Victoria’s Scottish Lion

by Greenwood, Adrian; Haythornthwaite, Philip;

  Ever since he had gained command of the 98th Campbell had been preparing his regiment for this moment. It was twenty-nine years since he had last led men into battle. In Spain, Campbell had been fighting for Britain’s very survival. In China he was fighting for a gang of opium traders. Sacrificing oneself to prevent the Marseillaise being sung in Piccadilly was one thing, laying down one’s life for the profits of Jardine & Matheson quite another, but at least the paltry casualties in the campaign so far were encouraging, as was the promise of spoils.

  In the small hours of 21 July the attack began. Campbell had been up since before dawn, transferring men from the Belleisle into the steamer Phlegothon,48 which would carry them to the brigade rendezvous point opposite Kinshan (Golden Island). Delayed by the strong current, the transports landed the men in dribs and drabs, leaving a jumble of corps on shore vulnerable to the enemy. The Chinese, however, made no attempt to exploit the opportunity. After two hours’ mustering, the brigade was still about 700 men short of its full complement.49 Nevertheless, that still gave Saltoun 1,000 troops (the majority being the 98th) plus three field guns. By 8 a.m. the thermometer was touching 96 degrees,50 so rather than wait for the rest, Saltoun decided to press ahead. The light company of the 98th formed the advance guard as they set off across the paddy fields towards the entrenched camps assumed to contain the bulk of the enemy troops.51

  As they sweltered in their woollen uniforms, the short 2-mile march took them an hour. Nearing the enemy camp, Campbell could see that the Chinese had left their earthworks and formed up ready for battle on high ground nearby. ‘By their dress we could discover them to be Tartars, not Chinese,’ wrote Cunynghame, ‘and with their numerous banners glittering in the sun, and the singularly attired spearmen and bowmen, they had a somewhat grotesque, though, I am free to confess, an imposing appearance.’52 This was the cream of the garrison under the command of Assistant Commissioner Ch’i-shen and commander-in-chief Liu Yun-hsaio.

  As the British closed to within 900 yards a furious whooping and hollering arose from the Chinese as they opened fire with their matchlocks. At that range a matchlock ball posed a negligible threat, so Saltoun ordered the men to rest while he brought up his guns. Saltoun’s plan was straightforward; a full-scale infantry assault, preceded by a cannonade. The Bengal Volunteers would go for the enemy left and right while the 98th’s light company would lead the assault on their centre, followed by the rest of the regiment and the 41st Madras Native Infantry.53 In other words, Saltoun would throw everything he had straight at the enemy.

  Major Anstruther somehow managed to lug his artillery up the narrow hillside paths in wheelbarrows, and opened fire. ‘The first two rounds were harmless but the third shot pitched into the very centre of the Chinese encampment.’54 The 98th marched steadily forward, Campbell bracing himself for the first Chinese volley as the British came within range. Perhaps it was the 98th’s cold-eyed determination, or Gough’s ever-victorious record, or perhaps it just came down to the arthritic grip of the Chinese officers over their men, but as Campbell’s regiment approached, the enemy turned and fled.** ‘So expeditiously did they perform this movement, that when we arrived upon the crest of the hill, not a vestige of them could we perceive’, recalled one officer. ‘We found many sedan chairs, deserted by their owners and bearers, in their hurry to get clear off, and small Tartar ponies running loose, the officers whose property they were, trusting to their own legs to escape.’55 After a wait of nearly three decades, and after five years of perfecting his regiment, Campbell had led the 98th half way round the world only to see his enemy bolt before his men could fire a shot.

  Elsewhere the story was much the same. Schoedde encountered minimal opposition on the hills outside town and so, as per instructions, turned to storm the city.56 He overcame the battlements using just three ladders. To the west Bartley’s sappers blew the main gate with powder bags.57 Unable to restrain himself, Gough led the brigade inside in person. As they entered the gatehouse they discovered a second inner gate blocking their way, but were relieved to find it already occupied by Schoedde and Captain Richards’s Marines. Carnage and self-slaughter had already overtaken the town. The British discovered ‘dead bodies of Tartars in every house we entered, principally women and children thrown into wells or otherwise murdered by their own people’.58 The remains of Governor Haelin lay in the ashes of a pyre of wood and official paperwork. ‘I am sick at heart of war and its fearful consequences’,59 confessed Gough.*

  By taking Chinkiangfoo, Gough had, according to one Chinese historian, ‘virtually severed the Chinese empire into two halves’.60 It cost him 144 casualties, including thirty-four men and three officers killed, a bill Gough regarded as ‘considerable’, but which was inconsequential compared with Chinese losses of around forty officers and 1,000 men dead, plus countless civilians.61 The 98th had just one man wounded. The real killer was sunstroke. Thirteen of Campbell’s men died of it that day, and dozens more were laid low. Campbell himself nearly collapsed, until revived with some brandy.62 While Schoedde, Bartley and Gough were bludgeoning their way into Chinkiangfoo, the 98th stayed in the hills to the west, wilting in their European kit as the sun climbed higher. Saltoun had a poor grasp of his troops’ needs and no experience of the tropics. Belatedly, he had ordered the brigade to find shelter in the nearby village of Tongchow.**

  That night the first case of cholera in the 98th was reported to Campbell,63 followed rapidly by dysentery. Among troops suffering heat stroke, tired from battle and forced to collect water where they could, contagion spread fast. Eight days later, the 98th (apart from Captain Whimper’s No.1 company, which stayed to help guard Chinkiangfoo)64 embarked and sailed up the Yangtze towards Gough’s next target, Nankin.65 In the confines of the Belleisle disease tightened its grip. The ship’s log records a gradual acceleration from one corpse a day to four a day by 30 July. Fifty-three more men lay indisposed.66 ‘The 98th regiment suffered perhaps more than the rest,’ remembered one naval officer, ‘but in reality, every ship, whether a man of war, or belonging to the transports service, had numerous sick on board; and some of the transport ships were at length scarcely manageable, owing to the shortness of hands.’67 The repeated splash of bodies as they were interred in the Yangtze was heartbreaking. ‘It is a sad thing for poor Campbell,’ wrote Saltoun, ‘for I never saw a man take such pains about his men as he did all the way out.’ At the same time Saltoun had no time for his methods. Campbell’s fretting was ‘almost preposterous … the more they are petted, the severer the blow when it hits them’.68 Neither the condition of his men nor the morality of the campaign gave Saltoun much cause for concern, only the job to be done. There was something to be said for his philosophy. Grand Duke Constantine of Russia once declared that he dreaded war because it spoiled the troops he had so painstakingly laboured to perfect. Would Campbell also become so overprotective that he would not risk his men at all?

  By the time the 98th arrived at Nankin, disease had seriously depleted Gough’s army. After deducting those left at Chinkiangfoo, he had only around 3,400 men left fit to fight.69 Yet, if anywhere could halt Gough’s progress, it was Nankin. One of the biggest cities in the world, the scale of its defences was humbling. The Chinese claimed that if two horsemen, starting at sunrise from the same point, rode along the ramparts in opposite directions, they would not meet until sunset, even at a gallop.70***

  On 10 August, Saltoun’s brigade transferred onto steamers. They made their way upriver and landed at Kwan-zin-moon, a few miles from Nankin. By now Saltoun had serious doubts over the 98th. In his opinion, they were ‘done up for this campaign’.71 Campbell himself was too ill to move, so, leaving the 98th to guard their steamer, the Pluto, Saltoun led the rest of his brigade inland.

  Behind the great walls of Nanking, the Chinese were broken. ‘We possess no impregnable defences and our military equipment is utterly useless’, one nobleman warned the emperor. ‘Our troops are feeble and our subjects disloyal. If we engage in h
ostilities, disaster will overtake us.’72 It was unthinkable that the ancient city of Nankin should fall to the barbarian, so now, at the eleventh hour, the emperor sued for peace. Envoys from the Imperial Court arrived on 12 August,73 just as the British prepared to attack. Gough dismissed their entreaties as an attempt to buy time, but British plenipotentiary Henry Pottinger believed they were in earnest, and so efforts to besiege Nankin were put on hold while negotiations began. Behind a cordial façade the British coldly dictated the terms of a new treaty and told the Chinese to sign or else. On 29 August, the emperor’s representatives capitulated. The signing was immortalised, in somewhat naïve style, by Captain Platt of the Bengal volunteers. ‘He has made an excellent likeness of me sitting, with Cunynghame standing on the right and Grant on the left, and Campbell looking over my shoulder’,74* wrote Saltoun. None of them actually had any input beyond the ceremonial. The Treaty of Nankin confirmed Hong Kong as British territory in perpetuity. Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo, Shanghai and Canton were designated as Treaty Ports with special trade terms and guaranteed access for British merchants. Diplomatic relations would be on equal terms. The Chinese were to pay $21 million (approximately £5.2 million) in compensation,75 $12 million of which was to cover the cost of the invasion. ‘Victory beside the laurels round her brows, has a balance of ready money’,76 observed Punch. From self-proclaimed ruler of the known world, China was reduced to the carcass of an empire, left to be picked over by European colonists.

  The scale of victory was prodigious; the British had captured or destroyed 2,200 guns,77 but though Gough had demonstrated the Chinese army’s obsolescence, his army’s technological superiority concealed tactical mistakes which a more imaginative enemy would have exploited. The Chinese guns were terrible, but British artillery was often not much better. ‘Their practice was by no means good and therefore the execution they did was comparatively trifling’, one officer wrote of the British guns at Amoy in August 1841.78 Communications were woeful. Having bought three horses in the Cape, Saltoun was surprised to find that they were the only mounts in the entire army. The other brigades had to rely on runners. ‘I am certain if orders could have been transmitted we should not have lost half the men we did here’,79 Saltoun reported. Because casualties were small, no one examined their cause very closely. In any case, troops lost to disease were regarded as an occupational hazard of campaigning in the tropics. Hence, the war fostered the dangerous conviction that any foreign power would quail before Victoria’s armies, and so British commanders went unpunished for their mistakes. Normally a man able to view war with a degree of perspective, Campbell was just as wrapped up in this feeling of invincibility as the rest and it strongly coloured his tactics. In his next war he would take great pains to avoid fighting in hot weather, but when eventually confronted with an Asian army he completely underestimated its abilities, encouraged by the ease of victory at Chinkiangfoo.

  With hostilities at an end, the British took in the sights at Nankin. Vandalising the Porcelain Tower was a favourite pastime. By the end of their stay the whole side of one of the upper storeys had been demolished by souvenir hunters. Pottinger offered $4,000 in damages to the Chinese and stationed a guard boat on the canal to stop depredations.80

  Meanwhile, heavy rain in late August had left the countryside boggy and malarial. ‘Every officer in the force on shore, except Captain Eady of the 98th, and Hope Grant, my brigade major, has been more or less ill’, recalled Saltoun. ‘The prevailing disorder is fever and ague, but it is odd that Campbell, and his adjutant, who are martyrs to the ague, and I, who am somewhat that way inclined, have had none of it. I suppose the diarrhoea, which we all three had severely, kept all fever away.’81 Between 21 July and 31 August Campbell had lost nearly 200 men to disease.82 On 8 September the 98th started boarding the Belleisle,83 ready to return to Hong Kong, but the spruce body of men Campbell had led onto the ship at Plymouth had degenerated dramatically. By 10 September over 600 were ill, leaving just eighty-six fit for duty. Campbell transferred the worst to the Belle Alliance, but disease had swamped the fleet. ‘All were anxious to quit the river without delay’, explained one naval officer:

  Every ship was full of invalids; in many of them fully one-third of the crew were unable to work, and in some even more. The officers appeared to suffer equally with the men … The recovery of the men was extremely slow, and even after the fever was apparently cured, relapses were very frequent.84

  Again, Campbell fell ill. ‘He abhorred medicine,’ recalled Shadwell. ‘Under the influence of fever he became irritable and it was with great difficulty he was induced to remain in his bed’,85 but he was persuaded to retreat to his cabin for a few days.86

  By the time she began her return journey on 15 September, the Belleisle had become, to all intents and purposes, a hospital ship. The Chinese had mischievously removed the buoys the navy had used to mark the channel on the trip upriver. The Belleisle ran aground several times and on one occasion collided with a transport,87 so progress was tentative. The whole of the lower deck was by now reserved for the sick. Only a quarter of the crew were strong enough to sail her. The ship’s doctor and the regimental surgeon were both affected. Campbell’s strength gradually returned but by 25 September he could still ‘only crawl about’. Saltoun at least was content. As the temperature fell, he managed at last to glue the bridge back on his guitar.88

  They reached Chusan on 29 September and Hong Kong on 1 November.89 Campbell had no desire for the 98th to stay in China. Before leaving Britain in the autumn of 1841, he had told the new governor-general of India, Lord Ellenborough, that he hoped ‘the conduct of the regiment in China would be such as to induce him to retain the corps under his own orders in India when the campaign in China had terminated’,90 but by late 1842 priorities had changed and instead the 98th Foot was to remain in Hong Kong. Campbell had good reason to prefer India. Visitors to Hong Kong were unanimous: the climate was insalubrious to a fatal degree.91 When his officers realised they would have to ‘remain in a climate like that of China, most of them immediately exchanged’, reported Campbell. ‘I lost all my young friends whom I so much loved.’92

  Opium smokers, from Thomas Allom’s China, in a Series of Views.

  ‘The want of sufficient barrack accommodation in this place obliges the authorities to keep us on board until barracks can be built to receive us’, Campbell complained.’We remain, therefore in this ship – of which a twelve month’s residence has most heartily sickened me – and I see little prospect of a release from our prison for the next five or six months.’ Confinement on the Belleisle aggravated the epidemic. On 5 November only thirty-six men paraded for duty.93 Matters became so bad that on 30 November Gough convened a special Court of Inquiry, presided over by Saltoun. With all the appurtenances of good intent, the real motivation was the concern that reports of the sickness might discourage further settlement. ‘The fact is, a party here, with the Plenipotentiary at their head, all interested in this infant colony, wish to make Hong Kong to be the most healthy place in the world’, Saltoun explained. Knowing which side his bread was buttered, his report concluded, ‘this place is less unhealthy for Europeans than most other tropical places’.94 This was fine politics, but left Campbell’s demands for new barracks on health grounds stripped of credibility. By now, however, Saltoun was past caring and itching to return home.

  ‘The regiment has lost by death up to this date 283, and there are still 231 sick, of whom some fifty or sixty will die’, lamented Campbell on 18 December 1842. ‘This is the history of the 98th regiment, which sailed from Plymouth in so effective a state in all respects on 20th December – and all this destruction without having lost a man by the fire of the enemy!’ ‘This melancholy overthrow and ruin of the corps under such circumstances makes me very miserable’, he admitted. All Campbell’s hopes for China were overthrown. His carefully nurtured regiment lay dying, and once again he’d missed out on the spoils. ‘I did not take any loot,’ he assured his sister, ‘so
that I have nothing of that kind, to which many of this expedition helped themselves so bountifully at Chinkiangfoo and near Nankin.’95 He was at least liberally honoured. Having fought in just one battle in China, he was invested by Victoria as Companion of the Bath, and Horse Guards promoted him full colonel and aide-de-camp to the queen. Neither expanded his responsibilities much, but both came with an increase in salary.*

  The rest of the expeditionary force dispersed, leaving the 98th as the bulk of the Hong Kong garrison, along with detachments of the 55th Foot and the 41st Madras Native Infantry.96 Gough returned to India and, though straining every muscle to leave, Saltoun remained in Hong Kong as commander-in-chief of Her Majesty’s troops in China with Campbell as his commandant, a post which brought an additional 150 rupees (about £15) a month.97 Set against the extra pay was the crippling cost of living. Renting a decent house cost upwards of £400 a year. ‘The civil and military officers are glad to get a location or even a room in any spot on any terms’, declared one official report. Even Saltoun, on $2,000 (around £400) a month, found that ‘things here are what they call dear’.98 Apart from the expense, the officers’ other chief complaint, as in the West Indies, was the lack of entertainment, so Campbell allowed them to ship over a billiard table from England.99