of the British and French would be visited upon their country for such an act of perfidy. As for delivering in person her Majesty's letter to the Emperor, he would waive that point; but that not a ship or any part of the army should leave the country until the provisions of the treaty had been carried out. The Chinese still evaded giving up the prisoners; and Lord Elgin therefore resolved that our advance upon Pekin should not be arrested.

[Prince Kung also threatened that the entry of our forces into the capital would be followed by the instant massacre of the prisoners. The perils which environed these latter placed both the military and the diplomatic chiefs in a position of the most painful perplexity. Mr Parkes and his party having been kidnapped in violation of the laws of nations, when employed upon diplomatic duty, could not be considered lawful prisoners of war; and Lord Elgin always refused, in his correspondence with the Chinese, to admit them to be such. The cruel and treacherous people into whose hands they had fallen, if irritated, were quite capable of wreaking a fearful vengeance on them, as subsequent events proved. And yet to have yielded one iota in our demands to insure

the safety of our fellow-countrymen would have been the most fatal of all precedents-would have been a premium on future bad faith, and might almost have neutralised the successes we had already gained. The plenipotentiaries, therefore, made the surrender of the prisoners a sine qua non before hostilities could be suspended.H. K.]

Sir Robert Napier arrived with his deputy assistant quartermaster-general, Lieut. Lumsden, on the 24th September, but his division was a few days' march in rear. I sent the irregular cavalry to make a reconnaissance up to Pekin; and on their return, Probyn, who was in command, told me that, along the whole distance, he had seen neither troops nor camps, but that report stated that the Chinese army was in position to the north of the town. He had ridden up to within 200 yards of the walls, which he described as being very high and in excellent repair. On the 26th, Lord Elgin and I rode to Chan-chia-wan to pay a visit to General Ignatieff, the Russian ambassador, who had throughout followed us up in our march, and was now on his way to Tang-chow. He received us very cordially, and showed us an excellent map, which he had caused to be made,

of Pekin, wherein was represented every street and house of importance. This plan he kindly lent me to copy, merely stipulating that it should not be published, as it had not yet been sent to St Petersburg.1 I had it photographed by Signor Beato, whom I had specially allowed to accompany the expedition, and who had previously photographed scenes in India and the Crimea. I also obtained some further very valuable information from the Russians-to the effect that the Tartar town, separated from the Chinese by a wall, occupied the northern portion; that the city was surrounded by large suburbs and numerous trees, and that the ditch was deep and broad on three sides, but on the north side shallow, and in many places almost dry. In this direction, moreover, the ground was much more open. General de Montauban was of opinion that the town ought to be attacked on the south side, but in consequence of the above information, I differed with him. We wished to molest the Chinese as little as possible on the north, where it was stated that

1 This acquisition ultimately proved of great value. The streets therein laid down had been "traversed" in a cart from which angles had been taken, while indicators fixed to the wheels marked the distances gone over. See note at end of this chapter.

the Tartar streets were wide and the population scanty, there would be greater facilities for forcing an entrance; and lastly, in this direction the Summer Palace of the Emperor was little more than four miles distant from the city.

On 27th September, the two regiments of Sir Robert Napier's division from Ho-si-wu, together with Pennycuick's and Bedingfield's batteries, marched in, and on the 29th our siege-guns arrived, under the charge of Captain Dew, R.N.1 He had had great difficulty in bringing them up, owing to the shallowness of the river, and at places had been obliged to have recourse to the company of Madras sappers, which I had sent with the guns in order to cut channels. The day before I had ordered Probyn, with the 1st Irregular Cavalry, to make another reconnaissance, and to ascertain the whereabouts of the Tartar camp—a task which this excellent officer performed with great judgment. He came upon their pickets, drove them in, and discovered their camping-ground to be on the north-east of the town. On 30th September an ultimatum was sent by Lord Elgin and Baron Gros to Pekin, to which the Chinese returned an 1 Since dead.

answer, that if we would retire to Chan-chia-wan, they were willing to sign a treaty there. Our plenipotentiaries rejoined that this reply was not at all satisfactory, and that the forces should march to Pekin. I left the marines and a couple of guns at Tang-chow1 to hold that place as a protection to our convoys coming up, and I also established a depot in some roomy old tombs, near the bridge of Pa-le-chiao and the village. These places were built with substantial walls, and were capable of making a good defence. As a temporary measure, I also left there our siegetrain, with 200 infantry. Several of our sowars had been fired at conveying letters from Chanchia-wan down the road, and in compliance with my request, General de Montauban took possession of the town with 100 men, to whom I added 25 irregular cavalry, thus enabling us to keep up our communication with the south.

On the 1st October, Prince Kung again wrote praying us to stay our march, and hinting that Mr Parkes should be employed as a mediator; but on the 2d the allied ambassadors again replied that they would listen to nothing until the

1 This town had surrendered without opposition.