Battles
of the Nineteenth Century
. Pages
27,
By
Archibald Forbes, G.A. Henty,
Major
Arthur Griffiths
The Storming of the Taku Forts
These lines from a modern balled put very clearly a truth that is
too often forgotten. Victories
are remembered and commemorated by medals and names inscribed in letters
of gold on our regimental colours’ but people do not talk about
defeats. Yet when brave men
fail against desperate odds, the story of their gallant efforts to carry
their flag to victory is quite as well worth the telling and the
remembering as if the chance of war had given them the converted prize
of success.
So it is that among the battles of the century that should not be
forgotten we count the one solitary defeat that English sailors or
soldiers ever suffered at the hands of the Chinese Admiral hope’s
failure to force the entrance of the Pei-ho River at the Taku Forts on
June 25th 1859: a failure amply improved by the gallant
storming of the same forts in the following year.
Taku is a town
near the mouth of the Pei-ho, which flowing between low, muddy banks,
runs into the Gulf of Pe-cho-li. Thirty-four
miles higher up the river is Tien-tsin, built at the junction of the Pei-ho
with the Greand Canal. It
is the port of Pekin, and a busy and prosperous place.
Pekin, the capital, is some eighty miles still further inland. In the year 1858 the French and English had forced their way
to Tien-tsin, passing the forts near Taku at the river mouth with but
little difficulty, for the works were badly armed and held by an
irresolute garrison which made but a poor defence.
When Tien-tsin was occupied, the Chinese asked for peace, and a
treaty was signed there containing among other stipulations, an
agreement that the envoys of England and France were to be received at
Pekin within a year, and that the treaty was to be solemnly ratified
there. Now the Chinese, as
soon as the allies withdrew from Tien-tsin, began to regret having
consented to allow the foreign ambassadors to enter their capital, and
endeavoured to have it arranged that the treaty should be ratified
elsewhere. But England and France insisted on the original agreement
being carried out, and when the envoys of the two countries arrived off
the mouth of the Pei-ho in June 1859, and announced their intention of
proceeding up the river to Pekin, an English fleet under the command of
Rear-Admiral Hope escorted them.
It was found that not only had the forts at the river mouth,
which had so easily been silenced the year before, been put into a state
of repair, but also the river was blocked against anything larger than
rowing boats by a series of strong barriers.
The admiral was informed that these had been placed on the river
to keep out pirates and it was promised that they should be removed; but
so from keeping this promise, the local mandarins set to work to
strengthen the defences of the river. On June 21st, the admiral sent the Chinese
commander a letter warning him that if the obstacles were not cleared
out of the channel of the Pei-ho by the evening of the 24th,
he would remove them by force.
The three days grace thus given to the Chinese he employed in
preparations to make good his warning message.
He had several powerful ships in his squadron, but none of these
could take a direct part in the coming fight, for the entrance to the
Pei-ho is obstructed by a wide stretch of shallows, the depth of water
on the bar being only two feet at low water, and hardly more than eleven
at high tide; and this only in a narrow channel scoured out by the
river. Thus, for the actual
on the forts, he had to rely on the gunboats of his fleet, a number of
small wooden steamers of light draft built during the Crimean war for
service in the shallow waters of the Baltic and Black Seas.
The gunboats with which Admiral hope crossed the bar and anchored
below the forts on the 23rd were the following: -
Plover, Banterer, forester, Haughty, Janus,
Kestrel, Le, Opossum, Starling each of four guns; Nimrod and Cororant ,
each of six guns.
Each had a crew of about fifty or sixty officers and men, so that
the eleven little steamers brought forty-eight guns 500 men into action.
The heavier the ship outside the bar were to send in 500 or 600
more men, marines and blue-jackets it steam launches, boats and junks;
this force being intended to be used as a landing party when the fire of
the forts had been silenced. No
one expected that this would prove a difficult business.
It was true that there was a big fort on the south side, with mud
ramparts nearly half a mile long, and heavy towers behind them, and
another large fort on the north bank, placed so as to sweep the band of
the river; but on all previous occasions the Chinese gunners had made
very bad practice with their guns, and had soon been driven from them by
the fire of English ships; and, besides, it was not supposed that there
were ant large number of guns in position on the forts, for very few
embrasures had been cut in the mud walls, so far as anyone could see.
On the evening of the 24th, no answer having been
received from the shore, it was announced that the attack would be made
next day, and after dark the admiral sent in one of his officers,
Captain Willes (now Admiral Sir George Willes, G.C.B.), to examine the
obstacles in the river and see what he could do to remove them.
Three armed boats, provided with explosives, accompanied Willes.
Rowing up quietly under cover of the darkness the boats came
first to a row of iron stakes, each topped with a sharp spike and
supported on a tripod base, so that they were just in the proper
position to pierce the bottom of a ship coming up the river at high
water.
This first barrier was just opposite the low end of the South
Fort. Passing cautiously
between two of the spikes, the daring explorers rowed up the river for a
quarter of a mile, when they came to a second barrier, formed by a heavy
cable of cocoa fibre and two chain cables stretched across the channel,
twelve feet apart, and supported at every thirty feet by a floating boom
securely anchored up and down stream.
Two of the boats were left to a fix mine under the middle if this
floating barrier, while Willes pushed on further into the darkness with
the third. Just above the
bend of the river he came to a third barrier, formed of two huge rafts,
moored as to leave only a narrow zigzag channel in mid stream, this
passage being still further secured with iron stakes.
Willes got out on one of the rafts and, crawling on hands and
knees, examined it carefully, and decided that mere ramming with a
gunboat’s prow would not be enough to displace it.
As he crouched on the raft he could see the Chinese sentries on
the riverbank, but was, happily, unseen by them.
Returning to his boat, he dropped down to the second barrier. The mine was ready, and having lighted its fuse the boats
pulled down the stream to the flotilla.
The explosion revealed their presence to the Chinese, and a
couple of harmless cannon shots were fired at them from the South Fort. The plucky little expedition had been a complete success; but
before morning the Chinese had repaired the gap blown by the mine in the
floating boom.
Early on Saturday June 25th, the gunboat flotilla
cleared for action. Admiral
Hope’s orders were that nine of the ships should anchor close to the
first barrier and bring their guns to bear on the forts, while the two
others broke through the barriers and cleared the way for a further
advance. High water was at
11.30 am, and it was expected that all would be in position by that
time; but the difficulty of working so many ships in a narrow channel,
not more than 200 yards wide, with a strong current and with mud banks
covered by shallow water on each side, was so great that it was not till
after one that the ships had anchored, and even then two of them, the
Banterer and the Starling, were stuck fast on the mud in positions from
which it was not easy to get their guns to bear.
All this time the forts had not shown the least sign of life. Their embrasures were closed; a few black flags flew on the
upper works, but not a soul was to be seen on the mud ramparts.
It was a bright summer day, blazing hot, with a cloudless sky of
deep blue overhead, and all round the little flotilla the dark waters of
the river came swirling down on the ebb, so that already patches of
yellow mud were showing here and there under the rush-covered banks.
The Plover, with all steam up and the admiral on board, was close
to the first barrier of iron spikes, and the Opossum, now commanded by
Captain Willes, lay close by her, the special task of this ship being to
deal with this first obstacle. At
a signal from the admiral the Opossum hitched a cable round one of the
iron stakes, and, passing it over one of her winches, reversed her
engines and tried thus to tear the stake out of the river.
But it was so well fixed that it was not until half-past two,
after half-an-hour of anxious work, that the obstacle gave way.
The
admiral in the Plover now steamed through the gap thus formed followed
by the Opossum. As the two
little ships approached the floating barrier beyond, a flash from the
long rampart on the left, the boom of a heavy gun, the whistle of a
round shot in the air, warned them that the Chinese meant to resist.
Along the walls of the forts on either side banners were hoisted
on every flag pole, embrasures were opened, guns run out, and from some
six hundred yards of the rampart on the left, and from the North Fort
out in front, the Chinese artillery, rapidly served and well laid,
poured a storm of shot upon the leading ships.
Promptly came the English answer.
Admiral Hope’s signal, “Engage the enemy,” flew from the
masthead of the Plover; her four guns opened, three of them on the big
fort away to the left, not more than two hundred yards off, the other
replying to the North Fort, while the guns of the rest of the flotilla
took up the loud chorus.
It was a fight at close quarters, and men who knew their business
worked the English guns; but the Chinese fire, instead of slackening,
seemed to grow heavier every minute.
If a gun was silenced, if a shell burst in an embrasure and swept
away all within reach of its explosion, another gun was promptly placed
in battery, another band daring gunners took the places of the slain.
They fired so steadily and aimed so truly, that to this day many
hold that they had trained European artillerymen helping them.
The iron storm of which they were exposed began to tell upon the
two leading ships. The
Plover had thirty-one out of her crew of forty killed or wounded in the
first half-hour. Her
commander, Lieutenant Rason, was literally cut in two by a round shot;
the admiral was wounded in the thigh, but refused to leave the deck; and
Captain McKenna, who was attached to his staff, was killed at his side.
Nine unwounded men only were left on board, but they, with the
help of some of their wounded comrades, kept two of the guns in action,
though they fought on a deck slippery with blood, and with the bulwarks,
boats, and spars of their ship cut to pieces by the Chinese shot.
It was about this time that a boat flying the stars and stripes
came pulling in from an American cruiser that lay outside the bar.
Commodore Tatnall of the United States navy was on board, and he
had come to the Plover, regardless of the Chinese fire, to offer some
help to the English Admiral. As
a midshipman he had fought against the British in the war of 1812, but,
as the old sailor said to admiral Hope, “blood is thicker than
water”; and though, as a neutral, he could not join in the attack, he
offered to send in his steam launch and help to convey the wounded out
of danger, an offer that was gratefully accepted.
When he bade good day to the admiral and went back to his boat,
he had to wait a little for his men.
They came aft, looking hot and with the black marks of powder on
there hands and faces. “What have you been doing, you rascals?”
Said Tatnall. “Don’t you know we’re neutrals?”
“Beg pardon, sir,” said the spokesman of the party.
“but they were a bit short-handed with the bow-gun, and we
thought it no harm to give them a hand while we were waiting.”
The incident is remembered in the navy to this day as a good deed
done for the old country by Brother Jonathan.
At three o’clock Admiral Hope ordered the Plover, now almost
disabled, to drop down the river to a safer station, and transferred his
flag to the Opossum, the Lee and the Haughty steaming up to the place
left vacant in the front of the fight.
A few minutes more, and a round shot crashed through the
Opossum’s rigging close to the admiral, knocking him down and breaking
three of his ribs; but though suffering severely the brave commander
made light of his injuries, a bandage was adjusted round his chest, and
seated on the deck of the gunboat he still kept the command, and later
on even insisted on being lifted into its barge in order to visit and
encourage the crews of the Haughty and the Lee.
“Opossum, ahoy!” hailed an officer from the Haughty.
“Your stern is on fire.”
“Cant help it,” shouted back her commander.
“Can’t spare men to put it out.
Have only enough to keep our guns going.” But, in her turn, the Opossum had to give up the fight for a
while and drop down to the first barrier.
The Lee and the Haughty now bore the brunt of the fight, and
suffered severely. Everything
that could be smashed on their decks was knocked to pieces, and the Lee
was hit badly in several places at and below the water line.
Woods, her boatswain, informed her commander, Lieutenant Jones,
that unless the shot-holes could be plugged she would sink, as her pumps
and donkey engine could not get the water out as fast as it came in.
“Well, then, we must sink,” said the lieutenant; “you cant
get at the worst of the holes from inside, and I’m not going to order
a man to go over the side with the tide running down like this, and our
propeller going.” But
Woods replied by promptly volunteering to go over the side and see what
he could do. His commander
warned him that the screw must be kept going, or the ship would drift
out of her place-so, besides the chance of drowning, he would risk being
killed by the propeller blades; but Woods, remarking that the chance of
being killed was much of a much ness anywhere just then, went over the
side, with a line round his waits, and a supply of shot-plugs and rags
in his hands, and, diving again and again, and more than once sweeping
down with the tide under the stern and rising just clear of the wash of
the screw, he successfully plugged
several shot-holes. But
for that the ship continued to fill, and before long had to give up her
place in the fight and run aground to prevent her sinking.
The Cormorant replaced the Lee, the admiral by his own request,
being seated in a chair on her deck.
He had already once fainted, and the doctors now persuaded him to
allow them to send him to the hospital ship on the bar, and Captain
Shadwell, the next senior officer, took the command of the attack.
At half-past five, when the battle had lasted three hours, the
Kestrel sank at her anchors. Of
the eleven gunboats, six were disabled or put out of action.
But the fire of the Chinese batteries was slackening, and at
6.30, after a hurried council of war on board the Cormorant, it was
resolved to bring in the marines and sailors who had been waiting in
boats and junks inside the bar to act as a landing party, and try to
carry the South Fort by a bold rush.
It was after seven, and very little daylight was left for the
daring attempt, when the boats were towed in by the Opossum and the Toey
‘Wan, a little Chinese steamer. Captain
Shadwell took command of the landing party, which was made up of blue
jackets under Captain Vansittart, and Commanders Heath and Commerell,
R.N. Sixty French sailors, under Commander Tricault, of the French
frigate Duhalya, the marines under Colonel Lemon, and a party of sappers
with scaling ladders, under Major Forbes, R.E.
As the boats pulled into the shore, the fire from the North Fort
had ceased, and only an occasional shot was fired from the long rampart
of the South fort. The
landing place was five hundred yards in front of the right bastion of
this fort. The tide had
fallen so far that it was not possible to get any nearer, and the column
had to make its way across these five hundred yards of mud covered with
weeds and cut up with ditches and pools, the ground being so soft in
places that the men sank to their waists in it. And as the first boat’s crew landed on this mud bank,
suddenly, to the surprise of everyone, the whole front of the South Fort
burst into flame.
The silence of its guns was only a clever ruse, to lure the
British to a closer attack. Now
every gun opened fire again, while Chinese, regardless of the covering
fire from the gunboats, crowded on to the crest of the rampart, and
opened fire with small arms upon the landing party.
As they struggled onwards to the river bank round shot and grape,
balls from swivels and muskets, rockets, and even arrows, fell among
them in showers. Captain Shadwell was one of the first to be wounded;
Vansittart fell, with one leg shattered by a ball; dead and wounded men
lay on all sides, and the wounded had to be carried back to the boats to
save them from being smothered in the mud.
Three broad ditches lay between the landing place and the fort.
Not 150 men reached the second of these and only fifty the third
that lay just below the rampart. Several of these gallant bands were officers-Triacault, the
Frenchman, Commerell and Heath, Parke and Hawkey of the Marines, and
Major Forbes of the Engineers. Their
cartridges were nearly all wet and useless, and they had only one
scaling ladder. It was
reared against the rampart, and ten men were climbing up it, when a
volley from above killed three and wounded five of them, and then the
ladder was thrown and broken.
There was no help for it but to retire.
It
was now dark, but the Chinese burnt flaring blue lights and sent up
rockets and fireballs, and by their light fired on their retiring
enemies. Sixty-eight men
were killed and nearly 300 wounded, in the advance and retreat of the
landing party. Several of
the boats had been sunk, and many of the men had to wait up to their
waists, and even their necks, in water, on the river’s brink, till
they could be taken off.
It was 1 a.m. before Commanders Heath and Commerell, the two last
of the party, re-embarked. Then
the gunboats slipped down to the bar, a party being sent in next day to
blow upon or burn those of the grounded ships that could not be got off.
So ended the disastrous battle on the Pei-ho.
Next year an allied force of British and French troops, under
General Sir Hope Grant and General de Montauban, taught the Chinese
that, notwithstanding their victory over Admiral Hope’s little
gunboats, they were in no position to cope with the great Powers of the
West. While the allied
fleets watched the entrance of the river, 11,000 British and Indian
troops and between 6,000 and 7,000 Frenchmen were landed at Peh-tang,
some eight miles north of Taku. A
wide expanse of marshes separated Peh-tang from the forts which were to
be the first object of the allied operations; but these obstacles were
turned by a march inland, in which the allies defeated the Chinese
field-army at Sin-ho, on August 12th, and coming down the
north bank of the Pei-ho, seized the walled town of Tang-ku, three miles
above the forts, on the 14th.
These forts were four in number.
There were, first, the North and South forts, which Admiral Hope
had attacked the year before, and a little higher up the river there
were two others, known as the small North fort and the small South Fort.
They stood on opposite banks of the river, and did embattled
walls of sun-dried mud enclose both alike-square structures, a few
heavier guns being placed on a high platform in the centre, and the
whole being surrounded with a double ditch, full of water, too deep to
ford. Between the inner
ditch and the rampart were broad belts of sharpened bamboo spikes, about
fifteen feet wide. The
swampy nature of the country rendered the approach to the forts
difficult for artillery.
At first there was a difference of opinion between the two
generals as to how the forts were to be attacked.
It was agreed that as they were built to protect the river mouth,
and their strongest fronts were toward the sea, they should be assailed
from the landside; but General de Montauban wanted to cross-river, and
take the great South Fort first of all.
Sir Hope Grant, however, insisted that a much better plan would
be to begin with the small North Fort, and predicted confidently that if
it were taken all the other forts would be quickly surrendered, as each
of them in turn could bring it’s fire to bear upon those still in the
hands of the Chinese. Happily,
this plan was adopted, though the French General was so dissatisfied
with it that he only sent a few hundred men to help in the attack of the
fort, and came to look on him, without even wearing his sword, as if he
wished to disclaim all part in the business.
The swamps so narrowed the available ground in front of the small
North Fort that the attacking force was limited to 2,500 English and
some 400 French. On the
evening of the 20th of August, Forty-four guns and three
8-inches mortars had been placed in battery before the fort.
At five a.m. on the 21st they began the bombardment,
which was to prepare the way for the storming party.
The English fire soon began to silence the Chinese guns, and
about an hour after the bombardment began, a shell from the mortar
battery penetrated into one of the magazines of the fort.
It blew up with a deafening explosion, and so dense was the cloud
of smoke that settled down upon the scene of the disaster, so utterly
silent was every Chinese gun in the work, that at first it seemed as if
the fort had ceased to exist; but as the smoke cleared the Chinese
bravely reopened fire.
Down at the mouth of the river, Admiral Hope’s ships were once
more engaging the two outer forts; but this was done merely to keep
their garrisons well occupied, and to prevent them sending help to the
smaller fort. Here, too, fortune helped the British, and one of Hope’s
shells blew up a magazine in the South Fort, doing a fearful amount of
damage to its defenders.
Soon after six o’clock the storming column was ordered to
advance against the small north Fort, the English force being mainly
composed of the 44th and 67th regiments.
In front of the column a party of marines carried a pontoon
bridge for crossing the ditches; but as they approached the walls they
were met with such a heavy fire of musketry that the attempt to bring up
the pontoons was abandoned. Fifteen
of the men carrying them fell under a single volley.
The French had adopted a simpler plan.
They had bamboo ladders, which were carried for them by Chinese
coolies. Heedless of the
fire of their own countrymen, the coolies laid the ladders across the
ditches, and, standing up to their necks in water, supported them while
the Frenchmen scrambled across. “These
poor coolies behaved gallantly,” wrote Sir Hope Grant in his journal,
“and though some of them were shot down, they never flinched in the
least.” The fact is, that
a Chinaman does not seem to know what the fear of death is; and while
these men were exposing their lives for a few pence, their countrymen on
the ramparts were just as recklessly standing up on the very crest of
the wall in order to get a better shot at the stormers.
The English crossed the ditches, partly by swimming and
struggling through the muddy water, partly by the French ladders, partly
over a drawbridge which Major Anson of the Staff very gallantly brought
into use by crossing the ditch almost alone, and cutting through with
his sword the ropes that held it up.
The stormers were now crowded together between the inner ditch
and the rampart. The
Chinese muskets, but they dropped cannon shot, big stones, explosive
grenades, jars of lime, and stifling stinkpots on to their heads.
The scaling ladders were replaced against the rampart, but the
Chinese caught them and pulled them into the fort, or threw them down,
spearing and shooting all who mounted them.
Men and officers tried to scramble in where the bombardment had
broken down the embrasures for the guns.
One brave Frenchman reached the top of the wall, fired his rifle
at the Chinese, and took another, which was handled up to him and fired
it, and then fell speared through the face.
Another, pickaxe in hand tried to break down the top of the wall.
He was shot dead, but as he fell Lieutenant Burslm, of the 67th,
seized his pick and went on with the work.
He and his comrade-Lieutenant Rogers, of the same regiment (now
Major-General Roger, V.C.)-Climbed into a embrasure, only to be thrown
out; but Rogers got in through another, helped up by Lieutenant Lenon,
who made a stepping place for him by driving the point of his sword well
into the mud wall, and holding up the hilt.
Rogers helped up Lenon and the others near at hand, and at the
same time Fauchard, a drummer of the French storming party, got in close
by.
Behind him came the standard bearer of his regiment (the 102nd
of the Line), and as the Chinese gave way there was a race between the
Frenchman and Young Lieutenant Chaplin (now Major-General Chaplin, V.C.),
who carried the colours of the 67th, to see who should first
get a standard fixed on the top of the fort.
Chaplin, though he was wounded in three places, won this gallant
race, and planted the British flag on the high central battery of the
fort.
“The poor Chinese now had a sad time of it,” writes Sir Hope
Grant. “They had fought
desperately, and with great bravery, few of them apparently having
attempted to escape. Indeed,
they could hardly have affected their retreat by the other side of the
fort. The wall was very
high, and the ground below bristled with innumerable sharp bamboo
stakes. Then intervened a
broad ditch, another row of stakes, and finally another ditch.
The only regular exit-the gate-was barred by us.
Numbers were killed, and I saw three poor wretches impaled upon
the stakes, and yet a considerable number succeeded in getting off.
The fort presented a terrible appearance of devastation, and was
filled with the dead and dying. The
explosion of the magazine had ruined of the magazine had ruined a large
portion of the interior. Many
of the guns were dismounted, and the parapets battered to pieces.”
The Chinese lost 400 men out of a garrison of 500.
The English loss was 21 killed and 184 wounded.
The loss would have been heavier if the Chinese had had better
cartridges. Thus, for
instance, Sir Robert Napier (afterwards Lord Napier of Magdala), who led
the advance of the storming column, was hit in five places by bullets,
but none of them had force enough to do ore than inflict a bruise.
The capture of the remaining forts was an easy matter. The smaller South Fort, only 400 yards from the North Fort,
and commanded by its guns, was at once abandoned by the Chinese, and
white flags were hoisted on the two larger forts; but on the great North
Fort being summoned to surrender the garrison sent back a refusal.
The guns of the captured fort of turned on it; other guns were
brought up from the English batteries, and the attack was about to be
begun by a bombardment, when General Collineau, of the French army,
noticing that there was no one on the rampart nearest him, marched
forward rapidly with 600 men, sent a lot of them in through a big
embrasure, opened a gate, and took the fort without firing a shot.
About 2,000 prisoners were taken here, and, to their great
delight, they were simply disarmed and told to go home.
They evidentially expected to be massacred. In the fort some of the guns taken from the ships lost in the
fight of June 25th 1859.
In the afternoon the fort on the south bank was summoned to
surrender, and, after some parleying, Hang-Foo, the officer in command
agreed to hand it over the next day.
Early on the 22nd Sir Robert Napier took possession to
the southern forts, in which he found no less than 600 guns, large and
small.
The same day Admiral Hope’s gunboats steamed up the river, and
cleared away the barriers below which the fierce fight of the year
before he raged so long, and thus the defeat on the Pei-ho was avenged
and the way to Tien-tsin and Pekin was opened.
A few weeks later, the armies of England and France marched in
triumph into the imperial city.
