The Sun.
London, England, 1859-09-16 00:00:00

THE DISASTER IN CHINA.

The following account is written by an eye-wit-

ness :
The less we expect the stroke, the more poignant
will be the pain it excites'; and no doubt the un-
expected and disastrous news which this mail will
bring you from China will cause a deep wail of
grief through the land; while, at the same time,
there is reason to fear that popular indignation will
lay blame and dereliction of duty at the door of
the commander.
Admiral Hope was severely wounded in the be-
ginning of the engagement. Mackenna, Rason, and
most of his, other personal attendants were lying
dead or dying around him, and yet these things did
not for a moment withdraw him from the post of
extreme danger. When the Plover, in a sinking
state, had to be abandoned, he removed his flag to
the Opossum, and, in the spirit of a Nelson, he got
himself propped up on her caboose, some eight feet
from the deck, and there, supplying the infirmity
of his wounded leg by holding on to a rope, he di-
rected the operations of the bombardment, and this
spirit of the Admiral leavened those under his com-
mand. Explosions of magazines followed each other
in quick succession within the forts, showing the
strength and accuracy of our fire, and must have
milked immense carnage among the enemy, as those
fort§ were at the time crammed with Mongol sharp-
shooters.
The removal of the Admiral's flag to the Opossum
at once made that gunboat the special target for the
enemy's fire, and his own exposed position on her
caboose rendered him the bull's-eye of this target.
A round shot from the enemy cut asunder the rope
by which the Admiral was holding on, and dashed
him to the deck with great violence, breaking one
of his ribs. By this time the Opossum was so severely
handled that she was obliged to draw off to plug up
shot holes, but the Admiral, though so severely,
crushed, instead of retiring in her, again got him-
self removed, on board the Cormorant, into the very
thickest of the fire, and it was only late at night,
when the struggle was at an end, that he came on
board the hospital gunboat.
As weary and fainting he was borne through the
midst of us, along that deck strewed with the dead
and wounded, the eye of many a poor fellow who
was smitten unto death himself filled with a sym-
pathy for that gallant man. Surely such a man
will meet with justice, aye, and tenderness, also, at
the hands of the British public !
That we fell into a trap is now manifest; but
is this the first time that a man of experience and
valour has been so caught? And, certainly, never
was a trap more skilfully laid to escape detection,
for, though numerous and well-built forts frowned
along the beach, we had constantly in China found
those formidable exteriors accompanied with com-
plete rottenness within, the garrisons running for
their lives as soon as our attacking parties landed,
and everything that occurred previous to the fight
led us to believe that those forts at the Peiho would
prove no exception to this general rule of Chinese
warfare.
When, some days previous to the attack, we tried
to open communications with the forts, our officers
were met by a man of the very lowest grade, and
in reply to their earnest request to see a mandarin,
were told that there was no mandarin in the forts
or neighbourhood. It is only in accordance with
Chinese lying and Mongolian treachery that this
falsehood was Rdemnly reiterated every time we
tried to land ; while, at the same time, some of the
chief men of the empire were close at hand. It is
a curious fact that while the love of money is so
strong and patriotism apparently so weak in the
breasts of Chinamen, yet we have never been able
to get any information with regard to the move-
ments or force of the enemy in any of our wars in
China. In those forts no flags were flying. No
bodies of men were to be seen either within or
without them. There was nothing to give us the
slightest intimation that a formidable artillery, sup-
ported by a picked army of 60,000 Mongolians, &c.,
garrisoned and protected those forts. Under those
circumstances an universal impression prevailed
that there were only a few Tartars in the forts, who
either would not fire at all or would merely fire a
few random shots to save appearances. It is true
that as soon as the storm of fire opened from
the forts we knew we were dealing with a
very different enemy from any that we had
before met in China—that we had got into a trap ;
but it is not our British custom to turn tail, when
we find ourselves in a difficulty, without trying with
all our power to overcome it. The Admiral felt
that he could depend on the unflinching pluck of
those under his command to do whatever could be
done by men, and their conduct in that assault
proved that his trust was not misplaced.
As his signal flew to land and storm the forts, a
simultaneous cheer burst from every breast. In a
moment our boats were off, and our marines and
blue jackets (English and French) were dashing
through mud and water, striving for the first place,
and not yielding for a minute to as murderous a
fire as ever was poured down on the devoted heads
of men. But now we had to encounter a still more
formidable obstacle than even that deadly fire. The
mud-bank in front of the south forts runs out a long
distance with very little-shelving, and the water on
it is consequently very shallow. You are aware
that in each spring the water at the mouth of the
Peiho is much shallower than in June. Prince
Sangkohlinsin when the water was so low got cir-
cular pits dug in this mud-bank at irregular dis-
tances. When we returned to the Peiho ose pits
were invisible, being under water, while at the same
time the water was too shallow to float our boats
full of armed men. The result was that the storm-
ing party had to jump out in the very place where
the trap was laid, and you saw on all sides meti sud-
denly disappearing in those pits, and then struggling
out with their rifles covered with mud and useless.
Thus three-fourths of even those who i cached the
front could not fire a shot, and consequently the
sharpshooters in the fort knocked over our poor
fellows almost with the same impunity as if
they were firing into a battue of game. De-
, spite of all this, between 300 and 400 men
reached the firm ground, and would have carried
the fort by storm in the face of all opposition, but
no scaling ladders were forthcoming. Those same
mud-pits had caught the men carrying the ladders.
As soon as one of the bearers got into a pit the lad-
der, of course, tumbled off on his side and either
stuck fast in the mud or got broken in dragging
it up. To this strategy of the mud-pits we owe
our repulse. No human wisdom could have fore-
seen the snare, and it clearly proves that in this
Mongolian Prince we have met with no ordinary
foe.
You will see by the Admiral's despatches that in
proportion to the numbers engaged our loss in
kilted and wounded was greater than that in any
of the late great battles in Italy, and it will be a
melancholy satisfaction to some at home to hear
that many of our poor fellows received their
wounds arid sacrificed their lives, not in the fierce
excitement of the advance, but as they retired, in
freely exposing their lives to save their wounded
comrades lying on the mud from falling into the
lands of the barbarous Mongols.
Already I have trespassed too much on your
valuable space, but I cannot end without referring
to one matter that, in connexion with this battle,
should be ever remembered. Were we children of
the same mother, we could not have received more
sympathy and kindness than we met with from
the Americans. Never were men more unwillingly
neutral. As we passed in to the assault Flag Offi-
cer (Anglice, Admiral) Tutnell was heard to say,
" Blood is thicker than water," and in 100 different
ways he and all his people, to the very cabin boys,
acted up to this homely proverb. When he heard
that our Admiral was wounded, at great personal
risk he went on board the Cormorant to see him.
Many of our men slept in the toeywan (American
tenders) on the night of the fight ; cigars, coffee,
Imdyua
, everything a man could want
forgot was laced
before them. The American crew them-
selves, and thought only of the British.
A
few days after die fight a Chinese junk, with
a -Rag of truce, brought fresh provisions to the
iPnrmowedhaiattantely sent to
States frigate). These were
to our wounded. The bond of
Am erican brotherhood was indeed deeply cemented
in our trial at the Peiho. I believe there was not
a man in the fleet who did not feel it growing up
and I am sure
within him, there are thousands, if
I may Mot say millions, at both sides of the Atlan-
tic who will join me in the fervent wish that that
feeling of brotherhood may take deeper and deeper
root in both lands.
The fol lowing is an extract from a letter written
bbbvy the senior lieutenant of her Majesty's ship
Flighflyer, present at the attack on the Chinese
Mete at the ,entrance of the Peiho, and detailing
tl te proceedin,gs
Highflyer, June 28.
" Her Majesty's ship
" I little thought, my dear father, when I began
thi 's letter what a tale of woe I should have to tell.
It , appears that the Chinese would have nothing
to
say to our Minister, so it was determined to attack
thei r farts and force the passage of the river. Alas
for te result! The gunboats Nimrod an,,d Cormo-
rant Trent in to attack about 240 p.m. on `the 25th,
accon yanied some distance out by a hired (French)
kind .oa temporary screw gunboat and the Coro
mend e/. The forts on both sides of the river were im-
mensely t trong, splendidly constructed by Russians
from Pek in, and loads of Russians fighting the
guns. It took eight gunboats till 630 p.m. to
silence the . ,forts, and then-they had got them corn-
Tietely undo T. At 7 p.m. all the marines from
Canton (abox t 400 odd), 100 sappers, the marines
and small_arm men of the squadron were landed on
a mud flat at dead_ low water, close under the
heaviest fort (th sir guns all '6B and 42-pounders).
I had the comma ad of the blue jackets, 84 strong,