CHAPTER V.

1817-1848.

THE FIRST WAR WITH CHINA.

The XVIIIth Royal Irish regiment landed at Portsmouth in March, 1817. Since 1783, the Royal Irish had only served three years in the United Kingdom, and they looked forward to a long tour of duty at home, but the fates were against them. Almost as soon as Napoleon surrendered himself to the captain of the _Bellerophon_ the economists in the House of Commons began to demand retrenchment in the army, and with such success that in 1821 only 101,000 men, exclusive of the troops in the East India Company’s service, were left to protect the whole of the British possessions throughout the world. The garrison of the United Kingdom absorbed about half the army, the remainder being stationed in India and the colonies, where, it is said, Wellington hid them to be out of sight of the anti-military politicians. Among the regiments ordered abroad was the XVIIIth, which in February, 1821, left Cork for the Mediterranean; it spent three years at Malta and eight in the Ionian Isles,[120] and in March, 1832, returned to England.

In the autumn of 1832, the Royal Irish were quartered in detachments in various towns in Lancashire and Yorkshire; during the general election at the end of the year several companies were called upon to help the civil power in quelling serious riots at Sheffield, Bolton, and Preston, where officers and men won high praise for the combination of forbearance and determination which they showed in dealing with excited mobs. Towards the end of 1833 the regiment was concentrated at Manchester, whence on May 8, 1834, to quote the words in which the Digest of Service records the first train journey of the XVIIIth, it “proceeded by railway conveyance” to Liverpool to embark for Dublin. In September the regiment moved to Cork; a few months later it was at Birr, and early in 1836, while at Athlone, it was warned for foreign service in Ceylon. Throughout their tour of duty in the United Kingdom the Royal Irish received warm commendation from all the generals under whom they had served, and these favourable opinions were fully endorsed in a letter from the Adjutant-General, who on December 20, 1834, wrote that “the report of the XVIIIth Royal Irish regiment is considered most satisfactory. The excellent state of its discipline is highly creditable to Colonel Burrell, and Lord Hill cannot be but more disposed to attachment (_sic_) to that officer’s exertions when he finds that discipline has been so effectually maintained without having had recourse to corporal punishment for a period exceeding two years.”

Two companies under Major Pratt sailed from Cork in the transport _Numa_ on November 15, 1836, and arrived at Colombo towards the end of April, 1837. The remainder of the corps, under Colonel Burrell, embarked in the transport _Barossa_, touched at Teneriffe and Rio de Janeiro, and reached its destination at the end of May. After serving for some time at Colombo, where new colours were presented by Lieutenant-General Sir John Wilson, K.C.B., the headquarters and a wing of the regiment were stationed at Trincomalee, where in 1840 welcome news reached them. Trouble had arisen with China, and the regiment was to form part of an expedition against the Celestial Empire. The causes of our quarrel with the Emperor of China, very shortly stated, were that the Chinese had not kept to the treaties of commerce which they had entered into with England; they had attacked and robbed British merchants, fired upon English ships, and grossly insulted the representative of the Queen. The Mandarins, or high officials of Canton, were the chief offenders; to punish them a naval blockade of that port was established; ships of war were ordered up from the Indian station, and a small body of troops was collected to co-operate with the Navy in bringing the Chinese to their senses. The six companies of the Royal Irish in Ceylon sailed eastwards in May and June, 1840, and the three depôt companies, recently landed at Bombay from England, joined headquarters soon after the regiment arrived in China, raising it to a total strength of 667 of all ranks.[121] The other British regiments were the 26th and the 49th; the Native army of India contributed detachments of Madras Artillery and Sappers and Miners, a corps known as the Bengal Volunteers, and the 37th regiment of Madras Native Infantry, while the Navy was represented by three line-of-battle ships, two frigates, fourteen smaller men-of-war, four armed steamers, and twenty-seven transports. With this small force England was about to go to war with a country of three hundred and sixty millions of inhabitants, whose seaport towns were defended by forts bristling with ordnance varying in calibre from 68-pr. to 18-pr. guns, and whose army immeasurably exceeded in number the British fighting men. Fortunately for us the Chinese artillerymen, though not wanting in courage, were ill-trained; their forts, though massive, were badly planned; and the infantry, though they often fought well and showed much courage as individuals, were poorly disciplined, badly armed, and as a rule very badly commanded. Though the government of Pekin had spent much money in making cannon on European models, they had neglected to reproduce the muskets with which the troops of the white races were equipped. Thus the Chinese foot soldiers did not possess the equivalent of our flint-lock smooth-bore muskets; their firearms were matchlocks and gingals or portable wall pieces, worked on tripods by a crew of three men, and throwing two-ounce balls. Their other weapons varied; the Tartars, the picked troops of the Empire, used the bow; other corps had spears and swords, while others again carried battle-axes and very unpleasant cutting instruments like bill-hooks, fastened to the end of long poles.

The policy and general conduct of our expedition was entrusted to two Plenipotentiaries. One of these officials soon broke down in health and disappeared from the scene; the other, who was credited with some knowledge of the Chinese character, proved to be amiable and well-intentioned, but vacillating, credulous, and incompetent to meet the wiles of Eastern diplomacy. His gullibility and want of backbone cruelly hampered the movements of the sailors and soldiers until, many months after the beginning of the war, he was replaced by Sir Henry Pottinger, an Indian officer of large experience in dealing with Oriental races.

After assembling at Singapore, the point fixed for the general rendezvous, the fleet sailed for China, and, contrary to the universal expectation, did not stop at the mouth of the Canton river, but followed the coast upwards to the island of Chusan.[122] From its position near the mouth of the Yang-Tse-Kiang river this island was of great strategic importance, and was required as a base of operations. Tinghae, its principal town, was weakly held, but when the Mandarins were summoned to surrender they replied that, though they had no hope of making a successful resistance, they were in honour bound to defend their post. After a short bombardment by the men-of-war on July 5, 1840, the troops were landed, the XVIIIth leading the attack, and the place fell into our hands. Our casualties were very few; the Chinese, on the contrary, lost very heavily, but the climate quickly avenged them. For several months the troops were kept inactive in Chusan, which proved to be a hot-bed of disease. In the hope of conciliating the inhabitants the soldiers at first were ordered to live under canvas, though there were hundreds of houses in which they could have been quartered. The camping grounds were selected without reference to the doctors, who protested in vain when they saw the “tents pitched on low paddy-fields, surrounded by stagnant water, putrid and stinking from quantities of dead animal and vegetable matter. Under a sun hotter than was ever experienced in India,” wrote a Madras army surgeon, “the men on duty were buckled up to the throat in their full-dress coatees, and in consequence of there being so few camp followers, fatigue-parties of Europeans were daily detailed to carry provisions and stores from the ships to the tents, and to perform all menial employments, which experience has long taught us they cannot stand in a tropical climate.”[123] The troops were fed on rations not only unsuited to the climate but of bad quality; much of the biscuit was bad, and the meat salted in India proved uneatable. Small wonder that in such circumstances intermittent fever, diarrhœa, and dysentery raged among all ranks; and though after a time the troops were moved into the houses of the natives, disease had taken such hold upon all ranks that in November there were not more than five hundred effectives at Chusan. The Royal Irish fared better than the other regiments, as the ships from which they drew most of their supplies were laden with stores prepared not in India, but in England; but still they suffered severely--two officers, Major R. Hammill and Lieutenant H. F. Vavasour, and about fifty of the other ranks died between July 5th and the end of the year.[124] Yet these losses were insignificant compared to those of the 26th, which from nine hundred was reduced to a strength, all told, of two hundred and ninety-one.

In January, 1841, there were combined naval and military operations against the forts at the mouth of the Canton river, in which the Royal Irish took no part as they had been left to garrison Chusan; a few of the regiment, however, were present, probably invalids serving on board ship for change of air. After several batteries had been dismantled and many heavy guns spiked or otherwise disabled, the Mandarins made a treaty with the Plenipotentiary, by which they agreed to cede to us the island of Hong Kong, to pay a considerable indemnity, and to allow trade to be reopened at Canton, while on our side we undertook to restore Chusan to the Chinese. No time was lost in occupying Hong Kong, of which formal possession was taken on February 26, 1841, two days after the Royal Irish arrived there. Colonel Burrell, XVIIIth, had been the senior military officer throughout the occupation of Chusan, and very thankful must he have been when, after seeing the last of the garrison safely on board ship, he turned his back on the island which proved fatal to such numbers of his men.[125] Very soon after the expedition had been concentrated at Hong Kong it became evident that the treaty was not worth the paper it was written upon. Far from being anxious for peace, the Chinese had only sought to gain time to prepare for war. An army of labourers was strengthening the defences of Canton; an army of soldiers was being collected in the interior of China to man them; large rewards were offered for the capture of British ships and British fighting men; for a battleship a hundred thousand dollars were promised; the Admiral and the Plenipotentiary were worth fifty thousand dollars each; the other officers were rated on a descending scale, while the price of a Madras Sepoy was only fifty dollars. On the 24th of February the fleet bombarded the celebrated Bogue forts in the Canton river; five hundred guns were taken, and everyone hoped that the ships would now be allowed to push up the river and capture Canton, when all movements were temporarily arrested by the announcement that the Plenipotentiary had entered into a truce. As, however, the Chinese did not fulfil its terms, the men-of-war engaged, silenced and destroyed such of the batteries as they had not yet attacked; made their way up the reaches of the river, and anchored close to Canton. The city lay almost defenceless under their guns, when the Plenipotentiary agreed to a suspension of hostilities on condition that the port should be reopened to British trade. This arrangement suited the Chinese admirably: the civil population would be enriched by the money paid by the merchants for the tea crop, then ready for delivery; while the military Mandarins gained time to cast new ordnance, to rebuild their ruined forts, and to reinforce the garrison before again defying the “Barbarians.”[126] The troops were ordered back to the harbour of Hong Kong, where Major-General Sir Hugh Gough, who had recently arrived from Madras to take command of the land forces, reorganised his little army, and attempted, though with small success, to infuse his own spirit of determination into the weak-kneed Plenipotentiary, whom Gough in a private letter described as “whimsical as a shuttle-cock.”

It was not long before the position of affairs at Canton once more became most serious. The gun factories had been working night and day; the forts had been repaired and re-armed; large numbers of soldiers had arrived; and in May the extermination was decreed of the European merchants, who on the faith of the truce had now returned to their counting-houses. This roused the Plenipotentiary into temporary activity; he arranged with Gough and the senior naval officer for a combined assault on Canton, and warned all Europeans to leave the place forthwith. By the evening of the 23rd of May the navy, after hard work in bombarding the river forts by day and warding off the approach of fire-rafts by night, had prepared the way for the execution of Sir Hugh Gough’s plan for the capture of Canton. This city of a million inhabitants was surrounded by walls of great thickness, and from twenty-five to twenty-eight feet in height; its ramparts, bristling with guns, were manned by forty-five thousand regular soldiers and an equal number of militia. To the west, south, and east of the town were large and prosperous suburbs, but on the north this expansion had been checked by a range of heights which, running parallel with the northern wall, completely dominated Canton and its defences. The Chinese had realised that if these heights passed into the hands of the British the town would become untenable: not only had they defended them with four strong forts, armed with forty-two heavy guns, but they had formed a large entrenched camp outside the north-eastern corner of the city, in order further to secure the safety of the heights which they rightly anticipated would be the point of our attack. Such was the position against which Gough, with less than 2800 soldiers, sailors, and marines, was about to try his strength. He divided his little force into two columns of very unequal size.[127] The right, or smaller detachment, was to force its way through the western suburb as far as the European settlement, or, as it was locally termed, “the factories”; occupy it, and place it in a state of defence. General Gough took personal command of the left or larger column, which consisted of four so-called brigades, the largest of which had in the ranks less than 900 officers and men. When the left column had been transhipped into all kinds of craft, from smart men-of-war’s gigs to lumbering native tea junks, it was towed in a motley procession of about eighty boats for five miles up a creek of the river to Tingpoo, a village about three miles and a half from the western base of the northern heights. Here the fourth brigade landed without opposition, just as the guns of the fleet were thundering out a royal salute in honour of the birthday of Queen Victoria. With the 49th regiment Sir Hugh Gough made a rapid reconnaissance inland, and then, leaving outposts behind him, returned to superintend the disembarkation of the main body.

Daylight on the 25th saw the whole column in motion, slowly threading its way, often in single file, over the densely cultivated rice-fields which lay between Tingpoo and their objective. The XVIIIth was ordered to leave an officer and thirty men at the landing-place to keep open the communications and to protect stores; the duty fell to Lieutenant W. P. Cockburn, who distinguished himself by the skill he displayed a few hours later in beating off an attack by a considerable body of the enemy. Until the infantry were within range of the western pair of forts the Chinese remained silent; then a heavy fire from their guns forced Gough to halt until his artillery could be brought into action. By eight A.M. the gunners had succeeded in dragging two 5½-in. mortars, two 12-pr. howitzers, two 12-pr. field-pieces, and a rocket battery to within 600 yards of the two western forts. These they bombarded vigorously, while the General reconnoitred and issued his orders for the assault: the Naval brigade was to storm the western forts, while the 1st and 4th brigades were to drive the Chinese from the hills close to the eastern forts. Under cover of our guns the troops advanced, exposed to a heavy but fortunately ill-directed fire: with great dash the sailors wrested the western forts from the enemy, who fought with stubbornness though without skill; the infantry swept over the heights with such vigour that the Chinese deserted the eastern forts before the troops had time to close upon them; and the Marines, who had been detached from Burrell to cope with a demonstration against our right flank and rear, disposed of their antagonists with little trouble. In the charge of the XVIIIth upon the forts the grenadier company led in extended order, accompanied by the General, who in his despatch reported that it had seldom fallen to his lot to “witness a more soldier-like and steady advance, or a more animated attack. Every individual steadily and gallantly did his duty. The XVIIIth and 49th were emulous which should first reach the appointed goals; but under the impulse of this feeling they did not lose sight of that discipline which could alone ensure success.”

Though the ridge had been won with such ease, the day’s work was by no means over. As soon as the Chinese realised that the forts were lost, they opened from the city walls so heavy a fire of guns, gingals, and matchlocks that it became necessary to keep the British troops well under cover, and part of the garrison of the entrenched camp advanced into a village, threatening our left flank. The 49th dislodged them, but later in the day there was such animation in the camp that Gough ordered Burrell to storm it with the Royal Irish, under Lieutenant-Colonel H. Adams, and a company of Marines. Between the foot of the heights held by the British and the enemy’s entrenchments stretched a great expanse of rice-fields deep in water; a narrow causeway bridged this inundation, and along it, under a galling fire, the XVIIIth advanced at the double, scattered the enemy in every direction, set fire to the tents, and blew up the magazines. This success was not a bloodless one--three officers were wounded, and there were some casualties in the other ranks. The assault was led by Captain Grattan, whose “spirited conduct” on this occasion led Gough to select him to carry despatches to the Governor-General of India.[128] With the capture of the village the operations ended, for though Gough was burning to assault the northern wall of the town, his heavy guns were not yet in position, and his infantry, out of training from their long detention on board ship, were completely exhausted by the abnormal heat of the day. To this exhaustion the unsuitable dress of the soldiers doubtless contributed not a little. Notwithstanding the protests of the doctors the men still wore tightly buttoned red coatees or shell jackets, stocks, and blue Nankin trousers; and their headgear was a huge shako or a small forage cap, both useless in an almost tropical climate.

Gough’s little force bivouacked on the heights they had won, elated at their own success and at that of the right column, which had made good its position in “the factories.” Early on the 26th, before our artillery was ready to open fire, the Chinese sent a messenger to say that they desired peace; Gough replied that before entering into any negotiations he must see the Chinese General, and in waiting for this elusive personage, who never appeared, several hours were wasted; then torrents of rain rendered any movements impossible, and Gough had to content himself with completing his preparations for the storming of the city wall on the 27th. But in his plans he had not reckoned with the Plenipotentiary, who, without consulting the officers commanding the naval and military forces, agreed with the Chinese to accept an indemnity of six millions of dollars, to be paid within six days, when the whole expedition was to retire from the Canton river. Remonstrances were useless, for the Plenipotentiary was supreme, and after several anxious days spent in skirmishing with the local irregular troops, the soldiers re-embarked and the fleet once more returned to Hong Kong, leaving the Chinese more firmly convinced than ever that the English were as easy to hoodwink in diplomacy as they were difficult to fight in battle. These operations cost fourteen killed and ninety-one wounded. The casualties in the Royal Irish were Captain J. J. Sargent, Lieutenants D. Edwardes and G. Hilliard wounded, and five men killed or wounded.[129]

Owing to a combination of adverse circumstances nothing was accomplished by sea or land for some months. The Plenipotentiary, ever engaged in futile negotiations with the Chinese, could not bring himself to accept the active policy pressed upon him by Sir Hugh Gough, who pointed out that the Emperor of China would never respect us until the expedition had forced a passage up the great waterway of the Yang-Tse-Kiang, and struck a vigorous blow at the heart of the Celestial Empire. A great typhoon drove many ships ashore, dismasted others, and blew down part of the settlement at Hong Kong. Malarial fever, caught in the rice grounds around Canton, became so prevalent that at one time two-thirds of the troops were unfit for duty. The Royal Irish did not suffer more than other corps, yet on August 1, six weeks after a draft had raised their strength to 747 all told, 136 of the regiment were in hospital, and three officers died.[130] With the arrival of Sir Henry Pottinger, the new Plenipotentiary, the aspect of affairs changed; and on the 21st of August the regiment formed part of the column embarked for the attack of Amoy--a seaport three hundred miles up the coast towards the mouth of the Yang-Tse-Kiang. The position of Amoy is naturally strong, and since the beginning of the war it had been so greatly fortified that, after it was taken, soldiers and sailors agreed that it would have proved impregnable had it been defended by Europeans. Amoy stands at the head of a bay studded with islands, the most considerable of which, Kulangsu, commands both the city and the strait or channel, only six hundred yards in width, by which the inner harbour is entered. From every island and from every headland guns frowned upon the bay, and, to quote Gough’s biographer--

“immediately in front of the outer town stood a succession of batteries, and from these there extended a solid rampart, facing the sea, about a mile in length. It was, says an eye-witness, ‘well built of granite, faced with earth, extending along the shore nearly up to the suburbs of the city, and designed to command the passage to the harbour. It presented a line of guns, a full mile in length, the embrasures being covered with large slabs of stone protected by earth heaped upon them, and mounting no less than ninety-six guns.’ The end of this rampart was connected by a castellated wall with a range of rocky heights running parallel to the beach and the rampart, which was thus protected from a flanking attack.... On the island of Kulangsu there were several strong batteries, mounting altogether seventy-six guns, and some of these faced the long stone rampart on the opposite side of the strait, thus exposing the assailants to a cross-fire.”[131]

The naval and military commanders decided that the works of Amoy and Kulangsu should be attacked at the same time; the ships were to bombard them in front, while the troops took them in reverse. The morning of the 26th of August saw the plan carried into effect: the batteries at Kulangsu fell easily into our hands: those at Amoy were so strongly built that though two line-of-battle ships poured many thousands of projectiles into them at 400 yards’ range, the masonry was practically uninjured. The cannonade, however, served its purpose in preventing the Chinese gunners from sinking the boats in which the XVIIIth and 49th were carried to their appointed landing-place at the foot of the castellated wall. While the Royal Irish, scaling this wall, turned the flank of the works on the sea front, the 49th rushed along the shore and scrambled over the parapet of the great battery; both regiments swept the work from end to end, driving the Chinese before them, and then joined the Marines, who had occupied the heights. Here they commanded the “outer city”; but the “inner city” was protected by a range of hills occupied by a large number of the enemy. Gough ordered the 49th to turn these hills, and sent the XVIIIth straight at the Chinese, up a steep gorge where a few men could have checked a regiment. The Chinese, however, made a very poor resistance; the troops bivouacked on the heights, and next morning occupied the citadel and “inner city” of Amoy. The total British loss was seventeen killed and wounded; among the latter were two men of the Royal Irish. The Chinese suffered severely, and several of their leaders committed suicide rather than accept defeat.

The adventures of the XVIIIth on this occasion are amusingly described by Lieutenant A. Murray, the officer in command of the picked shots of the regiment, who throughout the campaign worked together under his orders--

“We got into boats about 12 o’clock, and were taken in tow by the steamer _Nemesis_,[132] and as we had to go to the different ships to collect the men, we were towed about the harbour for a long time, at the imminent risk of being capsized, as the string of boats increased every minute, and consequently threading our way through the fleet became more dangerous. I cut one boat adrift to prevent her sinking us, as she was twice our size and was pounding us to pieces, the Colours of the regiment being in the boat with me.... The steamer stood pretty closely into the shore, and the boats cast off, the _Nemesis_ covering our landing with her guns and rockets. Our Grenadier and Light companies, and marksmen, under the command of Major Tomlinson, were ordered to move to the front to take the flanking wall of the battery, which was done very easily, and they (_i.e._, the Chinese) only fired a few shots and a volley of rockets. We got over the wall by stepping on each others’ backs. On seeing us come over the wall the Chinese, who till then had stood to their guns, ... now ran in all directions, throwing their large shields over their backs.”

After capturing a Mandarin’s flag Murray followed the grenadier and light companies along the rear of the batteries, where a number of the enemy came at them boldly; the Chinese were soon dispersed, however, and fell back to a clump of aloe bushes, from which they were driven by a second charge. Of the bivouac Murray writes--

“It was almost night when we reached the summit of the heights and there were ordered to halt for the night. This was rather a pleasant look-out for tired and hungry men, without anything to eat or a house to sleep in, with a bitter cold wind blowing; however there was nothing for it but to choose the softest possible rock, light a cheroot and fancy yourself comfortable for the night.... There was great picking and choosing among us for soft rocks; but I believe we all came to the conclusion that one rock is as hard a pillow as another.”[133]

After destroying the batteries and securing the five hundred guns captured at Amoy, the expeditionary force put to sea, leaving as garrison of Kulangsu 361 officers and men of the XVIIIth under Major J. Cowper, part of the 26th, and a detachment of artillery--a total of 550 of all ranks. The intention was to attack the towns of Chinhai and Ningpo, and then, in order to efface the bad impression produced by our evacuation of Chusan at the beginning of the year, to re-occupy that island. Bad weather, however, scattered the ships, and, when at length they were reassembled it was decided at once to seize Tinghae, the capital of Chusan, before the Chinese had finished their preparations for its defence. Since we had abandoned it our enemy had fortified the town assiduously. On the sea wall facing the harbour a battery of eighty guns had been thrown up. On the west it ended at the base of an eminence, in our previous occupation known as Pagoda Hill, where cannon were now mounted; to the eastward it stretched almost to the foot of a line of heights, entrenched but not yet armed. Gough decided to land at the foot of these heights, and after carrying them to push some of the troops against the town, while others attacked the long battery from flank and rear. The ships were to avoid the fire of the guns on the sea front by taking up their stations on the outer flanks of Pagoda Hill and the eastern heights. The fleet came into action on October 1, 1841, and covered by their bombardment three hundred of the Royal Irish under Lieutenant-Colonel Adams, the newly arrived 55th regiment, and eight guns of the Madras Artillery disembarked under a heavy though ill-aimed fire of matchlocks and gingals. The 55th won the eastern heights, though not without difficulty, for the garrison of Tinghae were soldiers of a better stamp than the defenders of Amoy. The Royal Irish were sent off to the right, marching in quarter column and covered by the flank companies and picked marksmen, who ran into the enemy at an encampment near the long battery. Here the Chinese showed fight, and lost considerably in hand-to-hand work. Murray relates that a “white-buttoned” Mandarin,[134] after wounding one of the marksmen in the chest with a spear, “closed with him and got his forage cap off, another man came up and thrust at him with a bayonet, which he wrenched off, but was shot by a third.” While the sharpshooters were thus employed the grenadier company had made its way into the long battery, where there was a sharp skirmish at close quarters round a gun. The Chinese stood bravely, and were not dislodged until another company of the regiment came up at the double, when they fell back, leaving the ground covered with their own wounded and a few of the XVIIIth. In this little fight pistols were used with effect. A Chinaman ran at Murray, sword in hand, but as the hero of the adventure writes, “having no particular confidence in my regulation spit, or perhaps in my own skill as a swordsman, I stuck my sword in the mud beside me, took a steady aim, and shot him.” As soon as the Royal Irish had cleared the long battery of the enemy they climbed Pagoda Hill, to find that its garrison had been driven away by the shot and shell of the men-of-war and the artillery. As the Colours of the XVIIIth were raised on the top of the hill, those of the 55th began to float over the walls of Tinghae, and the capital of Chusan once more passed into our hands at the cost of some thirty killed and wounded. In the XVIIIth the casualties were a sergeant and six rank and file wounded. The loss of Chusan greatly annoyed the Chinese, who complained that we had not fought them fairly. Instead of anchoring our ships right under the cannon of the long battery and making a frontal attack by sea and land, as they expected, we had meanly bombarded the extreme ends of their line of defence, landed where their guns could not play upon us, and taken the battery in flank. Had cricket been one of the national institutions of China, the beaten troops would doubtless have said that we had not played the game!

Leaving an adequate garrison in Chusan General Gough next attacked Chinhai, a seaport at the mouth of the Ningpo river, twelve miles from the important city of Ningpo. Its fortifications, though strong, were easily turned on the 10th of October, when the place was taken with a total loss of four killed and sixteen wounded. One man in the Royal Irish was killed[135] and four wounded. The Chinese suffered very heavily, for here, as elsewhere in the campaign, their arms were as indifferent as their shooting, and after standing well for a time they broke before a charge, and were then mowed down in every direction. The slaughter of the fugitives was a hideous necessity: we were but a handful in an enormous country, and our enemies were so numerous that we should have been overwhelmed by numbers had we not inflicted severe punishment upon them in every engagement. To the bad marksmanship of the Chinese must be attributed the XVIIIth’s good luck on this occasion. As the Royal Irish approached the range of strongly held hills which they were to seize, they found themselves on the bank of an unfordable canal, well under the enemy’s fire. This canal was spanned by a bridge, narrow in itself, and made still narrower by an arch across it; the archway was blocked by a large stone, and even after this obstruction had been removed the passage was so small that the men had to take off their great-coats in order to squeeze through it one by one. “We had one or two very stout fellows,” wrote one of the officers present, “whom we had great difficulty in pushing through, but when we came to the big drum we _were_ in a fix. However, we got a little boat, and put McGiff, the big drummer, and his drum into it, with a pole to shove himself across. The Chinese thought the big drum was some new form of infernal machine, and opened a tremendous fire upon it, much to our amusement, but it was anything but fun for McGiff. He and the drum, however, got over safe and sound, except the drum heads, which were much damaged by bullets.”

Three days later Ningpo fell without a shot being fired, and the little army was played into the town by the band of the XVIIIth. Here Gough was obliged to halt: much as he desired to push on to the banks of the Yang-Tse-Kiang he could not do so without troops, and sickness, casualties, and the drain of the garrisons of Hong Kong, Kulangsu, Tinghae, and Chinhai had left him with only about seven hundred and fifty men in hand. With so slender a force he could do nothing but await reinforcements; and for several months the headquarters of the XVIIIth and 49th remained at Ningpo, occasionally employed in demonstrations to postpone the attack which, as he rightly anticipated, could not be long delayed. Beyond these demonstrations there was little to break the monotony of existence in this Chinese city. The duty was heavy. Nearly five miles of continuous wall, twenty-seven feet high, twenty feet broad, and broken only by six gates, surrounded the town: each of these entrances required a strong guard; the town was patrolled several times during the twenty-four hours; and the field officer and captain of the day, mounted on sure-footed Chinese ponies, rode frequently round the ramparts to visit ground which could not be watched by the sentries on the gates. Once a week the Colours were trooped in the presence of the General, who insisted on the attendance of all officers not otherwise employed. When troops were available there was drill in a large square, to the great delight of a number of little native boys who had attached themselves to the Royal Irish. These children hung about the temple, which had been converted into a barrack, and did odd jobs for the men, helping them to cook and to carry dinners to the guards. In return for these kind offices the soldiers made pets of the boys, and taught them military expressions with such assiduity that in a short time “almost all the young blackguards about the place could swear in very good English.” These youngsters proved their friendship with the XVIIIth by confirming the rumours, already current, that during the absence of Sir Hugh Gough, who had been summoned to a conference at Chusan with Sir Henry Pottinger, a great army was about to attack Ningpo; and after warning their soldier friends that next day there was going to be a great fight, they disappeared. This warning was repeated by the traders in the market, who drew their hands across their throats to give their British customers to understand that all the “Barbarians” would soon be killed. In the night of March 9-10, 1842, large bodies of the enemy simultaneously assaulted the south and west gates. The attack on the former was successful; the Chinese forced it open, routed the guard, and were making their way into the centre of the town when they were met by part of the 49th, who drove them through the gate and back into the suburbs with heavy loss. The west gate was held by Lieutenant A. W. S. F. Armstrong and twenty-eight men of the XVIIIth, carefully picked among the best soldiers of the regiment by the adjutant, Lieutenant Graves, who, like every one of the garrison at Ningpo except the officer in temporary command, had realised that there was trouble in the air. Five minutes after the bugles had sounded the alarm the Royal Irish were on parade, and two companies went off at the double to reinforce Armstrong’s guard, who, owing to the construction of the parapet, were unable to fire down upon the Tartars as they strove to lever the gate off its hinges with crowbars and axes. Suddenly among the defenders appeared a private, Michael Cushin, described as a first-class soldier with only one failing, who seems to have been the hero of the defence. He had been imprisoned for drunkenness at the west gate, and when the attack began, begged to be released. As soon as his cell was opened, he wrenched the bar off the door and began to use it on the Tartars’ heads: next he killed the officer commanding a party of the enemy on the point of clambering over the parapet: then his quick wits solved the problem of the ill-planned rampart. Collecting ten or twelve men, they put their shoulders to the part of it which overhung the gate, and with a few great heaves topped the mass of masonry into the crowd below.[136] Through the gap thus made the guard began to ply their muskets, and when the supports arrived with a light gun, a murderous fire was opened upon the Tartars, who sullenly abandoned the assault and retired, leaving two silk banners as trophies in the hands of the XVIIIth. After the south gate had been re-occupied a handful of British soldiers, among whom were some of the Royal Irish, pushed their way through the town, and near one of the gates found a great number of the enemy drawn up across the street. The infantry reserved their volley until twenty yards from the Tartars, the guns fired canister at fifty yards’ range, and a party of the regiment, under Lieutenant Murray, after breaking through a house and fording a canal, occupied the side streets of the thoroughfare down which the enemy was driven, and by their musketry contributed much to his great losses. For six miles the Tartars were hunted, first through the suburb and then in the open country, but there was no fight left in them, and the civilian inhabitants who crowded the streets and roads gave them no help, and appeared to regard the fighting as a spectacle arranged for their own amusement. The attitude of most of the Chinese throughout the campaign, indeed, was one of complete apathy: they looked upon the war as an annoying but unavoidable interruption to their daily life, and finding that their conquerors treated them well, acquiesced in their presence, and made as much money out of them as possible.

The enemy attacked Chinhai about the same time that he attempted to wrest Ningpo from us, but was beaten off with ease by the garrison, largely composed of a detachment of the Royal Irish under Brevet-Major Grattan. A few days after these exciting little episodes, the XVIIIth was present at successful raids against the town of Tze-Ke and other places near Ningpo; but as those of the Royal Irish who were in the column hardly came into action it is unnecessary to describe these skirmishes. About this time Colonel Adams, being invalided home, was succeeded in command by Lieutenant-Colonel N. R. Tomlinson; and in the month of April three companies of the detachment at Kulangsu rejoined headquarters.

It has already been mentioned that ever since Sir Hugh Gough’s arrival he had pointed out that the war would never be brought to a satisfactory conclusion until, abandoning the policy of attacking only the towns on the sea-coast, we pushed our way into the heart of the country, and threatened the Emperor in his palace at Pekin. After much correspondence between the Ministry at home and the Governor-General of India at Calcutta, Gough’s strategy was adopted, and in May, 1842, the XVIIIth was afloat again, this time bound for Chapoo, where a naval arsenal was to be destroyed before the fleet entered the river Yang-Tse-Kiang. The place was strongly fortified, but, as usual, the enemy proved unprepared for anything but a frontal attack, and as soon as his works were turned on the 18th of May he was easily routed, except at one point, where the stubborn valour of the Tartar soldiery cost the regiment dear. Finding their retreat cut off, three hundred of these men flung themselves into a large stone house, and determined to take no quarter but to fight to the bitter end. The building was quickly and skilfully prepared for defence. The outer windows were manned by picked shots; the interior passages and the central hall were loopholed; mats were hung to exclude the light, so that if the British succeeded in making their way across the threshold they would plunge into semi-darkness, and not see the loopholes from which they would be shot down by a cross fire. A party of the Royal Irish tried to force their way into this death-trap, but were so warmly received that Lieutenant Murray, who was in command, drew off his men to wait for reinforcements; and after a similar attempt by some of the 49th had been repulsed, the house was surrounded by skirmishers to prevent the escape of any of the enemy. Before long, more companies of the XVIIIth and 49th came on the scene, and the officer in command of the latter corps, who was the senior officer present, decided not to press the attack until the Tartars had been shaken by artillery. The decision was a wise one, but unfortunately Lieutenant-Colonel Tomlinson overheard some expressions which he considered a reflection either upon his regiment or himself, and instantly led a headlong charge towards the entrance of the house. At the door he fell, so desperately injured that in five minutes he had ceased to breathe, while every man who tried to enter with him was killed or wounded. After he was shot down it became almost impossible to prevent the XVIIIth from rushing madly at the building, for the men burned to avenge their Colonel, whom they described as “the best officer who ever said ‘Come on’ to a grenadier company.” In more formal language General Gough recorded the same opinion, saying in his despatch that Tomlinson fell “in full career of renown, honoured by the corps, and lamented by all.”

When a few artillerymen came up with a light gun and some rockets they opened on the house, but without result; equally fruitless were the efforts of a party of sailors to set fire to the woodwork of the upper storeys; then the explosion of a powder-bag made a small breach in a wall through which a few of the Royal Irish tried to force their way, only to be driven back with loss. A second attempt to set fire to the woodwork, however, was more successful, and the explosion of another powder-bag brought down more of the wall, and thus exposed many of the Tartars to our musketry. Soon the whole place was in a blaze, and when at last our men rushed through the doorway from which they had been so often repulsed, they found themselves in a hell on Earth. Three hundred Tartars had defended the building; now all but fifty-three lay dead upon the floor; and of the survivors nearly all were wounded. Many of their wadded cotton uniforms had taken fire, and to the horrors of the reek of blood and the stench of singeing flesh were added the cries of the wounded, as they feebly strove to beat out the sparks which fell from the roof upon their clothing. In the midst of this scene of carnage sat an old Tartar colonel, who, when the red-coats began to show through the smoke, laid down his pipe, snatched up his sword, and cut his throat. This stout old warrior failed to kill himself, and with the rest of the wounded was tended by our doctors, and then released--a chivalrous recognition of their bravery which greatly astonished the prisoners and convinced them that the “foreign devils” were not as black as the Mandarins had painted them. The discovery, unfortunately, came too late to prevent an epidemic of suicide among the population of Chapoo. When our men entered the town it was full of dead: “men, women, and children were found drowned or hanged; whole families seemed to have destroyed themselves, and some, from the positions they were in, must have had difficulty and most desperate resolution to effect their purpose. The wells and every place where they could find water enough were full of bodies.”[137]

The Chinese are believed to have fought Gough’s little army of 2200 men[138] at Chapoo with 8000 regular troops, 1700 of whom were Tartars. Their losses were, as usual, enormous--from 1200 to 1500--while those of the British were two officers and eleven other ranks killed, six officers and forty-six other ranks wounded. The casualties among the XVIIIth were heavy: Colonel Tomlinson, a sergeant, and three privates were killed;[139] Lieutenants A. Murray and E. Jodrell, a sergeant, a drummer, and twenty-seven rank and file were wounded. One of the pay-sergeants had a very narrow escape: he was in the habit of carrying the company roll in his forage cap, and when at nightfall he wanted to make entries in it he found it cut to pieces by bullets.

As soon as the arsenal, guns, and other munitions of war at Chapoo were destroyed, the expedition made sail for the Yang-Tse-Kiang, where we bombarded Woosung, a town at the mouth of the river of the same name. Though small, the place was heavily fortified, for the Chinese trusted to its guns for the protection of the lower reaches of the river. In the capture of Woosung the army played no part, for the troopships were aground on mud-banks when the sailors and marines, after knocking the batteries to pieces, landed to take possession of the town. Two days later, on the 19th of June, the Royal Irish formed part of a column which marched fourteen miles inland to Shanghai, destroyed the warlike stores at this great centre of trade, and then returned to Woosung, to find that during their short absence some batteries of Royal Artillery, the 98th, and several Madras regiments had joined the force, and that Major J. Cowper had come up from Kulangsu to take command of the XVIIIth, bringing with him the company which had been left to garrison Chinhai. The fleet remained storm-bound at Woosung until the 7th of July: then the weather moderated, and the Admiral, Sir William Parker, ordered his seventy vessels--men-of-war, transports, and store ships--to weigh anchor for Nankin, now the object of our operations. This enormous city was the commercial capital of China, and the centre of a great network of canals connecting Pekin with the Yang-Tse-Kiang and the southern provinces of the Empire. Once masters of Nankin, we could stop all inland traffic on the canals, and by paralysing the commerce of the country bring irresistible pressure on the Emperor, six hundred miles away in his Court at Pekin. The task before the Navy was a heavy one. In peace time the mere passage of so large a number of ships over a hundred and seventy miles of an almost unknown river would have presented difficulties. Now these difficulties were increased by the necessity of guarding against attack, and by the knowledge that before the guns of the fleet could be trained upon the walls of Nankin we would have to fight the garrison of at least one large town on the banks of the river. The steamers scouted upstream, sounding and surveying as they went: the sailing ships followed in a stately procession many miles in length, watched by crowds of peasants who gazed in wonder at the “war junks” of the Barbarians. On the 20th of July, the rearmost of the fleet reached Chinkiangfu, a walled city fifty miles below Nankin; and next day Gough landed his troops, now numbering 6664 men. The first brigade (Major-General Lord Saltoun) was to clear the enemy from a camp south-west of the town; with the second, Major-General Schoedde was to attack the northern wall of the town; to Bartley’s brigade (the third) was entrusted the storming of the western wall. The first brigade did its work easily; the second had hard fighting before its bayonets glittered on the northern wall; the third brigade, and especially the XVIIIth regiment, had exciting adventures in carrying out the duty assigned to them.

The Royal Irish were the last troops to disembark. They did not land till seven A.M., when the heat was already so oppressive that the Adjutant, Lieutenant Graves, persuaded Major Cowper to leave the men’s great-coats behind, undertaking to provide the entire regiment with furs from the shops of the pawnbrokers, with whom the wealthy Chinese regularly stored their winter clothing. To go into action without great-coats was quite a new departure, but even more daring was the next order: the men were told to take off their stocks, sling them over the left shoulder, and unfasten three buttons of their jackets and three buttons of their collars! These precautions, though to our ideas not very far-reaching, served their purpose, for while in other corps numbers of men were knocked over by the heat, not a man in the XVIIIth suffered from sunstroke. The regiment was making its way through the suburbs to the western face of the wall, when an A.D.C. arrived with orders for the Royal Irish to come up at the double to the western gate, where the General was anxiously awaiting them. The troops around General Gough were in bad case: many lay senseless from sun apoplexy; the remainder were so exhausted that they could only keep up a feeble fire on its defenders. As soon as the XVIIIth appeared Gough welcomed them with the order “Go on, Royal Irish, and storm.” “We halted,” writes an officer who was present, “to tell off a storming party of fifty men, and then with arms at the trail and bending low, the stormers made a dash down a cross-street within about twenty yards of the gate, and from the windows of the houses which ran parallel to the wall, we opened fire on the Chinese gunners and soon silenced them. The engineers then advanced and placed a powder-bag against the gate (a very strong one and, as we afterwards found, strengthened by four or five tiers of sand-bags piled against it from inside); we were ordered to lie down; the fuse was lit, and in about ten seconds everything was flying about our heads. This brought us to our feet in a hurry; we gave a cheer and dashed into the archway, which was densely filled with smoke; those who got in first were soon brought to their knees by kicking against the sand-bags which we could not see, but we had to scramble on as quick as possible as there was danger of receiving a poke from a friendly bayonet behind! We got out as black as monkeys, to find ourselves in a sort of yard, surrounded by high walls, with a second gate leading from it into the city. We had just started breaking this second gate down, when we heard a friendly voice behind it shouting ‘Hold on, we’ll open it for you!’” It turned out that the 55th, after escalading their own wall, had worked round to the western gate, which the Chinese abandoned when they saw their flank in danger.

The Royal Irish were at once sent to drive the Tartars from the western wall. They moved off left in front,[140] and as there was not room on the rampart for four men abreast they marched in threes. The grenadier company were soon dropped to hold a commanding building close to the wall; the remainder of the regiment pushed on without seeing any of the enemy, until a keen-eyed officer noticed a large number of Tartars emerging from the shelter of some houses on the town side of the wall. The commanding officer, insisting that they were not fighting men but harmless coolies, refused to send out skirmishers to protect the head and right flank of his straggling column, and the Tartars were allowed to establish themselves in gardens surrounded by high walls, which made excellent rests for matchlocks and gingals. As soon as the regiment was within range they opened a heavy fire upon the leading company, killing Captain C. J. R. Collinson, wounding Lieutenant S. Bernard, and causing several casualties in the ranks. The rampart along which the XVIIIth was marching was so narrow that it was difficult for messengers to pass rapidly from company to company, and as no orders were received the men halted for directions: but by the time the enemy had discharged a second volley, an officer had called upon the Light company to avenge their captain. Collinson’s “Light Bobs” dashed down the slope of the rampart, scaled the mud walls and, followed by the remainder of the regiment, fell furiously on the Tartars, who, after a stout resistance, broke and fled. Not all, however, of the enemy had lost heart. Just as the regiment had re-formed after the charge, a gigantic Tartar rushed towards the line, brandishing a sword in each hand; the officers, unwilling to send so brave a man to his death, made signs to him to retire, but in vain, and he was almost amongst the men when a well-aimed bullet laid him low. The grenadier company came in for a full share of the excitements of the day. Their captain, Wigston, noticed some of the Tartars drawn up across a narrow street leading to his post, and sent a subaltern, Lieutenant W. Venour, and twelve men to dislodge them. The Tartars held their fire until the party of grenadiers were close to them, and then let fly with some effect. Lieutenant I. H. Hewitt with fourteen men hurried up to reinforce Venour’s detachment, and the street was cleared after sharp hand-to-hand fighting. Hewitt had a narrow escape: a Tartar cut at him with his sword, and the blow would have been fatal had not Private M‘Carthy “raised his musket and parried it, though unfortunately with the loss of his thumb, the sword cutting right through the bone, and also through Hewitt’s forage cap, slightly raising the skin of his head. We left a picket there,” continues Lieutenant Murray, “as occasional shots were still fired from the houses. A short time afterwards a Tartar soldier rushed in amongst the men and stabbed one of them in the side with his knife: he was shot instantly. We were obliged to set fire to the houses to drive the Tartars out of them, for we would not let the men follow them into the buildings.”

Although the troops did their best to stop the frenzy of rage and terror which seized upon the population after we had captured the town, the number of people who committed suicide at Chinkiangfu was as great or even greater than at Chapoo. One instance among hundreds will prove how determined the Tartars were not to survive the disgrace of a defeat. When their General realised that the day was lost he retired to his house, ordered his servants to set fire to the building, and allowed himself to be burned to death. It was fortunate for the success of Gough’s little army that the overweening contempt of the Chinese for foreigners had prevented the employment of European adventurers to mould and lead their armies. Had the Tartar troops been trained and disciplined by Continental soldiers of fortune, as were the Sikhs, the enemies whom Gough was to encounter in a few years, a great array of British soldiers would have been required to win on the banks of the Yang-Tse-Kiang victories as decisive as those of Sobraon and Goozerat.[141] In the capture of Chinkiangfu two officers and thirty of the other ranks were killed, eleven officers and ninety-eight other ranks wounded, and three privates missing. The casualties among the small Naval landing party were three killed and twenty-one wounded. The XVIIIth lost one officer, Captain Collinson, and two private soldiers killed; one officer, Lieutenant S. Bernard, two sergeants, and fifteen privates wounded.

While the soldiers were fighting on shore, the sailors were doing invaluable work on their own element by blockading the chief waterways to Pekin; and in a few days the result of the stoppage of trade with the capital was so disastrous to the merchants of China that the Emperor was obliged to sue for peace. But before negotiations had been opened, Pottinger, Gough, and Parker realised that the presence of British troops and British ships at Nankin would greatly stimulate the tardy movements of the Chinese diplomatists, and on August 9, 1842, the whole force, less a small garrison left to hold Chinkiangfu, was ready to assault the walls of the commercial capital of China. But no assault was necessary, as twenty days later a treaty of peace, this time a genuine one on the part of the Chinese, was signed on board a British man-of-war. Its terms were satisfactory: every point on which England had gone to war was ceded by the Emperor; our national honour was vindicated, and the rights of our traders secured. During the negotiations dignified courtesies were exchanged between the Mandarins and the Plenipotentiary. On one of these occasions the grenadier company of the Royal Irish acted as guard of honour to Sir Henry Pottinger while he solemnly dined with the Chinese officials: our late enemies turned out their best soldiers to receive the English guests, but though Lieutenant Murray admits that among them were many tall, fine-looking fellows, he insists that they were “nothing in appearance to our company, who looked remarkably well, and must have astonished the Chinese much.” Though the spectators doubtless admired the physique and martial bearing of the Irishmen who had so often routed the picked troops of China, they must have smiled at the contrast between the comfortable dress of the Tartars, who wore long loose coats and boots coming well up the leg, and the stocks, tightly buttoned shell-jackets and equally tight white trousers of the British army.[142] The spies among the crowd, for the Chinese had many very observant secret service agents in their employ, must have wondered why the infantry who served on board ship were armed with percussion muskets, while those who fought on land carried flint-locks.

No sooner had the treaty of peace been officially ratified by the Emperor of China than the expedition began to descend the Yang-Tse-Kiang with all speed, for the climate had begun to tell heavily upon the health of soldiers and sailors alike. So short-handed from sickness was the crew of H.M.S. _Rattlesnake_ that the Royal Irish, by this time nearly as much at home on a ship as in a barrack, helped largely in working her successfully down the river. At the mouth of the Yang-Tse-Kiang the expedition broke up: some of Gough’s units sailed for India; others went home, while the corps ordered to remain in Chinese waters proceeded to their several destinations. Among the latter was the XVIIIth, which was sent to Chusan, where its various detachments were assembled by the end of October, 1842. When the casualty returns were prepared it was found that though the losses in action had been small, those caused by dysentery, malaria, and cholera had been very heavy. Lieutenant-Colonel N. R. Tomlinson and Captain C. J. R. Collinson had been killed; Major R. Hammill, Lieutenants H. Vavasour, A. Wilson, F. Swinburn, D. Edwardes, J. Cochrane, G. W. Davis, S. Haly, Hon. C. H. Stratford, Ensign M. Humphreys, and Assistant-Surgeon J. Baker had died from disease; six officers had been wounded but had recovered from their injuries. Among the other ranks nine non-commissioned officers and men had been killed, seventy-seven wounded, and two hundred and fourteen had died from illness, accident, or the effect of wounds.[143] In honour of those who perished a monument was erected in St Patrick’s Cathedral. It stands in the north transept--the Walhalla of the regiment, where the old Colours, faded by the sun in many climes and pierced by bullets in many battles, overhang the stately memorials by which the Royal Irish regiment has sought to keep green the memory of its illustrious dead. The numerous monuments are described fully in Appendix 10, and photographs of them are reproduced in various parts of the book.

At the opening of Parliament in 1843, the House of Lords passed the usual vote of thanks to the troops which had taken part in the campaign. A medal was issued to the officers and men who had served in the Chinese war; leave was granted to the XVIIIth to add to its other battle honours the word “China” and the device of the Dragon, and Colonel G. Burrell, Lieutenant-Colonel W. H. Adams, and Majors J. Cowper and J. Grattan were awarded the C.B.

Very disagreeable orders awaited the regiment on its arrival at Chusan. Four companies were to remain there as part of its garrison until the Chinese had fulfilled all the obligations of the treaty, while headquarters and the greater part of the regiment were to occupy the island of Kulangsu, which our Government also held as a pledge of Chinese good faith. Kulangsu had already acquired the reputation of being one of the most unhealthy stations in China, and the Royal Irish soon discovered that its evil reputation was but too well deserved. According to Lieutenant-Colonel Graves’s statement, when the headquarters companies landed they found the detachment of the regiment which had been there for some months in a deplorable condition. There had been many deaths among all ranks; every one of the surviving officers was down with fever,

“and there were not thirty men under command of a sergeant who were fit for duty or could shoulder a firelock.... When the Headquarter companies landed from Chusan the men were healthy and well seasoned, but they very soon began to feel the climate, and before long half the men were on the sick list, and we began to bury them very fast. I had been appointed Staff Officer for the island, and at first found much difficulty in getting coffins quick enough, so I ordered twenty at a time to be supplied by a contractor at Amoy. Several of our officers died, and at last I found much difficulty in getting men enough to relieve the guards. I went to our Colonel, Cowper--who was the Commandant of the island--and represented that if we did not get a ship sent up from Hong Kong for the invalids we should very soon have no men for guard. We got a ship and found her of the greatest benefit; she was anchored half a mile out of the harbour, and the invalids sent on board her came back in a week fit for duty.

“A large draft joined from England, about three hundred strong, together with the women and children. This caused a little stir, but it was a short-lived happiness: they went down almost as fast as we could provide coffins for them. We pitched tents and moved our camp daily about the island, but it was no use--cholera and fever still continued. The men began to drink to drown dull care; the officers off the sick list were constantly on Court-Martial duty, and the Colonel received an official letter from Headquarters drawing his attention to the number of Courts-Martial for drunkenness, and directing him to parade the regiment and reprimand the men for their conduct, which was alleged to be the principal cause of the severe mortality. As Staff Officer and adjutant of the regiment I was ordered to read this letter to the men, which I began to do, but I must acknowledge I fairly broke down and had to hand it to another officer to finish. I felt so keenly how our gallant poor fellows were being sacrificed, after their long, hard services, to a climate no one could live in, and _how_ they bore it!”

In April 1844, after a hundred and thirty-six officers and men had fallen victims to the climate of Kulangsu,[144] the regiment was reunited at Chusan. The next station was Hong Kong, where the ordinary routine of garrison life in the East was suddenly broken by an urgent and wholly unexpected call to arms. The people of Canton, always overbearing and offensive towards Europeans, had recently insulted and ill-treated British subjects, and their Mandarins had refused to make redress for the outrages. The British Plenipotentiary, Sir John Davis, was a believer in the saying “A word and a blow, and the blow first,” and he determined to teach the mob of Canton a lesson they would not soon forget. During the night of the 1st of April, 1847, the Royal Irish, under Lieutenant-Colonel Cowper, with 23 officers and 509 other ranks, and the 42nd regiment of Madras Native Infantry, 399 strong, were packed into a couple of small men-of-war and an armed steamer. Early on the following morning the flotilla was off the entrance to the Canton river; the troops were landed, and driving the Chinese artillerymen from the batteries, spiked the guns. The works higher up the stream were then treated in the same way, but not without vigorous opposition from the enemy, whose aim, however, was much distracted by the steady fire of a party of the Royal Irish, described in the despatches as the “acting gunners of the XVIIIth, who replied to the batteries in a style which would have done credit to experienced artillerymen.” As soon as the ships were off Canton the soldiers occupied the “factories”; placed them in a state of defence, and made plans for storming the town. The Royal Irish were looking forward to winning much glory (and much prize money too!) in the capture of Canton, when the Mandarins, greatly perturbed by Sir John Davis’s prompt reprisals, hastily made full atonement for their misdeeds, and the expedition returned to Hong Kong. They had done a good week’s work: 879 guns, many of great calibre, had been spiked, much ammunition destroyed, and a greatly needed lesson given to the Canton roughs--and all without the loss of a soldier, bluejacket, or marine.

General D’Aguilar, who was in command, mentioned in his despatch the following officers of the regiment, viz., Lieutenant-Colonel Cowper; Captain J. Bruce, A.A.G.; Captain Clark Kennedy, Acting A.Q.M.; Captain J. W. Graves; Captain A. N. Campbell, and Lieutenant E. W. Sargent, Acting A.D.C.

Before the troops left Canton the British merchants asked for an officer to train their newly formed Volunteer corps. Captain J. W. Graves was selected, and with part of the Light company spent two months in “the factories,” where between drilling his civilian recruits, drawing up plans for the defence of the settlement against a sudden rush, and eating the good dinners to which the merchants invited him, his time was fully occupied. Soon after this detachment rejoined headquarters the regiment was warned to prepare to sail for India, and on November 20, 1847, embarked for Bengal on the transport ship _Balcarres_. Major W. F. Dillon was in command; with him were 24 officers, 42 sergeants, 15 drummers, and 595 rank and file, and when he arrived at Fort William on January 10, 1848, he found awaiting him drafts from England amounting to 7 officers, 1 drummer, and 334 rank and file. Thus the XVIIIth began its tour of duty in India with a total strength of one thousand and eighteen of all ranks.