The Sun.
London, England, 1860-12-31 00:00:00

(Fiom the Times' Correspondent,)
BEFORE PEKIN, OCT. 17.
When I :say "Before Pekin," you are not to ima-
gine that we are in the position of a besieging
army, and that ';Pe could not get in if we wished it,
for, as the last mail has probable informed you, one
possession, and we have
of the gates is now in fur
only to push on our advantage to become masters
of the entire town. It was not anticipated that it
would have become ours without some semblance of
opposition, and accordingly on the 12th the Ist
Royal Regiment was sent to take ell its quarters in
the " Temple of the Earth," the walls pf which en-
close a space of many acres, one of them stretching
parallel to the north wall of Pekin at a di,-tance of
a few hundred yards, and a little to our ioft of
the Anting-gate. Behind this wall the siege
battery was to have heel placed, openings having
been made in it for the purpose, and the plan
of attack was to breach the wall at a distance of
15 feet from the ground, then to storm the breach
with a party told off from the Second Division,
which party, when it had gained the wall, was to
turn to its right, and proceed along the wall to the
Anting-gate, which it was forthwith tt? occupy.
All this preparation was, however, rendered need-
less by the surrender of the gate, which was given
up to us in the course of the day, and is now held
conjointly by the English and French, one on the
right and the other on the left, our garrison being
composed of the 67th Regiment, the Bth Punjab
Infantry, and some Artillery.
The word " gate" conveys but a faint idea of the
complicated structure which bears that name. As
you approach the heavy massive wall, 40 feet high,
and, as will afterwards appear, 55 feet thick at the
top, passing by a bridge of stone over a ditch that
may once have been wet, but now is dry, you come
to what I can best term a " semicircular bastion,"
having at what, if it were built according to our
ideas, would be its saliant angle a huge square
tower of several stories, pierced with four rows of
loopholes, one over the other, and 12 in each row,
and surmounted by that peculiar pagoda-like roof
with which the willow-pattern plate has made us
all familiar. Leaving this on your right, and keep-
ing along the semicircular excrescence till it joins
the main wall of the city, you come to as archway
which is gate No. 1. Having got into the courtyard
inside this said semicircle, you find another arch-
way in the city wall, facing the aforesaid tower,
and this is gate No. 2, surmounted by a tower simi-
lar to that already described, but apparently in•
tended more for ornament than use, not being fur-
nished with loopholes, and having a balcony round
it at about half its height from the ground. From
this balcony, reached by means of an antiquated
wooden staircase of questionable solidity, I received
my first, and as yet my only, view of Pekin, for
ingress beyond the immediate gate is positively
forbidden. Facing you as you look towards the
city a broad street runs north and south, and at
right angles to it smaller streets along the foot of
the walls. At the junction of these streets be-
fore the gate was an enormous crowd of wonder-
struck inhabitants, gazing with open eyes and
mouths at the European soldiery in the gate, as
the Trojans may have gazed on the wooden
horse when it had passed their impregnable walls.
To keep back this curiosity-stricken mob was a
task of some difficulty to the sentries, and so far
from fearing us were they, that several adventurens
spirits brought with them supplies of fowls, fruits,
and sweatmeats, with which they drove a good
trade with the soldiers on guard. The shops in this
part of the main street, as far as I could see, seemed
to be small and insignificant, as were also the
houses on which we looked down from the wall,
and I was struck with the absence of all large
buildings, or even of the pagodas of which I fan-
cied the city had been full. In this respect, I am
told, the Tartar position of the city, on which I
was then looking down, is far inferior to the Chi-
nese or southern half, the inhabitants of which
would gladly have opened their gates to us long
ago, and actually made handsome offers of supplies
in case we took up our quarters in their city. I
was not at a sufficient elevation to see the wall se-
parating the Tartar from the Chinese city, but I
could clearly see the whole extent of the northern
part of the eastern and western walls, each about
four miles long, and well provided with gates
similar to that on which I was standing.
It is strange that a city of the size and antiquity
of Pekin should have little or no suburb round it.
The walls in most places look down on green fields
outside, and the only approach to a suburb is the
village in which the British army is quartered,
which, however, is quite detached from the city,
there being a plain of a mile or two in breadth
lying between.
There is a carriage road, of not very steep ascent,
up to the top of the wall at the Anting-gate. Of
this we have availed ourselves to get our gins on
tho walls, and the mouths of some howitzers now
frown on the main street of the city, while
traverses have been thrown up across the
wall at each side, thus precluding the possibility
of any attempt of the Tartars to dislodge us. The
wall is battlemented in the usual manner, with
square bastions at intervals, which afford a
kind of flank defence, an element of fortifica-
tion generally overlooked by Chinese Vaubans,
and, though there are no embrasures for cannon, I
observed a few light guns lying near the gate, the
largest of them a brass piece marked with the
maker's name, and purporting to have been made
at " Middleburgh" in the 17th century.
You have heard, I suppose, how the Emperor's
Summer Palace has been " looted," to use the word
which the Indian mutiny has domesticated in our
military parlance. Our allies decidedly got to
windward of us on this occasion, and the amount of
plunder which they secured is only equalled by the
amount of valuable property which they destroyed.
'When I reached the palace, which is five or six
miles from here, on the morning of the Bth, nearly
all the portable valuables were gone, but enough of
a larger description remained to show what must
have been the magnificence of those now desolate
halls. The English officers were allowed to visit
it, but the French being encamped on the spot,
both officers and men were there in numbers, and
the destruction of furniture, mirrors, clocks, and
articles of vertu by the French soldiery was some-
thing almost painful to behold. My time was so
limited, and the crash and din so bewildering, that
I feel 'utterly unequal to describe this palace, or

rather successiou of palaces, with its noble park
full of artificial lakes and mounds and fairy-like

summer-houses, with its marble halls and terraces
magnificent even in their ruin, its gorgeous turni-
tire, elaborate carvings, and warehouses of silks

and embroideries which not even an army was
able to empty. The sight was a practical transla-
tion of " V victis," and was enough to make
every Englishman pray that night that we might
never have an invader in London.

_ .
Prize agents were appointed to get together as
much property as they could for the benefit of the
English army, and orders were given that all
articles brought away by officers should be handed
Over to them. They put a value on each article
at
which the owner might redeem it if he
chose, or else leave it to be sold for the benefit
of the prize fund.
The sale took place
on the 11th and 12th, when a perfect mania of
competition seemed to have seized on all ranks,
and the prices realized were almost fabulous. The
commonest ornament for a table or mantelpiece
fetched from 30 to 50 dollars anything valuable or
handsome much more, and the silks, put up in lots
,
of a dozen rolls at 50 dollars a lot, generally brought
in 80 or 90.

The total amount realised by the sale is upwards
of £B,COO, which, added to the gold and silver bul-
lion found in the place, makes a prize fund of about
£30,000, to be divided—two thirds among the non-

commissioned officers and men who were in the
field on the 6th instant, and one third among the

officers—Generals Grant, Michel, and Napier gene-

rously resigning their claims to participation in it.
A visit to the French camp shows clearly that