorize that scripture from the boulder and to chant it. Oh and to begin stockpiling guns and other weapons and be ready to support the great master’s uprising against the Qing. It was said the “black wind” would hit in the spring of 1796 and it would destroy the world and usher in a new age. Zhang Zhengmo, a peasant living in Hubei province was one of many who believed the prophecy. At 32 years of age he had heard it told to him by a sect leader named Bai who explained to Zhang and many others that the True Master’s doctrine was part of the White Lotus teachings.    The White Lotus sect had been around for hundreds of years, it was something like a marriage between Buddhism and Daoism. For the most part, the White Lotus sects amounted to nothing more than harmless people practicing a faith based on healing and protection from misfortune. The founder of the Ming dynasty Zhu Yuanzhang, joined a White Lotus Revolution that took shape in 1352 in Guangzhou. The revolution saw him taking firm control over the head of a rebellious army and he would go on to conquer Nanjing and take the title of Emperor Hongwu ushering in a new age. His title also held religious sentiment of the White Lotus. This religion however like many others held a prediction of an apocalypse and its followers believed that with it would come the second coming of Buddha who would return in the form of a bodhisattva named Maitreya to rid the world of corruption and suffering. Maitreya would destroy the corrupt government and the non believers and a utopia would be formed for those who helped bring upon the apocalypse.    So put yourself in the shoes of the Manchu rulers of the new Qing dynasty. You hear these rumors going around and see the potential rebellion you might be seeing from this religious group. White Lotus groups had sprung uprisings countless times in history and hell the dynasty you just defeated was made by one of those uprisings! Back to Zhang Zhengmo, well he was a recent convert and Bai who was a traveling sect leader became his teacher who indoctrinated him in the True Master’s doctrine. Zhang donated money to the cause, not much, he was a peasant after all, but enough to start hoarding weapons. He then began to recruit other followers to become his students…you can see where this is going, think of a good old fashion MLM scam of today like herbalife or scientology haha except instead of toxic shakes or alien stories its people hoarding weapons to begin an apocalypse. So you can sort of get the picture, you become a follower, in the process you pay money to hoard weapons. Then you recruit other followers, rinse and repeat, soon you got yourself a rebellion cooking.    Zhang Zhengmo lived in a part of China considered to be an internal frontier, wide mountain ranges along the points where Hubei, Shaanxi and Sichuan pressed against another, same types of places all the bandit armies would run up into when the Qing came after them. This particular region was known as the Han River Highlands, which fed into the Yangzi river, not a very hospitable area and thus less developed. It was dense with forest, hills and such, perfect for bandits to hang out in. The reason I am describing this area is to emphasize something that is going on in China. I mentioned the population boom, from 100-300 million, it was enormous. With so many people, the necessity for agricultural expansion was enormous as well. Most of the southern and eastern parts of China were being cleared out for crops, literally everywhere was getting gulped up by farms. More and more people were forced to move into areas like the Han River Highlands and all of this culminated in more and more competition between settlers over natural resources. Like with most frontier societies, this got violent very fast. The Han River Highlands were a pretty scary place to live in the late 18th century, there was just about no security because the government officials were all in other areas. Thus without much intervention, who could step in to marshall such places? The White Lotus thats who.   The White Lotus promised safety for all of its followers and were more than happy to accept any settlers. By 1794 the Qing administration warily watched as regions such as the Han River Highlands had sects such as the White Lotus grow. Provincial authorities saw the potential risk of insurrection and began to work at dismantling such cells before they could cause trouble. A crackdown came in 1794 targeting groups based out of Sichuan, Shaanxi and Hubei. Emperor Qianlong made an edict in September ordering all captured sectarians to be punished according to the nature of their guilt. So for example, spiritual leaders would be executed by being cut into pieces, wozzors. Those who spread the White Lotus teachings would be beheaded. Mere followers, would be arrested and deported to Manchuria as slaves. All in all not a very subtle edict.    So the local Qing officials set to work, first it was village headmen who organized forces to round up White Lotus members. Within a few months time they had arrested 20 teachers and over a hundred followers, and as you can imagine their methodology was brutal and would intensify the situation. There was not enough forces to get the job done so the local officials began to hire local thugs to go house to house. As you can imagine the thugs began to run amok, many began to threaten to arrest people if they didn't pay them off. So those who paid them off or somehow managed to prove they were not White Lotus members received placards that they could put on their doors marking them as “decent people”. Everyone else were open targets for abuse as they were suspected White Lotus members. When Zhang Zhengmo heard the officials going house to house he quickly abandoned his home and fled before inspectors could get him. He returned to his native county in the same province where he continued his mission to recruit more followers. By the late winter of 1796, it is estimated that Zhang had more than 1000 followers. Only 2 months before the planned date for the apocalypse or better called uprising, Zhang found out that local officials were mounting a new crackdown now in his native county. Fearing his arrest, Zhang prepared for their arrival, calling upon his followers and telling him the time had come.   Zhang’s followers took to the roads where they joined up with other cells that other recruiters had grown. In only a few days more than 10,000 White Lotus members converged under the leadership of Zhang Zhengmo. They brought with them, swords, guns, gunpowder and other supplies necessary for waging a rebellion. They plundered villages for supplies and began conscripting the local populace, coercing them with food. This all mattered not to the White Lotus believers who were taught that non believers would all be destroyed when Buddha returned regardless, so who cares if they harm any of these people in the meantime. The worshipers and their indentured conscripts soon swelled to 20,000 and they began to create blockades along the roads and pathways and made their way to the hills. Zhang Zhengmo’s first HQ was to be a mountain estate of a very wealthy believer, but Zhang worried it was to undefendable and thus brought his force further into the mountains where he knew they could hold up better. A campment was built with thousands of shacks, white banners were spread out and the force began to adopt white headbands to identify themselves as legitimate rebels. Their weaponry was mostly swords, knives, though they did have 300 matchlock rifles and 6 chestnut wood cannons. They also had a ton of crossbows and a lot of poison tipped bolts. The defense of the mountain was typical guerilla stuff seen to this day, booby trapped paths, watch towers, makeshift landmines and people hidden around every nook and cranny.    Despite all the preparation, Zhang Zhengmo was quite reluctant to take his newfound rebel army down the mountain side, fearing they would all be slaughtered by the Qing army who must surely be awaiting them. So they all dug in for months, only sending the occasional raiding party down to gather supplies. July came and Zhang received word the Qing were slowly closing in on the mountain. He had burned his name in the registers hoping that he might be able to make an escape and some of his followers began to see he was not the leader they thought him to be. They had  been told he had met the True master, but many found out this was a lie. They looked to him for guidance, but all he could provide were cheap parlor tricks. When Zhang had called for the uprising he thought all of the White Lotus followers from miles all around would heed the cause. Yet after the first 10,000 flocked to him none others were found, he assumed everyone had been arrested and killed. They were trapped on this mountain, there was nowhere to escape to, there was no help coming. They held out another 2 months, but then in September the Qing broke their perimeter and arrested the lot of them. Zhang was to be executed, but before the deed a Qing interrogator demanded to know why he and his followers rebelled. “You are all peasants, you receive the blessings of the emperor. He relieves you of taxes and tribute grain. He relieves your debts. When there is a flood or a drought he gives you aid. You have a human heart, and you should feel gratitude and abide by the laws. So why, under the banner of these evil teachings, did you start a rebellion? In the end, what was it you wanted?”.  Zhang replied “We have indeed received blessings from the emperor. We had warm clothes and could eat our fill. We were peasants, and we were grateful. It was at a time when I was ignorant, that I first began to practice this religion. It was only because I wanted to encourage people to do good deeds and to avoid misfortune. But then the investigations and arrests intensified, and I saw that when people who practiced our religion were captured, all of them were charged with heavy crimes. So I became afraid”. So he was nothing more than a peasant, who ignorantly was led astray and when the crackdown occurred he did what he did out of fear. It is the excuse given by countless peasant uprisings, reckless bursts of defiance towards an perceived malevolent empire, nothing too remarkable. Zhang’s force of 20,000 were brushed aside….and little did they know what had occurred all over China.    The “black wind” uprising spread like wildfire. The vast range and appeal of the apocalyptic rumors that had pushed Zhang and his followers had only increased exponentially. From word of mouth through the province, uprisings began to all explode spontaneously through the hill countries of the Han River Highlands. Zhang had no idea, but it was his movement that became the spark to see the entire forest ablaze. By the time the Qing officials had dealt with Zhang Zhengmo’s camp, all of Hubei was engulfed in a wave of rebellion, and soon it spread to the neighboring provinces of Sichuan and Shaanxi. On february 9th of 1796, the first day of the lunar new year and just 6 days before Zhang Zhengmo began his uprising, Emperor Qianlong gave up the throne. The abdication had been planned for a very long time, all the way back to 1735 when Qianlong had given an edict that he planned to rule as long as high grandfather had. Emperor Kangxi had reigned for 61 years and Qianlong wanted to keep his word, but not entirely. While on the surface he did quote en quote abdicate on his 60th year as emperor, giving the throne to his son Jiaqing, in reality all he did was install a puppet. The calendars record the new year as Jiaqing Year 1, but within the capital it was truly Qianlong year 61. 2 calendars were kept, 2 sets of imperial annals with one referring to the supreme retired emperor Qianlong, who would continue to rule while his son kept the throne warm.   It probably would have been better for China if Emperor Qianlong really did abdicate, for while his reign was impressive, his effectiveness was deteriorating with his age. A Korean diplomat in 1794 reported to his superiors that Emperor Qianlong had acted in a bizarre manner. He stated that the Emperor ordered breakfast immediately after eating breakfast on some occasions. Thus the implication here was that the Emperor was going senile. Later in 1797 a different Korean envoy reported that the Emperor seemed to be unable to remember what occurred during the morning of their meeting nor what they had done the day prior. With the emperor in a weakened state, factions within his court began to vie for power. One of Emperor Qianlong's closest court officials a man named Heshen began to act out in the emperors name. The more the Emperors mental health declined the more Heshen would speak on his behalf. As observed by the western George Staunton in 1790 “Heshen enjoyed, almost exclusivity, the confidence of the emperor. He might be said to possess, in fact, under the emperor, the whole power of the empire”. It just so happens, Heshen was one of the most corrupt officials in Chinese history during a particularly corrupt ridden time in Chinese history. Heshen treated large amounts of the Qing governments bureaucracy as his own personal patronage network. For example, he began to appoint officials into positions and expected them to pay him handsomely for such appointments. This led the officials to embezzle money to pay him back. In one example he appointed a man to the Yellow River Conservancy, which controlled the funding for flood control over China’s second longest river and the man embezzled over 6 million tales of silver each year to pay back Heshen. That money of course was required to help prevent the Yellow River from flooding and by the end of the 18th century about 1/10th of the government funds were actually used for flood prevention. As Heshen and others sucked up the money, the peasants on the floodplain suffered tremendously as the appointed official at the Yellow River Conservancy found it was in the best interests of everyone to allow the river to breach its dikes periodically, just to make sure the government funds kept pouring in. Heshen’s corruption was widely apparent to the court, but to make any accusations against him was a death sentence as he had the mouth of the emperor.    Now back to the White Lotus rebellion, it was spreading as I said with great speed and this was greatly aided by government corruption. With the rampant corruption came a huge lack of government forces to respond to the initial uprisings. Skeleton garrisons in key locations such as Hubei allowed for the uprisings to spread like wildfire. The officials were caught off guard and massively unprepared. Across Hubei overwhelmed government forces tried to resist the rebels with whatever weapons they could muster, but soon began pleading other provinces for reinforcement. With such a lack of governmental forces to protect the common people, landowners resorted to raising private militias called “Xiangyong” (means local braves) which in turn began to simply plunder areas. As one witness reported “the so called militia soldiers just continued the work of stealing everything the refugees had left behind in their houses. There wasn’t an empty hand anywhere…if the White Lotus rebels are like an ordinary comb, the private militia are the fine-toothed one”. These militias killed, robbed and caused further havoc. To the government all of them were rebels and in turn this caused all the rebels to find common cause. The slogan “the officials oppress, and the people rebel” spread across multiple rebel groups, and at the forefront was the White Lotus. The Qing government began a cycle of violence, redoubled its efforts to extinguish the White Lotus sects, only to give justification to them to increase their rebellious activity.    It is interesting to note the hiring of these militia’s will play a crucial role in the downfall of the Qing dynasty. Many scholars attribute the adoption of hired militia’s by the Qing government to being something like cutting off your limbs and eating them during starvation. The idea being that while the Qing could raise such militia’s to try and stamp out the endless rebellions that will occur during their dynasty’s reign, these were short term solutions and only hurt them in the long run. Hiring civilians in war showcased how the Qing standing armies were losing their fighting capability and greatly hurt the Qing treasuries. Regardless this will all be showcased much more in the future.   Emperor Qianlong saw the uprisings as a local issue that should be dealt with by local forces. His focus was on internal unrest, not the problems of the frontier lands and so he denied requests for military aid. He kept telling provincial officials to use the resources they had to deal with the uprisings even though he held ample elite troops that could have swept in to restore the peace. What Emperor Qianlong did do however was send funds to the province to help as the government treasury was jam packed with silver during this age. Without the capitals troops to reinforce them, provincial officials began to follow the lead of the militia rebels and armed peasants to fight off the rebels. At the beginning of the uprising most frontier territories had government militias of just a few hundred, luckier ones perhaps a few thousand. But as the rebellion spread into neighboring provinces and the funds from Beijing poured in, the militia armies grew exponentially. By 1798, Hubei had nearly 400,000 militiamen registered on its books and Sichuan and Shaanxi each had comparably large militia forces. In the concert of the war against the rebels, the 3 provinces reported a total of 100,000 government soldiers and upto a possible million militiamen.    The militiamen strategy proved to be very ineffective against the rebels, in fact the militias did more harm than good. Militiamen came from all walks of life, from farmers, to unemployed city folk to ruthless criminals. If you were a bandit, it was actually far more beneficial to join the militia which paid a salary about the same as a government soldier. These militiamen had no real allegiance beyond the salary they were paid so as the White Lotus watched the government hiring all of these people they simply offered them the same salary or more. By the later years of the uprising it turned out nearly half the White Lotus armies were made up of former militiamen! And if you were wondering what else than money could persuade these militiamen to join the White Lotus hear this. The governor general of Sichuan province reported with disgust that whenever government troops went into battle they simply quote “sent the militia to charge in ahead of them as they hung back where it was safe. If the militiamen got turned back by the rebels and started to run away, the government soldiers just ran after them”. On top of this, tons of false victories over the rebel armies were being reported when in reality, the government troops would just pretend to engage the rebels and continuously move their camps around. There was even reports that government forces would murder refugees from nearby villages and set up their mutilated bodies at their camps to make it look like they had caught rebels. The fact the government forces were really not engaging the rebel armies very much was so apparent one witness said “where the rebels are, there are no government forces; and where the government forces are, there are no rebels”.    With the declining mental health of Emperor Qianlong growing worse, the campaign against the White Lotus fell into the hands of Heshen who was too busy using the opportunity to enrich himself. As emperor Qianlong obsessed over the reports of the rebel war, apparently barely sleeping while he read them day and night according to accounts from his son, well Heshen was doing his best to control which reports came to the emperor. Heshen made sure all the reports were fake victory stories making it seem that the entire campaign was going off without a hitch. Heshen had appointed his own personal goons to be in key military positions who in turn fed falsified victory reports for money or military honors in return. This went further to whitewash massacres done to the civilian population by the government armies. And of course the funds for the military were going to the goons who in turn paid tribute right back to Heshen, making sure they kept their positions regardless of how incompetent they were. For the first 3 years of the war, Heshen effectively controlled the central government's military funding. It would also turn out that the registry of over 300,000 militia soldiers recruited to fight the White Lotus did not exist and it was an embezzlement scheme. It gets even worse. Those militia soldiers who did exist and who died fighting the rebels, well the corrupt officials would embezzle their death benefits, so a ton of mourning families got nothing and this had the disgusting side effect of creating an incentive for corrupt officers to have more of their soldiers die on the battlefield. The Militia related expenses would claim at least half the war effort funding according to Jiaqing who discovered the racket. A scholar in Hubei said this of the situation    “At first they nibbled away like worms, gradually taking more and more until they were gulping like whales. In the beginning, their embezzlements could be reckoned in hundreds and thousands of taels, but presently nothing less than ten thousand would attract notice. Soon amounts ran to scores of thousands, then to hundreds of thousands, then to millions.” Emperor Qianlong expected an easy victory over the White Lotus, but the war was not ending. After reading so many countless reports of victories over the rebels, Qianlong because frustrated and confused as to why the White Lotus rebels did not submit. By 1799, the cost of the war was reaching nearly 100 million taels of silver, an unbelievable sum that had completely exhausted the treasury surplus and there still was no end in sight. Emperor Qianlong spent his last years of life losing his mind to the rebellion and died in a position of helplessness with the treasury emptied. Jiaqing did not have an enviable start to his reign. He was a broad, fat man with a talent for archery and was left with a clean up job that was simply immense. He had been forced to suffer the indemnity of being enthroned in 1796 only to find out he was a puppet and that his father was not even in charge, it was Heshen. He was in his 40’s and quite powerless as long as his father remained alive. The day after Emperor Qianlong died in 1799, one of Jiaqings first major acts was to order the arrest of Heshen, boom. There was a swift and very publicized trial where the board of punishments found Heshen to be guilty of a long list of corruption related charges and the sentence would be death. Because Heshen held one of the highest ranks in the court he was allowed to strangle himself with a silk cord, a privilege considered more honorable than having your head cut off. Although the execution of Heshen was symbolically cathartic, it did little to stop the rot of corruption within the government. Heshen was blamed for just about all the sins of the time, as if he alone dragged the empire down…though one could argue he certainly provided a helping hand. All Heshens misdeeds were laid to bare and his enormous wealth was unimaginable.    Heshen had a sprawling mansion of over 730 rooms. In his secondary residence there were 620 rooms. He held landholdings of over 120,000 acres of productive farmland. All the stories you can imagine were there, he had golden chopsticks, silver place settings for banquets, entire rooms filled with jewels, jade and other riches. He owned 10 banks, 10 pawnshops and millions upon millions of taels of silver hoarded into them. Apparently one wall in his main residence turned out to be filled with 5000 pounds of gold bullion if its to be believed. One extremely overexaggerated estimate his sum worth was around 800 million taels of silver, thats around  1.5 billion at the time, around 4 times the entire gross domestic product of the United States of America. More conservative estimates are at around 80 million taels of silver, which was more than the entire treasury surplus that preceded the White Lotus war and enough to make Heshen as wealthy as the Emperor!   After dealing with Heshen, Jiaqing began a campaign against the corruption in the government. However, Jiaqing understood how an anti corruption campaign could fall into chaos and become a general purge, so he allowed it to peter out pretty quick. What did happen, was the Qing government saw a lot of old scores settled and factionalism rose amongst officials. The first order of business after dealing with Heshen was obviously the White Lotus war. The day after Qianlong's death, Jiaqing issued an edict naming the suppression of antigovernment religious sects as the dynasty's most urgent priority. Jiaqing rallied against the corrupt military officers accusing them of dragging out the war in order to fill their pockets. He laid blame for the insurrection upon the civil servants who extorted the peasants. “The peasants enjoy few fruits from their labor. So how can they possibly supply such insatiable demands? It is the local officials who provoked these rebellions”.    Emperor Jiaqing began removing corrupt and incompetent military officials to try and replace them with better men, but the reality at the time was quite thin pickings. Most of the Manchu generals of his father or grandfathers generation were dead or far too old to lead. The younger generation were not born into the same world as their parents. If you’ve ever listened to Dan Carlin’s podcast and yes I am nothing but a mere fanboy, he often makes the analogy of how empires go soft. The old quasi proverb of old wooden shoes going up the stairs and soft silken sandals going down them. This new generation of Manchu did not live the hardened lifestyle of their ancestors, they were living in a world of luxury now. A ton of the younger generation were also tainted by the Heshen click. Yet there was a minority of great warriors and some of the old guard so to say that had won Emperor Qianlong some victories back in the day. The very best of them was a physically enduring Manchu named Eldemboo. At 51 years old in the year of 1799 he was selected to lead the White Lotus suppression. He was quite old, but experienced, ruthless and said to be incorruptible.    Elemboo’s had been part of campaigns in the 1770’s to bring parts of the frontiers under the Qing Yolk. He fought the Burmese in southern Yunnan. He fought during the Tibetan rebellion in the1770’s, during a muslim uprising in Gansu in 1784, helped put down a rebellion in Taiwan in 1787 and served in the far west against the Gurkhas in Tibet and Nepal in the 1790s. By 1797 he was a Lt-general who had just succeeded in suppressing a Miao ethnic uprising in Hunan province. The campaign against the White Lotus faced a crucial problem, that of mobility. The rebels required little in terms of weaponry and could get pretty much anything on the go from just about any village. They did not construct elaborate camps, they were accustomed to the mountains and forests and could carry out guerilla warfare at a moments notice. The Qing military was another beast altogether. It required enormous logistical operations to move its food, matchlock muskets, ammunition, powder, bows and arrows, this all required carts and beasts of burden. Usually these logistics were not a problem, but for mountains and forest regions it was a nightmare. The rebels understood the advantage and made sure to take up positions in the worst possible places for such logistics.    Because of these logistical problems the Qing forces had been simply setting up stations in fixed positions hoping to cast a net around rebel pockets. Many commanders simply did not have the stomach to march into forests or up mountain sides to chase an enemy that would use every obstacle against them. Eldemboo unlike his predecessor commanders not only was willing to venture into the forests and mountains, but was perfectly willing to endure the hardship of such ventures alongside his men. A new approach was necessary for the campaign. Eldemboo called for “jianbi qingye” “fortify the walls and clear the countryside”. The idea was two fold, first to separate the good peasants from those who would support the White Lotus, by concentrating them in places of safety ie, behind fortified encampments known as baozhai. In these Baozhai, some peasants would be trained as militia to defend their respective camps. The second idea was to clear the countryside, by moving all the grain harvest and food stores away and into the Baozhai where all the good peasants would be taking refuge. The hope was the rebels would eventually be unable to scavenge food from the emptied countryside and would be forced to come out of their hiding and fight the government forces on their terms.   Under the command of Eldemboo, the jianbi qingye strategy was implemented throughout the war zone. Hundreds of fortified camps were in the wartorn provinces. The fortified camps held strong walls and deep moats. The militiamen would defend them and not be taken out on campaigns that earlier had caused so much havoc upon the populace. The new role of the militiamen was to protect their own families, neighbors and such and thus they were far less likely to fall into banditry. While the quote “good” population concentrated in their Baozhai, defended by their good militiamen, Eldemboo’s manchu and Han troops were now free to campaign at will through any wartorn province. Soon Eldemboo began producing a string of victories over the weakened rebel forces. By early 1803, Eldemboo’s campaign had moved into its final phase, a brutal mop up operation. The remnants of the broken rebels needed to be crushed and the demilitarization of all the militiamen needed to gradually begin.  Emperor Jiaqing warned his generals not to relax in their campaigns prematurely. “Though the main disease is cured, there are boils and sores that remain. If even a single rebel is left alive, it would be enough for them to keep spreading and growing”. Emperor Jiaqing’s generals heeded his words and continued to ruthlessly crush the remnants of the rebels. A systematic program of pacification was enacted. The “good” populace was continuously resettled into the fortified cities, while the Qing forces pursued and exterminated the rebel guerrilla bands, though it should be noted they did give amnesty to many rebels who deserted. It was the combination of military and social policies that were winning the day. Qing administrators seized and destroyed all White Lotus scriptures they could find in the warzones.  By the late summer of 1803, some of Jiaqing’s commanders reported back to him that after 8 years of extermination efforts against the White Lotus in the 3 provinces, it seemed for all intensive purposes the job was complete. In early 1804, Eldemboo traveled back to Beijing and returned his carved seal of authority to the Emperor, signifying that the war was over. It would be the last great victory of Eldemboo’s very long career. The next year at the age of 57 Eldemboo died and with him the last of that hardened generation. In 1805, Emperor Jiaqing was able to address the empire without the ongoing drain of resources due to the White Lotus War.   It was a very bitter victory, most rebellions are. A chinese scholar wrote a few decades later that it was estimated that several hundred thousand rebels had been killed during the war. For the governmental forces, militiamen and countless civilians who died of war and starvation the scholar simply stated it could not be calculated. There was also no way to differentiate the White Lotus from the rebels as there were countless groups rebelling for differing reasons.   A major problem with the White Lotus Rebellion aside from the death and horror was the loss of prestige for the Qing military. There was a sort of myth of invincibility for the Manchu warriors, hell they had conquered the Ming Dynasty afterall. But the scale of damage caused by the White Lotus Rebellion was eye opening, it took the Qing 8 years to quell it! And quell it is a strong word, for the White Lotus were not truly gone or anything, there would be sporadic revolts throughout the early 19th century, just not on the same scale as the 8 year war. The Manchu army of the early 19th century was not the same generation that once conquered the Ming. The wooden shoes were being cast off and silky slippers were starting to become the norm so to say for you Dan Carlin fans. To make everything much worse, the adoption of training and hiring militia’s would have a devastating effect on the Qing dynasty until its demise in the 20th century. This was not a unique problem for China, many empires fell for this same reason. Take example the Egyptian empire under the Ptolemy’s. Under the reign of Ptolemy IV Philophater the military was forced to hire local native Egyptians in large numbers for the first time to deal with the 4th Syrian war of 219-217BC. Prior to this war, the Ptolemiac empire had a military consisted mostly of Greeks and for a very important reason, they did not want to train or arm the native population who did not like them very much. When their backs were against the wall they trained around 30,000 native egyptians as Phalangites and hell it paid off during the battle of Raphia when they smashed the army of Antiochus III. The Ptolemies had finally ended what was an ongoing manpower problem. Oh and then the trained and armed Egyptians rebelled and created a separate kingdom that lasted 20 years. It was an enormous turning point in Ptolemaic history and a bitter lesson.  For the Qing the hiring of militia armies will occur on countless occasions for countless reasons, but one thing is for sure it is part of a long list of reasons as to why the great dynasty will crumble.    I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.  The once mighty Qing have proven to be not so mighty anymore. The 8 year White Lotus Rebellion was quelled, but at what cost to the empire? With the death of Eldemboo came also the deaths of a generation of strong warriors. And while this rebellion was going on, something else was afoot, this time not an internal issue, but a growing external one. 

Last time we spoke, Sun Kewang, Li Dingguo and Emperor Yongli formed a sort of trinity that was chipping away at the Qing dynasty. Each man had his talents and combined they proved a formidable foe, but divided would they fall. Sun Kewang’s jealousy led him to butt heads with Li Dingguo undermining all the success they had made. When Sun Kewang was defeated a part of the trinity was gone and the forces of Li Dingguo and Emperor Yongli could not hope to stand against the Qing invaders as they marched into Yunnan. Emperor Yongli took flight to Burma forcing Li Dingguo to spend years trying to rescue him from the Burmese while fighting off the looming Qing menace. In the end even Li Dingguo could not stop the inevitable as he and Emperor Yongli fell. Now the Qing can face their last looming menace, the King of Taiwan, Koxinga.    This episode is Koxinga & the revolt of the three feudatories   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on the history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. I have repeatedly said his name, in the west we know him as Koxinga, his actual name being Zheng Chenggong.  It would be his marine forces that would fight the Qing Dynasty until the bitter end. He was born with the name Zheng Sen in 1624, in Hirado Japan, to Zheng Zhilong a chinese merchant and a Japanese woman named Tagawa Matsu. When Zheng was 7 years old, his father had business interests in Quanzhou and the family moved to Fujian province. His father would end up becoming one of the richest men in China and an Admiral under the Ming Dynasty. Zheng Zhilong operated a pirate fleet of over 800 ships along the coast from Japan to Vietnam. The Ming appointed him “admiral of the coastal seas” and he basically was tasked with repeling other pirates and the Dutch East Indies Company. The fruits of his labor wound him up grabbing over 60% of Fujian province land. Zheng Sen would pass the imperial examination at the age of 14 in 1638 becoming one of 12 Linshansheng of Nan’an. Linshansheng basically means the best of the best as students go. In Nan’an, Zheng married the niece of a Ming official named Dong Yangxian who was a Jinshi, meaning he held the highest imperial exam degree, so basically Zheng was brushing shoulders with giants so to say. In 1644 he studied at the imperial Nanking University.   When the Qing captured Beijing, Zheng’s father, Zheng Zhilong continued to serve the Ming moving to Nanjing, then after the capture of Nanjing in 1645 accepted an offer to serve  as commander in chief of the Ming forces working under the Prince of Tang in Fuzhou. It seems the war of resistance had gone to terribly for Zheng Zhilong because he became a turncoat in 1646, intentionally leaving the Zhejiang pass unguarded and allowed the Qing to capture Fuzhou. Zheng Zhilong defected to the Qing, but the Zheng army’s control lay firmly in his brothers and sons hands. That son, Zheng Sen refused to defect to the Qing and would take most of the Zheng army with him, causing problems. As for his wife Tagawa Matsu, it is alleged the Qing went to Anhai where she was residing in a castle, which I found particularly interesting since this is during the Sakoku period and it was illegal for Japanese to leave the country. Anyways its alleged the Qing marched upon the castle where she was and raped and or killed her. Other stories state she committed suicide while resisting the Qing. Regardless of the implications of her death, the Qing knew they could not trust Zheng Zhilong and would have him put under house arrest for many years until they executed him in 1661. It is said in 1646, while Zheng Sen was busy fighting off the Qing he managed to return to Quanzhou where he discovered his mother had been murdered or committed suicide because of the Qing and thus rebellion was firmly placed in his heart. I cant really get into it but there is an entire mythos around lady Tagawa and multiple perceptions on her and her legacy.    When the Qing took Beijing and gave their head shaving proclamation, Zheng Sen  refused and it is said his will was “as strong and firm as a mountain”. As I had said the Zheng army did not all follow Zheng Zhilong and defect with the Qing, many would follow Zheng Sen. Soon Zheng Sen recruited more followers and organized allied armies in Nan’an Guangdong. When Emperor Hongguang took the mantle, Zheng Sen flocked over to him in Nanking. When Emperor Hongguang was defeated and executed, Emperor Longwu rose up with support from Zheng’s father. Emperor Longwu established himself in Fuzhou and the natural defenses of Fujian allowed him to remain safe for some time. Emperor Longwu granted Zheng Sen the name Chenggong and the title of Koxinga “lord of the Imperial Surname”.    In 1646 Koxinga led the Ming armies to resist the Qing, much to his fathers displeasure who wished for a more defensive stance. When the Qing finally broke into Fujian, as I mentioned Zheng Zhilong literally opened the door to them, leaving Emperor Longwu isolated agaisnt the Qing. After the Emperor Longwu was defeated and executed, the Qing approached Zheng Zhilong and got him to defect and secretly appointed him governor of Fujian and Guangdong. Despite the betrayal of his father, Koxinga chose to fight on and led Zheng Zhilong’s marine forces to attack Tong’an, Haicheng, Zhangfu and captured Quanzhou and Minan. Because the Qing never placed much emphasis on naval matters, Koxinga’s naval forces basically could pick and choose at will where to do amphibious assaults providing him with many successful raids. Zheng Zhilong would send letters to his son asking him to defect to the Qing like he did, but they were to no avail and Koxinga pledged his allegiance to the only remaining claimant to the throne the Emperor of flight Yongli. Before Koxinga could get to Emperor Yongli he as you guessed it began the process of fleeing and this basically resulted in Koxinga never being able to link up with him. As a result Koxinga chose to concentrate on the southeast coast of China where he could safely move via his naval forces. Koxinga’s army soon established its base of operations in Kinmen and Xiamen. Using his base of Kinmen and Xiamen, Koxinga established a marine trade network and the anti-Qing forces grew quickly. By 1652 Koxinga led a force of 100,000 to attack Haicheng, Changtai, Zhangzhou, Zhangfu amongst other places. He also greatly benefitted by working alongside the Daxi army. In 1653 Koxinga tried to coordinate with Li Dingguo’s army in Guangxi and deployed his navy southwards towards Chaozhou. The following year Li and Koxinga agreed to meet in Guangdong and attack Xinhui together, but this plan never came to fruition. Koxinga’s forces simply took too long to get there and Li Dingguo’s army was defeated and he had to retreat to Guangxi. In 1655, Koxinga attacked the coastal area of Fujian defeating several Qing armies. Koxinga and Li then planned a northern campaign where they would coordinate rear and frontal attacks upon the Qing.    In may of 1656, the Qing sent Prince Jidu to attack Koxinga’s territory. Jidu’s forces attacked Kinmen island, Koxinga’s main base for training his troops. However a storm at sea battered the Qing ships and as a result they lost the battle against the Kinmen island. This also weakened Qing naval forces in the Fujian coastal area, opening many places for attacks by Koxinga. Then in 1658 the Qing armies carried large offensives against Li Dingguo in the southwestern area, prompting Koxinga to strike at the coastal areas in Zhejiang to try and relieve Li Dingguo’s forces. However Koxinga’s navy was hit by a hurricane at sea and they were forced to withdraw. This did not stop Koxinga from sending a large army to Zhoushan however, where he sought a base of operations to stage a siege of Nanjing. Koxinga however was quite eager and publicly proclaimed his intent to siege Nanjing, giving the Qing ample time and reason to prepare stronger defenses there.   In 1659 Koxinga marched north alongside his colleague Zhang Huangyan capturing Guazhou and Zhenjing before they would besiege Nanjing. They sprang through the Yangtze River with their navy igniting resistance everywhere they went against the Qing. Koxinga’s naval operations in the Yangtze River would hinder Qing supply routes and effectively were starving Beijing out, stressing the hell out of the Qing court. If it is to be believed, an account by a French missionary in Beijing reported they court considered packing up and going back to Manchuria because of what was essential a naval blockade of Beijing. Things got so bad in Beijing the French missionary states the populace of Beijing was waiting to see who would win the siege of Nanjing and were looking to join that said winner. The Qing were reportedly terrified of Koxinga’s “iron troops” who were rumored to be invincible.    The siege of Nanjing shocked the Qing, but Koxinga became cocky and in his arrogance he took his enemy lightly. He publicly announced to the populace all they had to do was to join his cause and that he would occupy Nanjing in short time. Koxinga believed that by taking Nanjing he could firmly blockade the grand canal and starve out Beijing  forcing them to pack up and run back to Manchuria, if the sources I talked about before are to be believed, it looks like his plan was working. Lang Tingzuo the governor trapped in Nanjing began to negotiate with Koxinga and Zhang, but in truth he was biding time for the Qing forces to come to the rescue. Despite Koxinga’s best efforts besieging Nanjing,  the city was never completely encircled and thus able to obtain supplies and reinforcements in the form of the Qing General Liang Huafeng. After 3 weeks of the siege, suddenly General Liang and his army burst out the gates of Nanjing in a cavalry charge as the Ming forces were busy partying and they were smashed. The entire Ming army fell into disarray and began to retreat back to their ships and Koxinga was forced to withdraw back to Xiamen.  Meanwhile his colleague Zhang had taken a ton of their forces to hit Anhui and was now left high and dry. Zhang’s army was eventually and  completely collapsed, but the commander was able to escape to Tiantai where he tried to form another resistance in the mountain range. He would fail to produce anything and by 1664 was captured and executed by the Qing.   Koxinga had lost half his land army, his colleague and many other officers because of his arrogant attack on Nanjing. It seems Koxinga suffered tremendous psychological damage from the major defeat and the loss of so many members of his family. He was known to be quite mentally unstable and had a horrible temper and tendency to order executions at a whim. A Dutch doctor named Christian Beyer who treated him believed he may have been suffering from Syphilis, some other contemporaries believed his mentality was the result of his Japanese upbringing in the form of “samurai ideals on bravery” like laughing to showcase his anger and being prone to quick violence. According to Dr Li Yengyue, he stated Koxinga most likely suffered from depressive insanity.  At this time Li Dingguo’s forces were being pushed further southwest and quite simply, the situation did not look good to say the least. This led Koxinga to gather all his officials in secret and tell them he now intended to occupy Taiwan and establish a base there from which they could all settle with their families in safety. He said that perhaps there they could unite all those who were loyal to the Ming and one day they would launch an attack on the Qing and fight the enemy without having to worry about the lives of their families. Thus when the Qing marched upon his stronghold of Xiamen in 1660, Koxinga instead of offering battle sailed off with over 400 war junks and 25,000 troops to Taiwan. Before the departure Koxinga had received a map of Taiwan from a Chinese merchant named He Bin who worked for the Dutch East India company.   It was also during this time when Koxinga had the family of one of his admirals named Shi Lang killed because the admiral allegedly was planning to defect to the Qing, though some sources say he simply had disobeyed an order, sheesh. Regardless after the murder of his family admiral Shi Lang promptly sailed off to defect to the Qing. The Qing were very happy to receive Shi Lang as he held extensive naval experience and had a network of contacts in major trading ports all over east asia. He would become absolutely instrumental to the Qing naval buildup and would emerge late into this story and he held a blood feud with the Zheng family henceforth.   Now the Chinese merchant who gave Koxinga the map, guided the Koxinga’s naval force to land on Wei Island and Haliao Island, thereby avoiding the artillery placements within the channel of Taiwan.  Koxinga’s forces managed to land at Pengdu Taiwan in 1661 and Koxinga soon led his forces to attack Dutch colonists proclaiming to them "Hitherto this island had always belonged to China, and the Dutch had doubtless been permitted to live there, seeing that the Chinese did not require it for themselves; but requiring it now, it was only fair that Dutch strangers, who came from far regions, should give way to the masters of the island.". They marched to Leurmeng where they fought small groups of Taiwanese aborigines and Dutch resistance. In the bay of Lakjemuyse 3 Dutch ships attacked and destroyed several of Koxinga’s junks, but then one of his junks got a lucky shot off exploding a gunpowder supply aboard the Dutch flagship Hector sinking her. The 2 other Dutch warships, were not enough to fight off the large force of junks and had to flee.   Here is an abridged account given by Frederick Coyett, the colonial governor of Dutch held Taiwan about Koxinga’s landing. The forces of Koxinga showed up armed with bows and arrows, others had shields and swords. Everyone was wearing coats of iron scales (by the way there is an artist rendition of the soldiers by a contemporary named Georg Franz Muller, worth checking out it looks awesome). The armor allowed for complete protection from a rifle bullet and allowed the wearer great mobility. Their archers were their best troops and their skill was so great it nearly eclipsed that of riflemen. They used shield men to form human walls and Koxinga had 2 companies of “black boys”, many of whom were former Dutch slaves that knew how to use rifles and muskets. They proved quite effective marksmen and caused a lot of harm to the Dutch in Taiwan.    As Koxinga’s force charged in rows of 12 men and when they were near enough sent 3 volleys of fire uniformly. The storm of arrows that came forth upon the dutch seemed to darken the sky (a herodotus moment). The Dutch expected their return fire to send the enemy fleeing, but they did not, in fact the Chinese held firm against them and in short time the Dutch realized to their horror that Koxinga sent a squadron behind them and they attacked from the rear. While the Dutch proved courageous at the beginning of the battle, now they were stricken with fear and many Dutch riflemen tossed their rifles without even firing them and began to run. As they faltered and fled, the Chinese saw the disorder and pressed their attack more vigorously. The Chinese force charged and cut down the Dutch and the battle raged on until the Dutch captain Thomas Bedell and 180 of his men were slain.    After defeating the Dutch force when they landed, Koxinga laid siege to the main fortress, Fort Zeelandia using some of his 100 cannons on hand. They outnumbered the garrison there 20 to 1 and the bombardment demolished the roof of the Dutch governors residence. The Dutch return fired from bastion forts killing hundreds of Koxinga’s men. Koxinga’s cannons proved ineffective against the walls, the Dutch governor wrote that after viewing the alignment of the Chinese cannons, he noticed they were placed quite badly, were unprotected and easy to hit with their own cannons. In the end the Chinese cannons only did some light damage to a few houses. Koxinga was shocked and enraged by the lack of damage to the fortresses walls and decided to give up the bombardment and simply to being starving the Dutch out. On April 4th Koxinga sent his army to besiege the smaller fortress of Fort Provintia, catching its commander Jacob Valentyn and his 140 men, completely off guard. Valentyn had to surrender without putting up much of a fight.   By late May, news of the Siege of Fort Zeelandia reached Jakarta and the Dutch East India Company dispatched 12 ships with 700 soldiers to relieve the fort. The relief force ran into Koxinga’s naval blockade and they engaged in battle. However Koxinga had hundreds of war junks and as the Dutch ships tried to fire upon them their aim ended up being too high. Basically of the height difference between the Chinese war junks and Dutch ships, this made aiming the cannons difficult as they cant pivot downwards, so you have to rely upon distance calculations and that in turn is not easy when the enemy knows to just close in on you and are firing upon you. Some of the smaller Dutch ships tried to lure some of the Chinese war junks into a narrow strait with a feigned withdrawal. But as they were doing so, the wind suddenly seized on them, and with only paddles available the Chinese caught up to them and massacred their crews with pikes. It is also alleged the Chinese caught many Dutch lobed grenades using nets and tossed them right back at them, that sounds like a nasty game of hot potato. The Dutch flagship Koukercken was hit by a Chinese cannon after running around and quickly sunk. Another Dutch ship hit ashore and the crew had to run for their lives for Fort Zeelandia. The remaining Dutch fleet eventually scattered and withdrew, all in all they took 130 casualties. By December Koxinga was given reports that the garrison of Fort Zeelandia was losing morale and thus he decided to launch another large offensive, but was repelled again by superior Dutch cannons.    By January 12th of 1662, Koxingas fleet began to help bombard the fort as his ground forces assaulted. With supplies running out and no sign of reinforcements, Governor Coyett hoisted the white flag and began to negotiate terms of surrender, finalizing them by february 1st. By February the 9th the Dutch left Taiwan and were allowed to take their personal belongings and provisions.    Now this siege was honestly a pretty horrible affair aside from the normal war actions. Prisoners on both sides were subjected to some rather gruesome torture. A Dutch physician allegedly carried out a vivisection on a Chinese prisoner and there were reports that the Chinese amputated noses, ears, limbs and genitals of Dutch prisoners. Apparently the Chinese would stuff their mouths with amputated genitals and send the corpses back to Fort Zeelandia, some really messed up stuff. One Dutch prisoner, a missionary named Antonius Hambroek was sent as an envoy to Fort Zeelandia to ask for their surrender, if he failed he was to be killed. Hambroek went to the Fort where 2 of his daughters were residing and urged everyone to surrender, but they did not and thus he came back to Koxinga’s camp and was promptly beheaded. Another one of Hambroeks daughters had been captured prior to the siege and Koxinga made her a concubine. Other Dutch women and children that were captured prior to the siege were enslaved and sold to Chinese soldiers. 38 years of Dutch rule over Taiwan had ended and Koxinga would use Taiwan as a military base for Ming loyalists.   The Taiwanese aboriginals played both sides during the conflict. For example when Koxinga’s men landed in Taiwan one tribal alliance known as the Kingdom of Middag invited Koxingas subordinate Chen Ze and his men to eat and rest with them only to kill them all in their sleep, allegedly 1500 soldiers. This was followed up by an ambush attack that would cost Koxinga the lives of 700 soldiers. More and more tribal attacks mounted and the brutality pushed Koxinga to offer the aboriginals amnesty and to help get rid of the Dutch. Many of the aboriginals were delighted by the chance to rid themselves of the Dutch and began to hunt Dutch colonists down, helped execute Dutch prisoners and burnt Dutch books used to educate them. Koxinga then rewarded the aboriginals with Ming clothes, made feasts for them, gave them countless gifts such as tobacco, farming tools and oxen and taught them new farming techniques.    Koxinga had a large problem after his major victory, Taiwan's population was estimated to be no greater than 100,000, yet he brought with him almost 30,000 soldiers and their families, so food was going to run out and very quick. Thus Koxinga set to institute a tuntian policy, that being that soldiers would serve a dual role, that of warrior and farmer. All the rich and fertile lands the Dutch held were immediately cut up and distrubed to his higher ranking officers. Much of the aboriginal held territory on the eastern half of Taiwan would also be distributed to Koxinga’s men and I would imagine that was a bloody ordeal taking the land. Then Koxinga set his eyes on piracy performing raids against several locations near Taiwan such as the Philippines and even demanded the Spanish colonial government pay him tribute, threatening to attack Manila if they did not comply. The Spanish refused to pay any tribute and instead prepared the defenses of Manila. Koxinga’s naval force raided several coastal towns in the Philippines but before he could perform any real sort of invasion, in June of 1662 Koxinga suddenly died of malaria. Koxinga’s son Zheng Jing succeeded his father and became King of Tungning. Zheng wanted to continue his fathers planned invasion of the Philippines, but it turns out his fathers little war against the Dutch did not go unnoticed by the Qing.    Back on the mainland, after Koxinga left and sailed for Taiwan, the Qing began to reimplemented the Haijin “sea ban” in 1647. The Haijin had been used in the past mostly to target Japanese piracy. Basically it was an attempt to force all sea trade coming in to be under strict regulation handled by Ming officials. The limited sea trade was to be “tributary missions” between the Ming dynasty and their vassals, such as Korea. Any private foreign trade was punishable by death and as you can imagine all this led up to was an increase in piracy and the formation of many smugglers along the eastern coast of china. The entire idea was to starve out Taiwan by denying them trade with the eastern coast of China. But when the Haijin was reimplemented it led to entire communities along the eatern Chinese coast to be uprooted from their native place and they were being deprived of their means of livelihood. So many communities simply had to get up and settle somewhere else where they could. This sent many coastal areas into chaos. This ironically led countless amounts of refugees from the eastern chinese coast to flee to Taiwan. Then in 1663 the Qing formed an alliance with the Dutch East India Company against the Ming loyalists in Fujian and Taiwan. The Dutch for their part sought the alliance simply to recapture Taiwan.   In October of 1663 a combined fleet of Qing and Dutch attacked and captured Xiamen and Kinmen from the Ming loyalists. Then in 1664 the combined fleet attacked Zheng Jing’s navy but ended up losing because it was simply to immense. One of the Qing admirals, a certain Shi Lang, remember that guy, yeah he like I said held a blood grudge against Zheng’s family, well he  advised the Qing that the Dutch were only aiding them so they could recapture Taiwan. He said that they did not really require the Dutch naval aid and that he could lead the Qing navy to take Taiwan back on his own. Thus the alliance fell apart.   The Dutch who were probably very pissed off now then began raiding the Zhoushan Islands where they looted relics and killed Monks at a buddhist complex at Putuoshan in 1665, pretty mean thing to do. Zheng Jing’s navy attacked them for this, capturing and executing 34 Dutch sailors. In 1672 Zheng Jing would attack the Dutch again, managing to ambush the Dutch ship Cuylenburg in 1672 off the coast of northeastern Taiwan. So a bit of a long lasting war between the Dutch and Ming loyalists remains in the background.    Now from the offset of his enthronement, Zheng Jing actually attempted to reconcile with the Qing, he sought to make Taiwan an autonomous state. Yet he refused their demands that he shave his head in the Manchu fashion nor would he pay tribute to the Qing dynasty. The Qing’s response initially as I had mentioned was a policy of trying to starve Taiwan out using the Haijin. This sent the populace of the southeastern coast into chaos and Zheng Jing continued to raid as the Qing really could not stop his larger navy. The Haijin like I said earlier had a disastrous and ironic effect. Soon there was a giant influx of the populace fleeing for Taiwan. Seeing the opportunity, Zheng promoted the immigration heavily and began proclaiming tons of promises and major opportunities for anyone who wished to immigrate to his kingdom. The enticement of land ownership and cultivation in exchange for military service suited many of the immigrant peasants quite fine, I mean for most there was simply no choice. And it was not just peasants who came, a ton of Ming loyalists used the opportunity to flee the mainland from persecution as well. All of this led to quite an enormous boom for Taiwan. A ton of reforms came into effect to meet the needs of the growing populace, agricultural, education, trade, industry and so on. Zheng’s main advisor, Chen Yonghua also helped introduce the deliberate cultivation of sugar cane and other cash crops which was further traded with Europeans who helped bring over machinery for mass sugar refining. The sugar economy allowed Taiwan to become economically self-sufficient and a booming relationship sprang with the British. Its funny how the British swoop in and steal all former Dutch things isnt it haha? The Qing tried to thwart all of this with the more intensive Haijin edict, but it only made the situation worse. It was not just Taiwan that was a thorn in their side, the head shaving order had caused a great influx of the populace to emigrate to other places than Taiwan, such as Jakarta and the Philippines. The Haijin and brief Qing-Dutch naval alliance had caused Zheng Jing to intensively exploit the lands of Taiwan and as you might guess this meant running into conflict with the aboriginals. The brutality grew gradually and Zheng’s kingdom would put down many aboriginal rebellions against his land grabbing and taxes. A series of conflicts with the Saisiyat people in particular left them absolutely decimated and they lost most of their land to Zheng's kingdom. Zheng Jing’s kingdom enjoyed a maritime trade network with the european colonies in the Pacific, Japan and SouthEast Asia.    Now for over 19 years, Zheng tried to negotiate a peace with the now Kangxi emperor, as Emperor Shunzhi died of smallpox in 1661. Despite the peace talks, Zheng never gave up the cause of restoring the Ming Dynasty and one last hooray would occur. Going back to the mainland, when the Qing finally broke the last leaders of the South Ming regime, Li Dingguo, Sun Kewang and Emperor Yongli, they had managed to do this using a lot of Han chinese. It was only logical that they would install more and more Han Chinese to govern the territories that they conquered. Yet by installing certain Han and defected former Ming loyalists in parts of the realm with varying levels of authority led to a few warlords emerging. One was Shang Kexi, a former Ming general who defected very early on in 1634 and one of the most powerful generals to do so. He was given the title “pingnan wang” “prince who pacifies the south” and helped conquer the southern province of Guangdong. When the task was finished he was made governor of Guangdong holding full civil and military authority. By 1673, Shang Kexi was very old and asked permission from Emperor Kangxi to retire and go back to his homeland of Liaodong. Permission was granted and his son Shang Zhixin would take up the mantle of Prince of Pingnan. However, Shang Zhixin and his father would soon be embroiled into a revolt by the actions of others as we will soon see.   Geng Zhongming was a Ming general who served under the Ming warlord Mao Wenlong “the sea king” if you listened to some earlier episodes. Well Geng Zhongming alongside Kong Youde ended up defecting to the Qing and aided in their conquest of the south. Geng Zhongming eventually died and his son Geng Jimao inherited his title of Jingnan Prince (which also means prince of pacifying the south just like pingnang wang) and aided in hunting down Li Dingguo and pacifying the southeast of China. Geng Jimao managed to get both his sons Geng Jingzhong and Zhaozhong to become court attendants under the Qing emperor Shunzhi and married Aisin Gioro women. His son Geng Jingzhong would inherit his fathers titles including the governorship of Fujian province and would become a warlord in Fujian which held a strong naval force.   Wu Sangui who we know quite well was the Ming General who literally opened the door for the Qing to help destroy the forces of Li Zicheng, but this also led to the Qing taking Beijing. Now Wu’s career was a lengthy one, he helped defeat Li Zicheng who executed over 38 members of Wu’s family, so a large grudge there. For his service against Li, Wu was given the “Qin wang” Prince of Blood title and helped fight the Daxi army in the south alongside Shang Kexi. Wu had the absolutely horrifying job of pacifying Sichuan against the hordes of differing bandit armies and South Ming loyalists. Then Wu became instrumental in the fight against Sun, Li and Yongli eventually defeating them and bringing the far reaches of Yunnan under the Qing yolk. Now the Qing were uncomfortable placing Manchu bannermen so far away in Yunnan or Guizhou and thus the job was given to Wu. He was given the title of Pingxi Wang “Prince who pacifies the West” and control over Yunnan and Guizhou. Wu was granted permission by Emperor Shunzhi to appoint and promote his own officials as well as being given the rare privilege to have first dibs on warhorses before other Qing armies. By that point because of the war against Li Dingguo, Wu already had a large army at his control, around 60,000 men. The Qing were very wary of Wu, but his rule of Yunnan had thus far caused no headaches. Wu inevitably became a semi-independent warlord because of the great distance. All the money he received from taxation within Yunnan and that funds he received from Beijing were spent to expand his military primarily, guess why?    So lets just summarize all of this. As a result of their great aid to the Qing defeating the South Ming regime, basically most of south China was handed over to 3 defected Ming generals.  Basically they were awarded large fiefdoms within the Qing dynasty. Wu Sangui was granted governorship of Yunnan and Guizhou. Shang Kexi got Guangdong and Geng Zhongming got Fujian. Each man had their own military force and control over the taxation and other civil administration of their respective fiefs. In the 1660’s each man began to ask for Qing government subsidies to keep them loyal, averaging around 10 million taels of silver annually.  Wu spent several million taels of silver building up his military, up to an estimated third of the Qing governments revenue from taxes. Geng Zhongming was quite a tyrant in his fiefdom and extorted the populace quite harshly before dying upon which his fiefdom fell to his son Geng Jimao and then to his son Geng Jingzhong as I mentioned. Shang Kexi ran a similar tyranny to Geng Zhongming in Guangdong and the combined 3 fiefs emptied the Qing treasury quite quickly. Another large issue was each man simply assumed and expected his feudaltory would be handed down to his offspring, but that was to be decided by the Qing Emperor not them.When Emperor Kangxi took the throne the 3 fief provinces had become financial burdens on the Qing government and their growing autonomous control of each province were becoming a major threat to the Qing dynasty.    In 1673, Shang Kexi sent a memorial to Emperor Kangxi stating “I am already 70 years old and have become weak. I hope I can be allowed to go back to Liaodong, my home place, to spend my old age. In the past I was granted land and houses in Liaodong. I hope that your Majesty will grant the land and houses to me again. I will take some officers and soldiers and old people who have been under me, 4394 households all together, to go back with me. There are 24,375 men and women in all. I hope the department concerned will provide food for all these people on their way to Liaodong”.  Emperor Kangxi replied  “Since you sailed from the island to submit to our dynasty, you have worked very hard and established great contributions. You have garrisoned in Guangdong Province for many years. I know from your memorial that you are already 70 years old. You want to go back to Liaodong. You are very sincere in your memorial. From this I can see that you are respectful and submissive and have the overall interest at heart. I am very pleased about that. Now Guangdong Province has been pacified. I will order the Kings in charge of government affairs, court officials and the officials of the Ministry of Revenue and the Ministry of Defense to discuss how to arrange the migration and settlement of the officers and men under you. I will let you know when they have made a decision.”. Oh but there will of course be a catch, for 2 weeks later Emperor Kangxi received another letter ““In the memorial presented by Shang KeXi to Your Majesty he says that he is already old and ill. He asked Your Majesty’s permission to let his son Shang Zhi Xin to succeed his title of King of Pingnan. But now Shang KeXi is still alive. There is no precedent that the son can succeed his father’s title when his father is still alive. So it is not necessary to consider whether or not to allow his son to succeed his title.”. Emperor Kangxi agreed to this with some stipulations about numbers of military personnel and such.   Then in July of 1673, Wu Sangui asked to be permitted to retire just like Shang Kexi and to be able to “settle down in some place”, the Emperor said he would speak to the court to arrange the migration. Then a week later, Geng Jingzhong asked the exact same thing and the Emperor said he would speak to the court. The court was divided on the issue, and against the majority in the court Emperor Kangxi decided to allow each man to have their wish. Wu Sangui was going to be given land in Guizhou, but he frantically sent word to Emperor Kangxi that he required a larger land because his officers families were many. It was a bit audacious and curious that Wu Sangui began with “settle down in some place” and turned it into “oh but I really need a much bigger place than that”, it was like he was asking for something he knew he could not have.  It turns out, Wu Sangui had assumed when he asked permission to retire that the Qing court would instead try everything they could to persuade him not to retire and to stay in Yunnan. That way they might give him even more autonomy and money thus enabling him to continue building his autonomous state even more. When the emperor said yes to his request it must have been a real shock and to make matters worse for Wu, the emperor immediately began the process of migrating him and his men so he freaked out.    So in 1673, Wu Sangui cut off his provinces connections to the Qing dynasty and began a rebellion under the banner of “Fǎn qīng fùmíng” “oppose the qing and restore the ming”. He was supported by his son Wu Shifan and other Ming loyalists in Yunnan, soon they all cut off their Manchu queues and he sent loyal commanders to garrison strategic passes into Yunnan.  The provincial governor of Yunnan Zhu Guo Zhi refused to join him and so Wu had him assassinated.  By 1678 Wu would declare a new dynasty, here we go again meme, giving himself the title King of Zhou and Great Marshal of the Expedition Army. And thus the Zhou dynasty was born. Wu Sangui ordered all of his followers to cut their Manchu queues and for all the banners to be white, and issued white military uniforms. The next order of business was sending word to Shang Kexi the Prince of Pingnan and Geng Jingzhong the Prince of Jingnan asking them to join the rebellion. Wu Sangui sent his loyal general Ma Bao to command a vanguard and march on Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou. All of Guizhou surrendered without a fight. Soon word got out of the rebellion and the colossal failure of Guizhou to defend itself. Emperor Kangxi immediately ordered the migration of Shang Kexi and Geng Jingzhong to be stopped and began to rally his army to meet the new threat. Generals from multiple provinces were assembled and estimates range quite a lot. Some say 500,000 some say up to a million troops, with the majority being Han Chinese of the Green Standard army were mustered. Emperor Kangxi promised any general who brought him Wu Sangui’s head would receive all the titles which Wu had held and any general that brought the heads of Wu’s generals would receive whatever titles those generals held, pretty big incentive. Emperor Kangxi also arrested and executed one of Wu Sangui’s sons who unfortunately was still in Beijing at the time named Wu Yingxiong.    Wu Sangui’s army set out of Guizhou and attacked Yuanzhou of Hunan province. Next Chenzhou, then his army split up taking Hengzhou, Lizhou, Yuezhou and Changsha. Most of the governors simply fled for their lives. Then Wu’s army marched into Hubei province attacking Yichang, Xiangyang, Yunyang where he defeated multiple armies. Emperor Kangxi furiously ordered some of his generals to rush to Wuchang as it was strategically important and had to be defended. The southern Qing forces had not been prepared to face the well trained army of Wu Sangui and were falling like dominoes. To make matters worse many rallied to Wu Sangui’s cause, such as Sun Yanling, a general in Guangxi. Soon Wu’s army was in Sichuan causing havoc, everywhere Wu’s army went there were either military defeats for the Qing, retreats or defections.    Then in March of 1674 Geng Jingzhong began a rebellion in Fujian declaring himself Grand General of All the Armies. Soon his forces took Yanping, Shaowu, Funing, Jianning and Tingzhou. Then Geng Jingzhong and Wu Sangui managed to form an agreement that they should combine forces and hit Jiangxi province together. At the same time Geng Jingzhong sent an envoy to our old friend Zheng Jing  the king of Taiwan to come join the party by attacking prefectures and counties across the coast. Soon Geng Jingzhongs forces took Jiangshan, Pingyang, Wenzhou, Yueqing, Tiantai, Xianju and Chengxian. He defeated countless armies, rallied many to his cause and earned many defectors amassing an army of 100,000. Then he set out to attack Shaoxing, Ningpo, Huangyan, Jinhua before marching into Jiangxi province. From there Geng and wu took Guangxin, Jianchang, Raozhou, Kaihua, Shouchang, Chun’an, Huizhou, Wuyuan and Qimen. Thus his forces had hit the provinces of Fujian, Jiangxi, Zhejiang and Anhui. The Southeast of China was in utter chaos.   Meanwhile Shang Kexi notified Emperor Kangxi of Geng Jingzhong’s rebellion early. Shang Kexi was loosely related to Geng Jingzhong, his son Shang Zhixin’s wife was Geng’s younger sister. Now that Geng Jingzhong was rebelling, he knew people would suspect he was going to rebel, but he did not want to. I mean hell the guy is 70 years old, he just wanted to retire. So he asked Emperor Kangxi if he could prove his loyalty by protecting Guangdong Province from the rebels and give his life in doing so. The Emperor was moved by this and ordered more units and money be made available to Shang Kexi for the task. Now remember, Shang Kexi was also the guy who got the confirmation that his son Shang Zhixin would inherit all he had, titles and all.    When Wu Sangui began the rebellion, Emperor Kangxi was 20 years old and Wu assumed he was a “green horn” IE: a incompetant young man with no real experience and thus a push over. But very soon Wu Sangui would be facing the full might of the entire Qing Dynasty and he certainly began to regret his decision to rebel. When his army reached Lizhou he got word that the Emperor had executed his son Wu Yingxiong and his grandson. Allegedly he was eating a meal when a messenger told him this and he exclaimed “The young emperor is so capable! I am doomed to fail”. An odd quote to say the least given the circumstances, but thats how one of my sources put it….I’d rather think he’d shout in grief or something.    Emperor Kangxi dispatched many Generals to help Shang Kexi attack the rebels occupying Yuezhou as Wu Sangui set up defenses there and sent expeditionary forces to march into Jiangxi province. The expeditionary forces took Nankang, Duchang and then Wu Sangui sent more expeditionary forces out of Changsha to hit Pingxiang, Anfu, Shanggao and Xinchang. Emperor Kangxi responded by throwing titles out to countless officials ordering them to suppress all the rebel forces spreading like wildfire, honestly I can’t list the mount of Princes that spring up. Countless Qing generals and governors fought and died to the rebel armies. By january of 1675 Emperor Kangxi ordered Grand General Yuele positioned in Yuanzhou to recapture Changsha. Yuele led his forces to take Nanchang, Shanggao, Xinchang, Donxiang, Wannian, Anren and Xincheng defeating countless rebels. When his force made it to Pingxiang they were repelled. At this point Wu Sangui ordered his men to build wooden fortresses to defend cities without natural defenses and to build log barriers to thwart cavalry, log obstacles in the rivers to thwart naval forces and traps everywhere. Then Wu Sangui told his troops he was going to cross the Yangtze River and break the dike near Jingzhou to immerse the city in water. While this was to occur he ordered some subordinates to attack Yunyang, Junzhou and Nanzhang.   In 1676 Wu Sangui’s forces approached Guangdong and Shang Kexi was seriously ill leaving his son Shang Zhixin in charge of the defense. Many forces defected to Wu Sangui and allegedly in an effort to save his father, Shang Zhixin defected and became a grand general in Wu’s army. Ironically and rather tragically it seems the surrender broke Shang Kexi’s heart and he died. In December Shang Zhixin regretted his defection so much he sent a secret envoy to Emperor Kangxi begging to be allowed to defect back over to the Qing and Emperor Kangxi accepted him with open arms right back. Quite a few rebel generals began to defect back to the Qing and the Emperor kept a policy of extreme leniency hoping to win many over without bloodshed. These were after all his subjects and the emperor understood the need to avoid bloodshed whenever possible. Wu Sangui sent forces to attack Ji’an while Yuele made a second attempt attacking Pingxiang. Yuele’s forces had destroyed 12 enemy fortresses and killed more than 10,000 rebels before the rebel commander of Pingxiang fled. After taking Pingxiang, Yuele marched on Liling and Liuyang before finally attacking his tasked objective Changsha. Meanwhile Emperor Kangxi also dispatched forces into Zhejiang Province to attack Geng Jingzhong. In 1676 they attacked Wenzhou fighting fiercely and taking multiple fortresses. Despite a fierce month long siege, Wenzhou withstood the Qing and thus they bypassed it to march into Fujian province taking Jiangshan first. Meanwhile Zheng Jing’s force arrived at Xinghua Bay to attack Fuzhou, but Geng Jingzhong was at the end of his resources and ended up asking permission to defect to Emperor Kangxi. He asked Emperor Kangxi permission to show his newfound loyalty by attacking Zheng Jing’s invading force at Fuzhou. Emperor Kangxi accepted the offer and said he could resume his title of King of Jingnan if he was successful. The forces of Geng Jingzhong, heavily supported by the Qing army sent initially to defeat him mind you, easily defeated Zheng Jing’s force sending him packing back to Taiwan. A real game of thrones.    By 1677 Wu Sangui’s army were facing stalemates all over the place and Yuele successfully captured Changsha. Then Ji’an fell as many of Wu’s men simply retreated. By 1678 Yuele recovered Pinjiang and Xiangyin defeating countless rebels and accepting many surrenders. Then Wu Sangui sent one of his most formidable generals Ma Bao to attack Yongxing and he died in battle failing to take the city. Wu Sangui was 67 years old, 6 years had passed since he began the rebellion. The vast territory he had taken in its peak was declining rapidly. His army was greatly weakened, but despite all of this many of his officials pleaded to him that he should officially declare himself emperor. So he proclaimed his reign title as Zhaowu meaning “demonstrating great military power” of the Zhou Dynasty in march, I guess go big or go home right. He made Hengzhou of Hunan Province the new capital and like all the rest before him began issuing titles and so forth. Then in august he was stricken with dysentery and was so ill he apparently could barely speak. He ordered his son Wu Shifan to come to Hengzhou, and by September 11th he was dead. Wu Shifan decided to take the mantle and chose the title reign of Honghua. When Emperor Kangxi got news of Wu Sangui’s death it was like a shark smelling blood in the water and he sent all his armies to crash upon Hunan, apparently the Emperor even considered leading the army he was that eager. Wu Shifan’s forces fled for their lives when the Qing armies marched into Hubei, disarray was soon rampant. Soon Yuele’s troops marched into Hunan and attacked Wugang which had a fairly stout defense of 20,000 troops. The battle was bloody, Wugangs commander was killed, his troops soon routed and the city fell. The rebel army’s morale was low, the Qing took Yuezhou, Changde, Hangzhou. It got to a point where the Qing faced more issues with logistics than they did in the actual fighting of the enemy. By 1680 the provinces of Hunan, Guizhou, Guangxi and Sichuan fell back to the Qing and Wu Shifan fled to Kunming.    Once Wu Shifan was pressed into a corner in Yunnan province the Qing General Zhao Liangdong formed a 3 pronged attack strategy to hit Yunnan. The attack would be performed by Cai Yurong, Zhang Tai and Laita Giyesu. They each marched through Hunan, Guangxi and Sichuan respectfully taking territory as they did. Wu Shifan had no reinforcements and was greatly outnumbered. The Qing generals entered Yunnan and Kunming was besieged for months, but it still held firm. General Zhao Liang proposed they cut Wu Shifans supply route on Kunming lake and this provided quick results. The generals then led a fierce attack upon the city. But before they could capture Wu Shifan he had committed suicide. They decapitated his corpse and sent it back to Beijing. There lies just one more small story to end the tale.   All the way back in 1674 Geng Jingzhong as we know sent an envoy to Taiwan to ask the help of Zheng Jing. Zheng Jing sailed to Siming, the south part of Xiamen in southeast Fujian province. His army then captured Tong’an and marched north to attack Quanzhou which was defended by Geng Jingzhongs army. Geng Jingzhongs men fled the scene after a quick battle and Zheng captured Quanzhou. From there he took Chaozhou, defeating more of Geng Jingzhong’s troops, making an enemy out of him. Then in 1675 Geng Jingzhong made peace with Zheng Jing, it seems it was all a misunderstanding and they began to collude. But in 1676 Geng Jingzhong surrendered to the Qing and personally asked to be tasked with defeating Zheng Jing, so perhaps there was something more personal going on between the 2. Well Zheng Jing began the new found war between them by besieging Quanzhou again. The siege lasted 2 months but he was unable to take it. Zheng Jing lifted the siege and instead attacked Fuzhou, but by now Qing forces were crashing into Fujian province. The forces fought for various cities such as Quanzhou, Tingzhou and Zhangzhou. In 1677 Zheng Jing laid siege again for a 3rd time to Quanzhou, but the Qing in the meantime had taken 10 counties back and were overwhelming Zheng Jings armies. He lifted the siege yet again and fled back to Siming, and by 1678 a Qing envoy showed up demanding his surrender. Emperor Kangxi followed this up by sending naval forces to Fujian to attack Kinmen island. Enroute a Qing naval force led by Wan Zhengse attacked Haitan island. During the ensuing battle 16 of Zheng Jing’s ships were destroyed with more than 3000 soldiers drowned. Zheng Jing’s admiral at the scene, Zhu Tiangui had to flee and Wan Zhengse pursued them. Soon Meizhou island, Nanri island, Pinghai county and Chongwu county were seized by the Qing naval forces. Then land forces and Wan Zhengse consolidated and attacked Zheng Jings forces in Xiamen. They smashed his army there, Zheng Jing tried to flee to Kinmen, but the Qing attacked it simultaneously forcing him to sail all the way back to Taiwan. In 1781 shortly after arriving in Tainan, Zheng Jing died of dissipation on march 17th.    Zheng Jing’s eldest and illegitimate son Zheng Kezang was appointed as Supervisor of the state. Now Zheng Kezang was the next in line to take the throne, but this is where that “illegitimate” part comes up. Two political hungry officials hated Zheng Kezang, Feng Xifan the head of the bodyguards and Liu Guoxuan a high ranking military officer. Upon Zheng Jing’s death they both began to slandere Zheng Kezang as not being a biological son of Zheng Jing in front of the Queen Dowager Dong. They then launched a coup with the help of Zheng Jing’s brother Zheng Cong against Zheng Kezang, killing him and installing his 12 year old little brother Zheng Keshuang on the throne. Some real game of thrones shit. Meanwhile Emperor Kangxi and the Qing court heard about the coup and that a 12 year old emperor was just placed upon the throne and he realized the time was ripe to attack the politically divided and certainly weak island of Taiwan. Then a Qing court official recommended our old friend Shi Lang, the man who had a blood feud with Zheng's family, to command the entire Qing navy against Taiwan. Thus Shi Lang was made commander in chief of the naval force and ordered to take the Pengdu Islands and then Taiwan. Shi Lang rallied 20,000 crack troops and 300 warships for an invasion of Pengdu. Shi Lang also took the time to purchase a number of Dutch made cannons for his bigger ships. Liu Guoxuan of Taiwan knew the Qing would attack Pengdu first and sent a large force there to prepare it’s defenses.   In june of 1683 Shi Lang's navy sailed out of Tongshan and captured a few small islands along the way to Pengdu. Now Shi Lang divided his force into smaller fleets before engaging the enemy. He sent one detachment to slip around the planned naval battle and land covertly near Liu Guoxuan’s base on Pengdu. Liu Guoxuan was no fool however and placed numerous cannons and troops along the beaches to thwart such attacks. On June 16th the battle of Pengdu commenced and many of Liu Guoxuan’s larger ships targeted the smaller fleets of Shi Lang encircled them. Seeing this unfold Shi Lang took his flagship personally in to break up the encirclements. As the battle raged, a stray arrow hit Shi Lang in the eye spraying blood everywhere, but Shi Lang fought on. Shi Lang managed to break an encirclement killing 3000 enemy soldiers and by June 18th captured Hujing island, just southwest of Pendu island proper and Tongpanyu island to its southwest. On June 22nd, Shi Lang organized multiple simultaneous attacks to throw the enemy off balance. He sent 50 warships to hit Jilongyu and Sijiaoshan situated on the west of Pengdu island. Another 50 warships to hit Niuxinwan Bay to attract the enemy's attention as he sailed off personally with 56 warships right through the center to hit Pengdu island proper. The enemy sent all their warships out to meet his separate forces and from 7am to 5pm they fought. The Qing managed to outflank and break the enemies formation, but they fought on tenaciously. In the end the Qing won a battle of attrition as they had significantly more ammunition than the rebel navy whom was forced to resort to boarding ships and melee fighting. Many rebel leaders chose not to surrender and went down fighting to the end in a blaze of gunfire and glory. Over 194 enemy warships were destroyed, more than 12,000 enemy soldiers were killed. Seeing he was going to lose the battle, Liu Guoxuan took his fastest ship and fled back to Taiwan. Shi Lang’s detachment that slipped past the battle landed ashore and were met with an onslaught of cannons and arrows from the beaches. However the Qing warships began to tip the scale in firepower breaking open pockets for amphibious assaults and soon the Qing soldiers were breaking through towards Liu Guoxuans base. The Qing defeated the garrison at the base and raised the Qing banner triumphantly.    On july 15th, Zheng Keshuang sent envoys to Pengdu island to offer terms of surrender to Shi Lang. By August Shi Lang accepted their surrender in Taiwan and on August 18th, Zheng Keshuang and all his officers and officials shaved their heads in the Manchu style. They all then positioned themselves to face the direction of Beijing and bowed, Taiwan was now part of the Qing empire. Shi Lang was granted by Emperor Kangxi the title of General of Jinghai, Jinghai meaning “pacifying the sea”. Zheng Keshuang and his highest officials were escorted to Beijing and Zheng Keshuang was granted the title duke of Haicheng   I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.  The Qing war for unification was over, of course there would be countless rebellions during the reign of the Qing dynasty, but as for the threat of a Ming takeover that was not a thing of the past. A brand new world was emerging however, as the 19th century was soon rolling in and with it much much more devious trouble. For the century of humiliation was mere decades from commencing its ugly start.  9500