Empire: World History - 254. Victorian Narcos: Fire Monkeys, Iron Gunships, & Peasant Warfare (Ep 8)

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

Who won the First Opium War? Why did British troops feel guilty about their role? What treaty led to Britain taking control of Hong Kong? Anita and William discuss the tragic imbalance of The First Opium War, and the traumatic ways in which Chinese citizens responded to the humiliation it entailed… Empire Club: Become a member of the Empire Club to receive early access to miniseries, ad-free listening, early access to live show tickets, bonus episodes, book discounts, our exclusive newsletter, and access to our members’ chatroom on Discord! Head to empirepoduk.com to sign up. You can get started with a 3-month trial for only £5 at https://historytoday.com/empire For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com.  Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk  Blue Sky: @empirepoduk  X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Anouska Lewis Senior Producer: Callum Hill Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. And welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Durunpool. Yes, and you join us in the midst of our Victorian Narcos Opium War Series. Ben, thank you very much for all your kind comments about this. I'm really glad you're enjoying it as much as we are.

Shall I just remind you where we were at the last episode? So we left you with the nemesis, fabulously named, ironclad sort of suit of armour of a ship that's been sent by Palmerston. I think William described it like a stealth bomber last time that is going to be used against the wooden ships of the Chinese. So the British invade China on the pretext of protecting free trade. That's what they're arguing. Actually, the plan has been entirely formulated by this duo, this dynamic or dire duo,

Matheson and Jardine, who has managed to find himself a tiny corner of Palmerston's office and is whispering into his ear constantly that, you know what, if we actually go for this, we can get quite a lot out of this. Hong Kong, for example, this island that actually nobody very much cares about could be yours. It sits at the mouth of the Pearl River. And then, you know, we could attack Canton and we could get. the ports and, you know, nothing could stop us. And then Beijing is just on the horizon. So all of this is being murmured into Palmerston's ear. And he is being charmed by it, even though there

are others saying this is not the right thing to do. So that is why the nemesis is chugging its way over to China. And you've got Charles Elliott, who we talked about in the last episode, who's this rather, I mean, sort of nervous and indecisive, but quite a decent man, I think, who is in charge of British trade in China. And he's trying to keep the peace. as best he can and trying to stop lives being lost. And everything that poor old Charles Elliot has had to say is being either ignored or mocked. And when he offers to diffuse this situation by buying up the opium of these traders who are otherwise reaching for guns and it's all going to get very, very ugly, he will get into trouble for that as well because it is a check that he's writing that he has no right to sign, six million dollars worth of a check. which, as we discussed last time, is this extraordinary sum of money.

Elliot sort of wildly says, oh, don't worry, I'll pay for it. And then the Brits find themselves with this enormous loss that they've promised the opium traders, particularly Jardine and Matheson, that they're going to reimburse their entire opium stocks, which is a considerable sum of money. It's an enormous bit of the British annual budget. $6 million at this time is a lot of money. The British basically end up going to war to try and get that money back. Get it back. Can't pay, won't pay, first of all. I don't know what this is all about.

And, you know, actually, can we just put an end to all of this nonsense? Because we need to be able to do this trade because we need the money. We're paying too much China for tea. We need to make some of it back. So let's just do something about it. Now, take us to where the nemesis is and how the whole of British diplomacy is, or a change in British diplomacy is sailing with it. Before I actually talk about the events, I should talk about the wonderful book that I've been reading to learn about this. There's a lot of books on the opium wars and opium in general. And we've talked previously about Stephen Platt's wonderful book, Imperial Twilight. We're going to get Stephen on the next episode.

And there's also Amitav Ghosh's extraordinary new book, Smok and Ashes. Smok and Ashes is fabulous. But the great book for the actual course of the first Opium War, and particularly on the diplomacy and the fighting and the detail of different characters like Elliot and Commissioner Lin is Julia Lovell's book, The Opium War, Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China. What she's done in this book is to give the Chinese side as well as the English, because obviously the people like Jardine and Matheson, the writing diaries that we can all read sitting in the records office. And particularly Jardine's archive is in the Cambridge University Library and anyone that wants to research, it can just go there. but much less accessible as the Chinese records. And Julia spent many decades of her life reading the Chinese records.

And what you're going to hear over the next hour is very closely based on Julia's extraordinary new research. No other account goes into the detail or has the extraordinary depth of understanding of what's going on in China at this time and the Chinese sources. So I have hugely, hugely enjoyed this book and recommend it every bit as strongly as Stephen Platt and Amatov Ghosh's. So the story begins, as we said, with the nemesis. The course of the open war is very different from many other imperial wars. If you think of, I've written about the war in Afghanistan, which is taking place at exactly the same time, 1842, the year that the open war reaches its climaxes, also the year that the troops of the first Afghan war are massacred on their journey back to India.

The two things are happening side by side. And you could not imagine two battles which happen more different. because while the Afghan story is extraordinary story of triumph by the Afghan resistance, and these guys not only managed to drive the British out, but to massacre every last soldier that comes into the country, the course of the war in China is the exact opposite. There are virtually no British casualties sitting in their ironclad dreadnought, almost, this nemesis, this stealth bomber,

184 by 29 foot iron steamer, specifically commissioned for the, war in China, and which arrives in time to fight it with iron sides, accurate guns, a very shallow draft to allow it to go up the rivers. And it has a massive psychological impact, because whatever the Chinese do, they're constantly sending fire junks down to try and burn the British ships. And you can't burn the nemesis. It's this incredibly unequal war. And the British, who are, you know, very much up for a good imperial fight at this period of their history, are longing for in the Victorian way for blood and glory,

find themselves disgusted by the open war, not just because it's morally questionable whether there's any need or right to go to war to sell drugs that at the time is very consciously realized by many of the participants, but also the fact that the Chinese really have no protection against the British weaponry of this period.

The Afghans have their long jazales, sort of sniper rifles, and they can sit at the top of their mountains with greater range than the British. brand best muskets. And so the British are on the back foot in Afghanistan. But it turns out that the Qing Chinese army is completely unprepared for war in the way that the train sepoys of India are ready to fight and disciplined fighting force. And particularly the Navy, because this is a naval campaign as much as anything. You have the nemesis, this fleet of British ships. They're sailing up a river.

It's rather like, you know, remember Heart of Darkness when those dreadnorts are sailing up African rivers and sort of shelling randomly into African jungle. There's a bit of that in this war. It's just these terrible ships that the Chinese can't deal with in any way, wreaking destruction and occasionally gorging out troops into the countryside to commit massacres. So, I mean, we've talked about this and, you know, China's inability to respond, and it's partly it's the tech, you know, the Brits have got the tech with this ironclad ship. But it's also partly, you know, China's always sort of looked, it has. such a vast empire, which is sort of contiguous and they haven't had to sail over water to get

to their bits of their empire. You know, it's just a massive landmass. So naval concerns have not been their concerns for years and years. And so this is just completely, you know, wrong-footed them entirely. It just hasn't been a thing that they've been developing. It's a very good point. You're making it. They don't have a navy that's designed to fight other navies. What the Navy's been doing is basically policing pirates. And so it's more like a coach. Coast Guard is the Chinese equivalent to the Coast Guard that's there to stop the selling of opium. And then when the opium payments and the money begins to pour into China, this is one of the forces that is completely corrupted by the opium trade in that the captains of these coast guards just take bribes to let the, what called the crabs, these very fast ore ships that can dodge into creeks and pick up opium from western ships on islands like off Hong Kong. and then dive down the different waterways and smuggle it into the center of China.

And from the beginning, this starts off as a naval campaign. And we left you, I think, on the last episode, when in the first big conflict of the first open war, the British attack Zhaushan Island. And there's this massacre of the ships, followed by a massacre on lap. And this continues. And the British continued to demand the money from the Chinese government, that they're not willing to pay, war finally breaks out again.

And 1841, at the beginning of the year, we see the nemesis engaging with the Chinese fleet at the mouth of the Pearl River. And I'll read an account of what happens in that first conflict, because it kind of sets the tone for everything that follows. So this line of Chinese war junks is blocking the nemesis at the mouth of. the river. And then the nemesis brings its congru-roved rockets into range. We were talking in our last bonus episode about Tbil Sultan. This is an Indian technology, the use of war rockets, which is adopted by the British and then put into action. When we're saying rockets, we're talking about

sort of repurposed fireworks in a way, are we? Or are we talking? Yeah, that's what it is, isn't it? Fireworks with fuses with added boon. Yeah. The nemesis has these congrive rockets, which are the British version of Tipu's rockets that Tipu has used in war in 1799 against the British, and a guy called Congreep brings them into the British Army, and they now are very popular as weapons in the Navy. One of the British sailors called Captain Hill sets off these Congreve rockets into the line of war junks,

blocking the British path into the Pearl River. And he describes one of the junks, it blew up with a terrific explosion. launching into eternity every soul on board and pouring forth its blazed like a mighty rush of fire from a volcano. The smoke and flame and the thunder of the explosion with portions of dissevered bodies scattering as they fell were enough to strike with awe the stoutest heart that looked on. And I think both sides are incredibly shocked by this. No one has expected. I think it's been a bit of a fluke that obviously one of these congruive rockets has landed in the guise.

powder of one of the warjunks, but the whole thing has just gone up. The explosion is tremendous, and I love that line, you know, sort of launching into eternity every soul on board and the number of souls that we're talking about. It's an hour and a half that they're facing off against each other and fighting them. This huge explosion happens. And the Chinese lose 280 people. 462 are wounded. So this is absolutely a bloodbath on the water for them.

And the English, in comparison, they have 38 wounded and not one single. single death, not one person dies on the English side. It's not even David and Goliath. It's like a steam roller just rolling over the Chinese efforts to defend their own territory. And in terms of ships, 11 war junks are destroyed, 173 Qing cannons are removed or spiked or captured. And the damage to the nemesis is a little damage on her paddle box. That's all that happens. So the Chinese discover at this point that there's almost nothing that they can do. you're in the nemesis sailing up the river. They have no defences against this. So the plan that Jardine has come up with is very simple. They've got to go back to Canton, which has been the foothold where the British and the American and the French factories are all sitting on the riverbank.

And as we know, and as we've discussed in earlier episodes, for 100 years, these European factories have been sitting there doing business initially buying tea, but more and more getting involved in the opium trade. The British and the French and the Americans have never been beyond the factories. They're not allowed into the city of Canton even. They're stuck in this tiny little sort of no-man's land on the river. And what we see as their first plan of attack laid down by William Jardine in Palmerston's war office is to capture Canton. So on the 25th of February, the British arrive at the outer defences on the river. And these are the forts upriver from Canton on the edge of the city.

I mean, it's a sort of tragic and almost comic horror story. The Chinese, in order to try and scare off the Brits, arrange for the garrison, which is not as large as it should be, to go round and round the hill, but they have to change their clothes on each circuit. So the Brits think there's more of them than there are. So they walk round and round with different kind of clothes on. In home alone, McCauley Colkin does a similar thing with sort of cutouts in the window just to make it look like there are more people at home than just him.

This doesn't work. But, I mean, apart from the people changing their clothes, the emperor does take this very seriously and is starting to mobilize troops because eventually there will be some 17,000 troops from seven different provinces who will converge on Canton because he knows as well. This is a prize. This is a jewel. this is a port that has marshaled an enormous amount of trade, not just an opium, but in other things,

and he can't afford to lose it. So, yeah, at the beginning, it's almost comical in his lack of men and having to look like they're much more muscular and there are many more of them than there were. But, you know, he's not taking it, he's not taking it lightly. He knows what's at stake here. And he's actually put down three million ounces of silver, which is a considerable fortune to fight this battle. Anyway, by the 21st of May, the nemesis is sitting off the factories. Now, you may remember from the last episode that the British had withdrawn and the other, all the other Americans and everyone else had withdrawn from the factories, leaving them empty and they'd been looted and gutted by the people of Canton.

So on the 21st of May, the nemesis arrives off the factories to this place where the British had been for 100 years, and they find utter silence. The factories have all been looted. There's no one around. And as they park their ships off these looted factories and as night comes, they suddenly realize that there is an attack being planned on them. The Chinese have got all these fireboats, these junks and rafts, and they're all stuffed with oil-soaked cotton. So the first move that the Chinese have is to wait until the right time and the current is at its height. and they let these flaming ships out on the British fleet.

Of course, not yet realizing that the nemesis is made of metal. This is their answer to torpedoes, isn't it? I mean, it's just sort of get them as close as you can and let them blow up and take as much out as they can. Exactly that. And then at the same time, the Chinese have hidden among the ruins of the factories and Canton houses opposite all their artillery. So just as darkness comes,

and the fire ships begin to float towards the British fleet on the ebb tide, a whole load of artillery opens up from hidden positions. So it looks as if it's quite a serious defence, that they've planned for this and the British have walked into the trap. But, of course, it all starts to go wrong. The fireboats drift in the wrong direction and don't get anywhere near where the British ships are parked. the British unload troops, which immediately put out the artillery. The first skirmish has taken

place. The next day is Queen Victoria's birthday. So they begin with a high noon salute on the 24th of May, and then 2,300 British troops, most of whom are actually sepoys sent from British India, storm around Canton. And remember, this is a city they've never been allowed to enter in all the time that they've been trading there. And they tramp over the rice fields and the burial grounds on the outskirts of town, dragging these four enormous howitzer field guns and powder guns and lots of more concrete rockets onto the hill. Zushiyan, the mountain of transcendent excellence, which overlooks Canton.

And for the first time ever, the British look down onto Canton. They've never been able to see beyond the walls. You can't see over the walls when you, for a hundred years, there's just been the same picture. All the Brits who are there take back of the walls of Canton. Now they get onto this hill and they're looking down and they prepare on the 27th of May to shell the city of Canton, which is full of people. It's a city of a million people. It's an enormous metropolis. 40,000 Qing troops against 3,500 East India Company sepoys. The numbers seem to be in favour of the Chinese, but not if the East India Company sepoys have howitzers at their command.

So as soon as the Howitzer start fighting, there is absolute disarray. You can just imagine it, this constant thud, thud, bang, bang of the cannon. And one of the descriptions says the canon did not fall silent for a single moment. That's from a Chinese source. When night fell, the fires burned as bright as day. Neither officials nor soldiers dared come out to help. All you could hear was the noise of burning and death. And the next morning the infantry think it's their moment to actually charge into the city and take the city in a full-scale assault.

And they're just revving up, getting ready for this, getting their tot of rum before running down the hill into the gates of Canton. When a single, rather plump British officer spotted blundering his way through the paddy fields announces that the Chinese have backed down, they're going to pay a $6 million ransom. They're going to withdraw their troops from Canton. There's no need for the British to take the city by rape and plunder. Haven't they just blown it to smithereens, though, with the sounds of screaming. They've already killed many, many people by artillery, but there's not actually going to be Benets in the city walls. So there's a really interesting story about the bloke blundering to give this message.

Because couldn't he have got there a lot earlier, but he got lost. That's right. And he had asleep in a paddy field. So he goes to sleep in a paddy field. And I wonder whether if he would have got there just a tiny bit earlier, whether the bombardment might not have gone on as long as it did or the loss of life went on as long as it did. So what happens then?

So then there's an example of what could have been if the Chinese had got their act together a bit more. Because on the next day, the troops who've been about to attack the city and suddenly realise that they've got a free day off. And so the troops just run off into the countryside and swarm around the little hamlets and villages and the burial grounds with their blood up, these guys begin to get into mischief.

They start opening the tombs, taking the bodies out, which obviously is a deeply offensive thing to do, and there are accusations that the Punjabis have been raping the local women, and they call them black devils in the Chinese sources. But they also say things that it is a shame to even speak of, because this is a society that's so utterly outraged and deeply ashamed of what happens. But that's what happens.

I mean, you've talked about this before in Delhi as well. You know, when you have sort of troops who are thinking that they've got one day of fighting and putting their lives on the line and it suddenly disappears, or they've taken a city and they still have their blood up, Roman soldiers would be allowed to go and vent themselves. Soldiers are all periods of history, tragically. Yeah, so it's horrific. British troops are now basically taking a holiday, moving around people, villages, disturbing the dead, making it, making mystics of themselves.

And just taking what they like. I mean, there's a lot of new thing reported as well. Remember that there's a big difference between the Manchu Empire, which is, you know, Manchu's from north of the wall who are the government, and the local Chinese. And the local Chinese are not going to take the ceasefire as a solid thing if the British are still molesting the women and disembodying the troops out of their tombs. So the local farmers line up in a sort of peasant militia and armed with spears, shields, and swords, they fall on the British troops who are not expecting any resistance at all. And so the day after the ceasefire, the British suffer a major peasant revolt in the villages

outside Canton. These guys are, you know, wandering around paddy fields, smoking their shrews, having a nice time on their day off, when suddenly they find this enormous peasant militia armed with swords and shields and spears coming down on them with a vengeance. The British think, okay, there's men with spears and shields. What are they going to do? So they send a detachment out to go and get rid of them and just, you know, scare them back. Fire in the air a bit, they'll run away. But about after three miles of sort of pursuing them into their fields and trying to get them to go home or go away or kill them,

there's a spectacular rainstorm that breaks out. It is a downpour that is so heavy, so torrential. It's like the sky is falling down. You can't see even just meters in front of your face. And the guns are completely useless. So, you know, that advantage those British troops have is lost completely because you can't fire a gun. You're not quite as scary, you know, even if the people you're pursuing only have sticks and stones and shields. So what happens is is that, you know, the paths are all washed out.

They can't fire their guns. They don't know which where they're going because, as you quite rightly said, these are places they've never been before. And they're bogged down in the paddy fields. Well, the paddy fields, it looks like water. If you've seen the paddy fields, it's just, you know, sort of a lake with things sticking out of it. There is no land. Everything seems to be, you know, covered with water. So that's when the peasants start jabbing back with a bit more success.

They stopped running away from these troops pursuing them and they start fighting back. And it's the Qing government who gets the British off the hook. They've signed this piece. So they suddenly turn up and tell the peasants to go back home and not to resist it. anymore. And this, of course, is hugely unpopular because the peasants have got the British troops on the run. And they say, since the peace is signed, you must let the foreigners go. But this, of course, it is now in modern China a major moment. It's been turned into a big visitor center, and it's a major part of all school textbooks. And it's called the San Yuan Li People's Anti-British

Struggle. You go there today, and Julie McFarthur says there's an enormous, very phallic monument to mark this reversal of the British troops. But again, it just shows that, you know, with a slightly different configuration, this war could have gone very differently. But it remains the, you know, the Manchu imperial forces who are underarmed against the British. And the Chinese, in the sense, are actually, that the local Chinese barely take part in this war. So at this point, the British carry on a little bit further up the river. They take a place called Zenha. There are, at this point, 1,500 Chinese dead for only 16 British casualties. They then take another place further up river called Ningbo. And at that point, they decide to settle down for the winter and hope that

the Qing will give in to their demands. And I think we should take a break there while the British are wintering in Ningbo. Welcome back. So just before the break, we had this sort of slightly now lionised version of a peasants revolt where the peasants say, you know what, actually we had enough of your nonsense, Brits, we're going to fight you back. And they're quite successful. I mean, with the help of a huge downpour in pushing the British back. But it is their leadership. It is the emperor himself. He says, no, signed a bit of paper. You lot, stop that. Go home. We've got to do what we've said we're going to do. And we're basically giving up. So this is a huge success for the British. But what do they do? Well, they sack Elliot immediately.

Well, we're on that. One of the people who rather disloyally does for Elliot is his own cousin Lord Auckland. While Auckland is making his own mess in Afghanistan, he's pointing at his cousin Charles Elliot and saying that Elliot's making an even bigger mess in China. And it's his letters to Palmerston that actually result in Elliot getting sacked. Oh, really? He's being slacked off by his own family member. Oh, that's hilarious. And Emily Eden writes these very spiky notes about him, how hopelessly is and how slow and how dithery in her words. And so poor Charles Elliott, this is now the winter break. They've got as far as Ningbo. The Chinese have hunkered down for the winter too. Everyone sort of realizes this is a break and there's going to be a pause in the fighting during the Chinese winter. Elliot goes off for some fun to Macau, the Portuguese colony, which has hotels and bars and today is famous for its country.

casinos, and it's a place where at this time people go for a bit of a break. And he's only just arrived. He has a nightmare trip to Macau. I think his ship sinks or he ends up on an island. He's nearly captured by the Qing. Everything goes wrong. And he finally gets to Macau, walks up the beach and is told he's been replaced by Henry Pottinger, who's arriving in 48 hours from India. It's the equivalent getting a text message saying don't come in tomorrow. But, I mean, you say it's Auckland who slacked him off and said he's just made a hash of this. But it is, actually Jardine and Matheson, who really have done for Elliot, because they have not rested at all in slagging him off, slagging the way that he has been getting in the way, he hasn't

been muskin enough, they've been telling him for ages that Canton could have been taken. Why are we, you know, sort of kowtowing to these people? Well, we just take it. We're, you know, we're much better off. So really, the opium smugglers have won this war on their own. And they've also sacked, you know, a fairly decent man when they did it. And what still bothers me is that Palmerston just believes him. I think it's a close parallel to Elon Musk sitting in Trump's office telling him what to do.

Jardine particularly and Palmerston are sitting in the same room in the foreign office, drawing up these war plans. Poor old Elliot, who's got this very difficult balancing act and trying to get the Chinese to do what he wants and repay the money without slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent people. He is being slagged off. Jardine is now in London, he's not in Canton, he's come all the way home, and he's got the ear of the foreign minister. And that's him. That's him finished, and he never gets another job. He never gets another job, and he always has to put up or deal with that feeling that, you know, his entire career has been reduced to ashes, and everyone thinks he's a chump, even, you know, his own family. But Palmerston writes a really scathing note to him. Basically, you were useless from the

moment you got there. You've done absolutely soddle that I wanted you to do. Everybody else who's done that job, has done it better than you. I mean, it really is sort of like a horrible text saying don't come in tomorrow. And there is one, I'll just conclude with one bit. You seem, Palmerston says, to have considered that my instructions were a waste of paper and you were at full liberty to deal with the interests of your country according to your own fancy. I mean, basically, you were shit. I cannot emphasize how shit you were at your job and you will never work in this town again. It's just career ending, everything ending. And that's only because he's listening to these drug dealers. Sitting in his office. And the letter ends very promptly, you will accordingly return home at your

earliest convenience. And poor Elliot writes in his diary, a line from Dryden, slack all thy sales, for thou art wrecked ashore. So poor old Elliot, who was not, I mean, relative to the rest of that was not a bad guy, I was trying to avoid bloodshed and do the decent thing. He's someone that spent his life fighting slavers in West Africa, has been sent into this thing and is comprehensively outwitted at every stage by Jardine and Matheson, who have the ear of the powerful. And instead, he's replaced by this character Henry Pottinger, who I know all about it. You've written about him in relation to Afghanistan, so tell me about this Pottinger replacement. What does he like?

So Pottinger is one of the earliest British spy master. of the Great Game. And he's a very important figure in the whole story of the run-up to the war in Afghanistan. There are two British intelligence centres, one on the West Coast in Gujarat, which is run by Pottinger, and the others in Ludiana run by a character called Wade. And at this point, it looks as if Wade has won the battle, and poor old Pottinger has been outflanked by his rival. And he's given, basically, because Wade has got all the glories, it seems at this point. Pottinger is now given his chance in a sense to show his colours by replacing Elliot. He's capable. He's very, and he's annoyed. He's annoyed and he's very bullish. He's a big man

with sort of mutton chop whiskers and is a much tougher, more blimpy character than Elliot, who's quite a sort of Christian and wants to save civilian lives. Pottinger's absolutely no worries at all about sacrificing hundreds of thousands of Chinese in order to get the money for the opium back. As I say, he's got a name to prove because he's been out for flanked by his rivals in the service and his former protege he's now got a knighthood. And he's longing to make his name by being tougher than Elliot. And on the Chinese side, there's also been a turnaround. Commissioner Lynn, who as we saw in the first episodes of this series,

is the most capable and wonderful of all the Chinese civil servants who completely outflanks Elliot and gets all the opium surrendered to him, who hasn't put a foot wrong. He now takes the can for the loss of Canton, and he's sacked. Is it just a very short line? Again, it's a very short note. Oh, really? And in the way of royal dynasties, the emperor, rather than sending another Commissioner Lynn, another man who spent his entire life passing exams and rising to the top of the service

and performing an exemplary service for the emperor, instead, of course, it goes to the emperor's nephew, who's a man called Yi Jing. And Iging is the worst possible choice for this job. His only position prior to taking on the British Army who were halfway up the Auxey River already. He's been director of the Imperial Gardens. And he's a noted calligrapher and a painter, just what you need. Wow, my God, he sounds amazing for this job. He sounds so qualified.

It's perfect. Does he do origami? That's useful. Okay. So Yi Jing, who I think has hardly left Beijing before, has never left the Imperial Gardens, which he loves gardening in, is set down to the lovely sort of riverside resort of Suzao, and there he decides to spend the winter.

And this is a lovely place with canals, and it's got lots of brothels and gorgeous courtesans, and it's a place where the educated pleasure seekers of Beijing will go for their break. and he spends the winter, while the troops are massing, rather than making war plans, he spends it dining, drinking, listening to operas, which is a very nice touch, and cultivating his rock garden and honing his poetry writing skills. So in effect, what you have is somebody who likes flower arranging against a really wily

war horse who already has had a pretty rough time of it in Afghanistan done and been robbed of his laurels, he feels, he's definitely, definitely on the move to make his name and no bastard's going to take the credit this time. It's not a fair match, is it, William? It's not a fair match. And what makes things worse is that the Chinese officials are so afraid, in a sense, to tell the emperor the reality that these troops have got different generations of weapons, that there's nothing the Chinese have that can take on these trained British troops. So they keep sort of sending, well, simply fantastic reports of what's going in. So Yi Jing doesn't realize.

Everything's fine. We're doing really well here, Emperor. It's all fine. And it's not just that Yi Jing is doing his flower arranging. He thinks there's no reason for concern because no one's told him that there've been all these terrible defeats and the Chinese troops have crumpled. He thinks that he's absolutely on top of it. And then the final coup d'ata, as far as he's concerned, is when on the 13th of February,

700 Sichuanese Aborigines dressed out in tiger-skin tunics turn up. And Yejing is a great follower of oracles and astronomy. And he realizes that this is the hour of the tiger and the month of the tiger and the year of the tiger. And as far as he's concerned, everything couldn't be more auspicious for the attack. That this Aboriginal regiment arriving at the moment it has is a sign that the gods and the heavens are with them. and they're about to send the British off to their makers. They plan an assault on the foremost British town of Ningbo, which is as far as the nemesis has got up, the river.

And the Chinese attack is being prepared. And again, there's this other sign that if only the Manchu's had left a little bit more to the locals, that could have been a very sustained resistance. because in Ningbo where the British have spent the winter, they're feeling very much under assault by the locals. They can't leave the garrison. Initially, they've been putting their troops out into different little pickets around the place. And every time someone goes off for a pee behind lines,

they're found the next morning trussed up with a walnut in their mouth, sort of floating in a paddy field. Oh, okay, so there's quite good peasant resistance. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Trust up with a walnut in their mouth. Is that because they've been killed or just sort of tied? up. I mean, that doesn't make sense to anybody. I will read you the description. This is from wonderful Julia Lovell's description of what's going on in Ningbo. She says that a captured private

was found tied up in a bag, a large walnut with hair wound around it, had been forced into his mouth, the sides of which were cut, open to admit it. He was quite dead. The business was repugnant to the feelings of civilised nations, commended one British lieutenant. You're right. What's interesting is if the peasants had had their way, they were actually pinning them down. They have, they have a fight back force. Everything feels a little bit, well, I mean, not realistic. So you haven't got real reports getting back to Beijing. You've got a man who thinks, hey, what else do we need? Have you seen my latest flower arrangement? We don't need anything else. I've done this beautiful swan. It's a crane. It's absolutely bloody used it. And he also has people with him who are inexplicably odd as well.

Can I tell one of the preparation stories, which I love so much. So this is a commander who is, is facing the nemesis, okay, the nemesis, which has caused untold damage and got as far as Ningbo. So one commander purchases, 19 monkeys. Now, why you may ask, does he want 19 monkeys? Because he has this brilliant idea that he's going to strap fireworks to their bags and then set them loose. Fly my monkeys, fly, like something out of, you know, wizard above. Fly my battle monkeys. And they're going to crawl all over the British ships.

and then blow up. I mean, it's not a very lovely story for animals, but this is the calibre, this is the calibre of fightback that is coming from imperial China, whereas peasant China is doing a pretty, I mean, horrific, but good job with walnuts and stabby things. And the poor monkeys, in the end, no one dares get close enough to throw the fire monkeys onto the British ships, particularly the nemesis, which is towering up above any of the Chinese junks, so that their keeper leaves the attack monkeys of Nimbo to start. slowly to death in his front lodge in the end. I hate that, really?

It's not a nice ending to the story. But anyway, there's a three-pronged attack. Yi Jing has spent the whole winter planning this, and there's meant to be a three-ponged attack, not just on Ningbo, but on two other cities, Zenghai and Zhaushan. And the idea is that 36,000 men will hurdle themselves on the British troops,

and it'll be a great victory. Of course, everything goes wrong. And again, it's the British howitzers that see for the Manchu resistance. They're still fighting in close packs and they're just wiped out by the British shells. The British now got this horse artillery that can move very fast around the field. They've got explosive shells. They've got the latest logistics so they can work at about ballistic, so they can work out exactly where to plant the shells. And so when it does come to fighting in the

city, the howitzer is set up and it just massacres the Manchu resistance. And again, there's this hideous descriptions of at least 3,000 Chinese soldiers just being massacred by a couple of guns. The effect was terrific, observed one campaign-hardened officer. The enemy's rear, not aware of the miserable fate which was being dealt out to their comrades at the front, continued to press forwards in a mass so as to force fresh victims upon the mounds of the dead and the dying. By the time that the howitzer fell silent after only three rounds, there was a writhing, shrieking hecatum, closely packed, fully 15 yards. So this one gun sitting in the street in Ningbo slaughters the Chinese troops.

Outside the city, there's a last stand of the Qing Imperial Guard who are dressed up in this fantastic black and purple velvet. And these guys are very brave, but they are not fighting tactics that are going to win them against East India Company's supoys. So they just sit at the top of the hill. 500 elite Qing soldiers and eventually the company 1,200 sepoys surround them on all sides with their artillery and they just shoot them dead with the shells and finish them off with the bear nits. We sat by helpless watching our comrades die, writes one of the diaries of one of the Chinese survivors. Even now, the thought of it tortures me. So Yi Jing has lost. but again, Dan tell his uncle the emperor what's actually happened.

So what he reports is that 500 British soldiers have been killed, including their chief Palmerston. Parmiston is actually sitting in the war office in London. This is insane. This is insane, though. This is insane. Yeah. Palmerston's been killed.

We got him. Okay. So now, I mean, and what happens to the civilian population, dare I ask? So as before rape, Julia Lovell gives very, very detailed and very upsetting. descriptions of a kind of mass rape that takes place after the attack on Ningbo. And then in response to the rape and the loss of the Imperial Guard, there's a mass suicide in the city of Ningbo. So the British walk into the city after this battle to find just heaps of bodies. Well, I mean, I've seen one of the accounts on this and it is just awful.

So if you are of a delicate disposition, maybe do something else for the next 30. seconds, but this is an account of what a British soldier saw. He says, old men, women and children cutting each other's throats and drowning themselves by the dozen, and no one either attempting or apparently showing any inclination to save the poor wretches, nor in fact, regarding them with any more notice than they would a dead horse carried through the streets of London to the kennel. That's just horrendous. That's horrific. So, you know, the soldiers talk about wandering through this kind of almost like a ghost town. And it's the city, you know, it's getting darker.

So it is getting more or more spooky with these bodies that they're having to tread over. But in contrast to that, the soldiers also write about, you know, the fragrance of the flowers that are hanging over all these really beautifully appointed, these civilian houses, you know. So it is, it smells pretty. If you look up, it looks beautiful. If you look down at your feet is just rivers of blood. There's another one account, I'll just read. I mean, these things are horrific.

We entered an open court strewn with rich stuffs and covered with the clotted blood. And upon the steps leading to the hall of ancestors, there were two bodies of youthful tartars, cold and stiff, much alike, apparently brothers. Stepping over these bodies, we met face to face, three women seated, a mother and two daughters. And at their feet lay two bodies of elderly men with their throats cut from ear to ear. the hardest heart of the oldest man who ever lived a life of rapine and slaughter could not have gazed on this scene of woe and been unmoved. There's a feeling of guilt in many of the British accounts because they're aware that morally this is a very dubious war.

And then there's no resistance. There's no feeling that they've won a great victory against a well-organized opponent. This has just been a slaughter followed by mass suicides of the people who they're meant to be trading with. And so there's two more cities which are captured in a succession and similar horrors. And eventually they advance on Nanjing. They capture Shanghai, which is a relatively small city at this point. Shanghai's greatest days lie ahead of it. And that doesn't move the emperor to surrender. But when Nanjing comes under the guns of the nemesis is the moment that finally the penny drops and the Qing government capitulates. And finally, on the 26th of August,

Pottinger is a large chap, has to be said, and he's carried in a sedan chair to the Chinese camp where a surrender banquet has been organised. Rather improbably, he's invited to this enormous feast. Yes, I can tell you what they ate. I mean, you know, it's going to take a while. So numerous patties have minced me, pork, arrowroot, vermicelli soup with meat in it, pig's ear soup, and other strange dishes were served in succession. And as a coup de grace, keying, I don't know who keying is, insisted upon Sir Henry opening his mouth, while he with great dexterity shot into it several times immense sugar plums. I shall never forget Sir Henry's face of determined resignation after he found remonstrances were of no avail, no more. So yes, Pottinger has to, you know, leave a lot fatter.

But I mean, this is also, this is, this is, you can't imagine Elliot behaving like this, can you? You can't imagine even at this kind of moment of victory, basically behaving like a member of the Bullington Club, which is what these guys are behaving like. The Ching perhaps hope that the British will have been stuffed to the point of insensibility. And then they start negotiating the treaty. But the demands are very clear. 21 million dollars in Demnity. The opening of five more ports. to trade, including Canton, the British right of residence, and the setting of tariffs, a very

contemporary touch. And the Chinese just want to get the business finished as quickly as possible. The Imperial Commissioners, Pottinger observes, declared their readiness to sign and seal the treaty at once without further explanation. So this is the treaty that gives the British Hong Kong. It's thanks to this that the whole subsequent history of Hong Kong takes off in the way that it does. Which the British aren't that bothered about at the time. At the time, they've no idea what they've got, exactly. Oh, we'll take it. But, I mean, you know, thanks.

Thanks a lot. Yeah, you shouldn't have. I mean, it's kind of that kind of shrugging mentality. They don't realise what they've got when they get it. So this is an odd war. At the same time, as we say, you know, you've got the Afghans completely defeating the British in Kabul. And in Hong Kong, in the opium war, it's a total defeat. that leaves such a bad taste even in British mouths.

And Elliot writes in his diary, you know, this man has just been sacked, he's lost his career, and he so he lets out all the feelings of this hopeless war. He says, our visitations are so calamitous to the wretched inhabitants, a war in which there was little room for military glory, the slaughter of an almost defenseless and helpless people, and the people which, in large portion of, the Theatre of War was friendly to the British nation. And that humiliation still rankles. And Julia Lovell opens her book with The Wonderful Story, which I think is where we should conclude

with. November the 9th, 2010, when David Cameron and his delegation arrives to try and patch up relations with China in the Great Hall of the People at Tianmen Square, it's November, and they're wearing Remembrance Day poppies. And the Chinese officials say they're not going to let them into the hall unless they remove their Remembrance Day poppits on the grounds that the flowers evoked such painful memories for the Chinese people. So this is not dead history for the Chinese. They remember this, and although this is no longer a part of history that the British choose to remember much about, one of the most shameful, immoral and horrific wars of empire ever fought, but one which has considerable echoes and ripples into the present.

Anyway, we're going to leave it there. We've got the next Opium War and looking back on this whole debacle on the last episode. And next week, we're going to get the wonderful Stephen Platon, whose Imperial Twilight, is along with Julian Avel and Amatov Ghosh, the three great books. And I've so enjoyed reading while doing this series. If you want to hear that final episode now, you can join the Empire Club. Sign up. Get all our wonderful newsletters and all these other goodies straight to your inbox.

If not, we'll see you next week. And it's goodbye from me, William Derrimple. And goodbye from me, Anita Arlen.