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Sir Walter's meeting with Admiral Croft is satisfactory, and their agreement is finalized, which means that the Elliots are off to Bath. Or rather, Sir Walter and Elizabeth are headed to Bath, but they will be joined by Mrs. Clay instead of Anne. It's quite an affront, but one that is softened somewhat by an invitation from Anne's other sister, Mary, to stay with her at her home in Uppercross. So Anne is staying close by to Kellynch instead. At least she's wanted here, which is more than she can say for Bath. As she settles in with Mary's in-laws, the Musgroves, let her story help you settle in under your covers as you drift away into a night of gentle sleep.-----Welcome to the Jane Austen Bedtime Stories podcast! Each episode is a section of a classic Jane Austen novel, read in soothing tones and set to calming music to help you fall asleep.With everything that is going on in the world, we find comfort in the familiar. For so many of us, Jane Austen's works are like a warm hug. So snuggle up under the covers and let the comforting words of Jane Austen lull you into sleep.-----Show your appreciation for the pod! Support the podcast: http://bedtimestoriespodcast.net/support -----Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janeaustenbedtimepod/-----Music ["Reverie"] by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. – www.scottbuckley.com.au
As much as it pains him, the proud Sir Walter must decide who will be the new tenant of Kellynch Hall. Luckily, Mr. Shepherd has just the tenant in mind: an Admiral Croft. Though Sir Walter generally finds naval officers displeasing (their faces are just so weathered), there's a certain charm in letting one's home to an Admiral - their station is just high enough, without being too high to embarrass a baronet. For Anne, the choice of tenant holds particular significance, for Admiral Croft's wife is none other than the sister of Mr. Wentworth, and he could be back at Kellynch very soon, indeed. Things are moving for the Elliots and Kellynch Hall, and as they do, let this week's story move you on your own way into gentle and restorative sleep.-----Welcome to the Jane Austen Bedtime Stories podcast! Each episode is a section of a classic Jane Austen novel, read in soothing tones and set to calming music to help you fall asleep.With everything that is going on in the world, we find comfort in the familiar. For so many of us, Jane Austen's works are like a warm hug. So snuggle up under the covers and let the comforting words of Jane Austen lull you into sleep.-----Show your appreciation for the pod! Support the podcast: http://bedtimestoriespodcast.net/support -----Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janeaustenbedtimepod/-----Music ["Reverie"] by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. – www.scottbuckley.com.au
Sir Walter Elliot's money troubles are serious - serious enough that the family absolutely must retrench. But mere cuts to their household budget (journeys, London, servants, horses, table...all the comforts of baronet life) aren't enough. The family will have to quit Kellynch Hall, relocate, and, much to Sir Walter's chagrin let their beloved home. While Anne wants to stay nearby in the country, her wishes are, as always, disregarded, and instead the family will be making their way off to Bath. As the Elliots plan their move, let their journey away from Kellynch help you on your own journey away from the day and into a night of soft and restful sleep.-----Welcome to the Jane Austen Bedtime Stories podcast! Each episode is a section of a classic Jane Austen novel, read in soothing tones and set to calming music to help you fall asleep.With everything that is going on in the world, we find comfort in the familiar. For so many of us, Jane Austen's works are like a warm hug. So snuggle up under the covers and let the comforting words of Jane Austen lull you into sleep.-----Show your appreciation for the pod! Support the podcast: http://bedtimestoriespodcast.net/support -----Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janeaustenbedtimepod/-----Music ["Reverie"] by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. – www.scottbuckley.com.au
It's time to meet our new protagonists: the Elliots of Kellynch Hall. The family consists of Sir Walter, the haughty and vain baronet, and his three daughters, Elizabeth, Anne, and Mary. Elizabeth and Mary have something to recommend themselves to their father (beauty, and a husband, respectively), but Anne has lost her bloom - she's only Anne. We meet them as Sir Walter is growing distressed for money, having exceeded his income since the unfortunate death of the late Lady Elliot. What's a boastful baronet to do? Settle in under the covers to find out, as we begin our new novel and tonight's story carries you away from your day and into another night of gentle and restorative sleep.-----Welcome to the Jane Austen Bedtime Stories podcast! Each episode is a section of a classic Jane Austen novel, read in soothing tones and set to calming music to help you fall asleep.With everything that is going on in the world, we find comfort in the familiar. For so many of us, Jane Austen's works are like a warm hug. So snuggle up under the covers and let the comforting words of Jane Austen lull you into sleep.-----Show your appreciation for the pod! Support the podcast: http://bedtimestoriespodcast.net/support -----Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janeaustenbedtimepod/-----Music ["Reverie"] by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. – www.scottbuckley.com.au
Watch on Philo! - Philo.tv/DTHJacob is telling Elliot, Nick, and Alice about when teenage Colton shows up one day. They spend the day together and Colton tells him exactly what to harvest for the next couple years. We see Del who is contemplating why Colton kept this from her. Back in the 1800's, Kat and Thomas are talking and kissing some more. She's like what am I even doing here? Am I just trying to get back at Elliot? Thomas is like i dunno man. She is like I just gotta have some time. When she gets back to the present, she walks by Elliots how and she locks eyes with him...he knows she time traveled. Alice and Kat are talking and Alice talks about how she believes that Casey is her kid and it's messing with her. She walks outside as Noah is walking up and she breaks up with him. Kat is looking through the archives that Casey worked on and she notices that they signed their name as the letter K.C. Alice travels back and time to talk to Colton and he sings her a song that sounds a lot like a song about diving into the pond and time traveling.Del is grappling with the fact that Colton knew about the pond and just watched her mourn the loss her child. Kat tells Elliot about the kiss and then promptly goes back the 1800's to kiss Thomas some more. He tells her that Susanna is in trouble because people are real mad at Cyrus right now. So she goes to rescue him. Alice is back in the 70s and she records a track with Colton. He then plays the song that he wrote for Del but didn't get to play for her and it makes Alice cry. Back in the 1800's, Kat catches up with with Susanna but then they're captured and brought to Cyrus. Cyrus found the painting and knows that Susanna has been protecting Kat in 1814. He's mad and he's going to take the angry mob to the Landry farm to burn it down. Alice gets back to the pond and finds Evelyn face first in the pond. Alice freaks out on her and tells her her poems womp. Back in the 1800's, Susanna and Kat try to warn them to leave but they won't. The house catches on fire and Jacob is stuck. Someone drags him out. Who is it? It's Colton! He runs away. He jumps in the pond and comes back and is very upset for some reason. He sees Alice and he asks if everything is okay in the farm.
The reemergence of the Musgroves, Charles Hayter and Henrietta are getting married, Anne and Wentworth have a CONVERSATION about the PAST, and Elizabeth Elliot invites everyone over for a party. Plus, something is going on with Mrs. Clay and Mr. Elliot. Topics discussed include rogue heirs, pump rooms, and cool logs.Glossary of Terms and Phrases:remonstrance (n): a forcefully reproachful protest.Glossary of People, Places, and Things: Bridgerton, Penelope, But Make It Scary, Nobu, Michael Scott, 10 Things I Hate About YouPatron Study Questions:Diana: How do Mrs Smith's actions in this chapter compare to Colonel Brandon's in S&S when he didn't reveal W's behavior because he thought he & Marianne were engaged? What do these say about their society and “living in the world”?Leigh: What do you think of Mrs. Smith only telling Anne the truth about Mr. Elliot after she learns they won't be getting married? What does it say about her friendship with Anne?Avi: This chapter marks the first time Wentworth directly alludes to his earlier relationship with Anne, when he says to her “Eight years and a half is a period.” What do you think is happening with Wentworth and why now?Ghenet: 1. What does it say about the state of her relationship with Lady Russell that she doesn't hesitate to delay revealing the duplicity of Mr. Elliott to her? After all that's happened, does Anne trust Lady Rs judgement? 2. Do you think Anne is ever envious of the relationship Louisa and Henrietta have based on her little speech about sisters? 3. WHAT do you think Mr. Elliott and Mrs. Clay were up to? What were they talking about?!Emily: Anne is clearly trying to get a message to Wentworth about her feelings. How much of the difficulty she is experiencing is down to the time period's restrictions on single people conversing, and how much is down to Anne's own feelings / the awkwardness of it all?Becca's Study Questions: Topics discussed include the purpose of Henrietta's and Louisa's love stories, the return of the Musgroves, and the Elliots' feelings about Wentworth.Funniest Quote: "You need not tell her so, but I thought her dress hideous the other night. I used to think she had some taste in dress, but I was ashamed of her at the concert. Something so formal and arrangé in her air! and she sits so upright! My best love, of course."Questions Moving Forward: What are Mrs. Clay and Mr. Elliot up to? Will Anne expose Elliot? Will her family have some growth?Who wins the chapters? Captain WentworthNext Episode: Volume 2 Chapter 11Pod and Prejudice is brought to you by Kyte. Kyte is a car rental company that delivers your car to your front door, so you never have to wait on line. Save 15% on your first booking of two days or more when you use our code WHOMST. Your carriage awaits at kyte.com.Our show art was created by Torrence Browne, and our audio is produced by Graham Cook. For bios and transcripts, check out our website at podandprejudice.com. Pod and Prejudice is transcribed by speechdocs.com. To support the show, check out our Patreon!Instagram: @podandprejudiceTwitter: @podandprejudiceFacebook: Pod and PrejudiceYoutube: Pod and PrejudiceMerch store: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/pod-and-prejudice?ref_id=23216
WE HAVE A PROPOSAL! Louisa and Benwick are in love and the Crofts come to Bath. Who else comes to Bath? WENTWORTH! Anne runs into him in a shop and he offers her his umbrella. Steamy. Plus, she and Lady Russell pass him in the street. Topics discussed include what the heck happened between Wentworth and Louisa, grumpy/sunshine pairings, men in mourning, Gay Street, Mrs. Clay's potential ulterior motives, Elizabeth's shunning of Wentworth, Wentworth's jealousy, well-hung curtains, and our band kid days.Glossary of Terms and Phrases:chair (n): A portable chair with a detachable roof, carried by two men.descried (v): caught sight ofGlossary of People, Places, and Things: Eponine, The Holiday, House in the Cerulean SeaPatron Study Questions:Avi: Earlier in the book Wentworth, clearly thinking of Anne, told Louisa that he liked firm characters. Now Louisa has changed her affection to Benwick. What do you think Wentworth's reaction will be?Ghenet: 1. Why do you think Louisa and Captain Benwick fell in love with each other? 2. We see Anne with members of the upper class and members of the lower class (by the Elliots' standards) but where is it that you think Anne is most comfortable and most herself?Emily: What point is Anne making about Benwick's character when talking about his change of heart, and is she doing him justice?Becca's Study Questions: Topics discussed include the purpose widowers play in this story, what's shifted between Anne and Wentworth, Bath as a setting for their meeting.Funniest Quote: "Anne sighed and blushed and smiled, in pity and disdain, either at her friend or herself. The part which provoked her most, was that in all this waste of foresight and caution, she should have lost the right moment for seeing whether he saw them."Questions Moving Forward: What happened with Wentworth and Louisa? What will happen at the concert?Who wins the chapters? Anne and WentworthNext Episode: Volume 2 Chapter 8Our show art was created by Torrence Browne, and our audio is produced by Graham Cook. For bios and transcripts, check out our website at podandprejudice.com. Pod and Prejudice is transcribed by speechdocs.com. To support the show, check out our Patreon!Instagram: @podandprejudiceTwitter: @podandprejudiceFacebook: Pod and PrejudiceYoutube: Pod and PrejudiceMerch store: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/pod-and-prejudice?ref_id=23216
In todays chapters, we travel from Uppercross to Kellynch to Bath. Anne and Lady Russell skirt around the subject of Wentworth, Anne has a potential new suitor, and Christmas happens! Mr. Elliot comes to Bath and is forgiven by his family.Topics discussed include the laundry door, Sir Walter's mirrors, whether Benwick is a good match for Anne in Lady Russell's eyes, the reasons the Elliots are in a great mood, why Mr. Elliot has returned, how everyone in Bath is ugly, bad parents in Austen, and questioning the decisions made in youth.Glossary of People, Places, and Things: Free Fallin', There's Something About Mary, Dance Moms, Jojo Siwa, Lawrence, She's All That, BridgertonPatron Study Questions:Emily: What do you make of Mr Eliot's return to the good graces of Sir Walter, and what does it tell you about each man?Hannah: How would you describe Anne's personality so far? (i.e. Is she shy or just quiet? Is she funny or reserved? Confident or insecure? etc.)Leigh: Up until now Anne has been presented as being unattractive to the other characters, having “lost her bloom.” Now suddenly in Lyme she catches the notice of Mr. Elliot and Captain Benwick. What - if anything - has changed about Anne?A Listener: What do you think Jane Austen is telling us about Bath, and from that, what do you think Anne's Bath experience will be like?Katrine: What are your thoughts on Lady Russell wanting to meet Captain Benwick and also Mr Elliot? And Mr Elliot himself, what do we think of him and his behaviour among the Elliot's? Is he what you expected?Becca's Study Questions: Topics discussed include Anne in different settings, Wentworth's movements, reuniting with the Elliots, our unresolved cliffhangers, and who Mr. Elliot likesFunniest Quote: "Sir Walter talked of his youngest daughter; “Mr Elliot must give him leave to present him to his youngest daughter” (there was no occasion for remembering Mary)."Questions Moving Forward: Will we be in Bath for a while? Will we see Wentworth again? Will he end up with Louisa or start courting Anne again? Will Benwick come to visit?Who wins the chapters? Mr. ElliotNext Episode: Volume 2 Chapters 4-5 / Chapters 16-17Our show art was created by Torrence Browne, and our audio is produced by Graham Cook. For bios and transcripts, check out our website at podandprejudice.com. Pod and Prejudice is transcribed by speechdocs.com. To support the show, check out our Patreon!Instagram: @podandprejudiceTwitter: @podandprejudiceFacebook: Pod and PrejudiceYoutube: Pod and PrejudiceMerch store: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/pod-and-prejudice?ref_id=23216
Natural order was restored as the Bairns went over 515 days unbeaten in the league and put to bed some demons with a win over Airdie at the Tattie Dome. It's a packed episode this week, as Ross and John look back at the game in the company of Elliots legend Brian Stuart; chat to Paul Berry from O'Neils about kits and look ahead to the Celtic game with Tam Spraggans aka Chris Toal from the Pint and Two Shots podcast and Craig McCaffery. Plus all the club news and we are still on the look out for celebrity supporters. Expect the Unexpected! Brought to you by Behind the Wall – Behind the Bairns since 1985 Falkirk's best selection of fine wines lagers, craft and cask ales, fantastic value food and great service. https://behindthewall.co.uk And Falkirk Football Fans in Training https://www.facebook.com/groups/1803421196843918 And Remember sign up for our Discord and Social Media: Discord - https://discord.com/invite/sVYbRzzusK Twitter/Insta/Facebook - @Falkirkdaft Get Merch: merch.falkirkdaft.co.uk For any sponsorship enquiries email sales@falkirkdaft.co.uk
Segment 1: Court Ruling on Christian Charities and Employment Practices In the first segment, Dr. Chaps delves into a recent court ruling that may allow Christian charities to be exempt from hiring individuals based on sexual orientation. This segment will explore the legal implications, the potential impact on religious organizations, and the ongoing debate surrounding religious freedom and anti-discrimination laws. Segment 2: Neal Mammon's "My Church Finder" at NRB In the second segment, Dr. Chaps interviews Neal Mammon at the NRB Conference, discussing his innovative platform, "My Church Finder." Neal shares how this tool is helping people connect with local churches that align with their beliefs, and how it's making a difference in the faith community. Segment 3: Chuck & Ashley Elliot on Miscarriage and Marriage The final segment features a heartfelt interview with Chuck and Ashley Elliot at NRB, where they discuss their new book, "I Used To Be..." The couple shares their personal journey through miscarriage and how it has impacted their marriage, offering hope and guidance for others facing similar challenges. Get free alerts at http://PrayInJesusName.org © 2024, Chaplain Gordon James Klingenschmitt, PhD. Airs on NRB TV, Direct TV Ch.378, Roku, AppleTV, Amazon FireTV, AndroidTV, GoogleTV, Smart TV, iTunes and www.PrayInJesusName.org
Today, Anne and Wentworth are thrown together in a variety of awkward situations, and we discover a love quadrangle. Topics discussed include the devastation of not being able to read your favorite book again for the first time, military superstitions, Hayter the hater, how much we love the Crofts, an abundance of Charleses, and Anne's deeply held beliefs.Glossary of Terms and Phrases:assizes (n): a court which formerly sat at intervals in each county of England and Wales to administer the civil and criminal law. freehold (n): permanent and absolute tenure of land or property with freedom to dispose of it at will.frigate (n): a warshiprizz (n): style, charm, or attractiveness; the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner.Glossary of People, Places, and Things: Little Women (2019), Pirates of the Caribbean, Adele, the Napoleonic Wars, Gilmore Girls, Friends, HOT TO GO!, Taylor Swift, Renee Rapp, Heartstopper, Chappell Roan, Olivia RodrigoPatron Study Questions:Ghenet: What song - Taylor or otherwise - is on repeat on Anne's Sad Girl™️ playlist?Emily: Hearing Mrs Croft's account of her life as a captain's wife, how do you think Anne would have changed over the eight years if she had been married to captain Wentworth instead of the eight years that she instead spent living with her family?Hannah: How much of the narration do you think is Anne's internal dialog? Is it all Jane Austen from her rocking chair or a mix of both?Hannah: Do you think Captain Wentworth is in love with one of the Musgrove sisters?Becca's Study Questions: Topics discussed include Wentworth's character and how he feels about Anne, how he feels about women, and the differences between the Musgroves' and Elliots' stances on marriage.Funniest Quote: "Mrs Musgrove had not a word to say in dissent; she could not accuse herself of having ever called them anything in the whole course of her life."Questions Moving Forward: Which sister does Wentworth like better? Who likes him more? How long will Wentworth stay?Who wins the chapters? Mrs. CroftOur show art was created by Torrence Browne, and our audio is produced by Graham Cook. For bios and transcripts, check out our website at podandprejudice.com. Pod and Prejudice is transcribed by speechdocs.com. To support the show, check out our Patreon!Instagram: @podandprejudiceTwitter: @podandprejudiceFacebook: Pod and PrejudiceYoutube: Pod and PrejudiceMerch store: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/pod-and-prejudice?ref_id=23216
Welcome to season FOUR of Pod and Prejudice! Today, we're diving into Persuasion, starting with the first three chapters. We meet the Elliots, get ready for a trip to Bath, and the navy comes to town. Topics discussed include: family history fans, our first certifiable DADDY, eternal life cults, the tale of William Walter Elliot Esquire, the Elliots' money problems, Elizabeth's gay romance, the Croft family and their connections to the area.Glossary of Terms and Phrases:Engrafted (v): incorporated in a firm or permanent way.Retrench (v): to reduce costs or spending in response to economic difficulty.Glossary of People, Places, and Things: 23andMe, Gilderoy Lockhart, Hugh Grant, Jenna Maroney (30 Rock), Jerry (Parks and Rec), Toby (The Office), Gwyneth Paltrow, Nobu, The Napoleonic WarsPatron Study Questions: From Joanna: Why does Austen focus the reader's attention on the Baronetage? From Megan R: What do we think of the use of narrative voice in these chapters? From Emily: Best guess so far on who the villain of the story is / will be?Becca's Study Questions: Topic discussed include the Elliots' status and what Austen is getting at by showing them in their fallen state, the status of the navy, how the stakes are changed by the age and marital status of our main characters, and who HE is. Funniest Quote: “A lady without a family was the very best preserver of furniture in the world.”Questions Moving Forward: Why does Anne hate Bath? Why was William Walter the worst? What is wrong with Mrs. Clay?Pod and Prejudice is sponsored this week by the Ballarat National Theatre in Australia. They've created a 13-episode audiobook version of Persuasion featuring a cast of 20 actors, plus original music and sound design. It's made entirely by volunteers, and it's available for free on all major podcast platforms. You can find all links at www.bnt.org.au. Our show art was created by Torrence Browne, and our audio is produced by Graham Cook. For bios and transcripts, check out our website at podandprejudice.com. Pod and Prejudice is transcribed by speechdocs.com. To support the show, check out our Patreon!Instagram: @podandprejudiceTwitter: @podandprejudiceFacebook: Pod and PrejudiceYoutube: Pod and PrejudiceMerch store: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/pod-and-prejudice?ref_id=23216
Welcome to Kellynch Hall, the ancestral manor of Sir Walter Elliot and the home of our forgotten and ignored heroine, Anne. Sir Walter, a vain and extravagant man, has found his spending has put them in a challenging financial position and our story begins with the Elliot's being forced to leave their home and rent it out to recoup costs. But it is not any ordinary tenant; it is someone connected to a name never forgotten by Anne, a love long since lost. Will this mean the chance of seeing him again? This episode covers chapters 1 - 3 of Jane Austen's Persuasion.We hope you enjoyed this episode of Ballarat National Theatre's adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion and will join us each week until all the episodes have been released. This production is directed and narrated by Liana Emmerson, with Sarah Barlow as assistant director for sound design and composition. This episode features the voices of:Alix Roberts as Anne ElliotNicholas Barker-Pendree as Sir Walter ElliotHelen Gibson as Elizabeth ElliotMiriam Wood as Lady RussellFred Preston as Mr ShepherdJodie Mattingley as Mrs ClayThis podcast features original compositions within the chapters by Sarah Barlow, Liana Emmerson and Helen Gibson that has been mastered by Charlie Hughes.This podcast was produced by Ballarat National Theatre on the lands of our traditional custodians the Wadawurrung people. Further sound production and cast recordings were made in the lands of the Wotherong, Wurundjeri, Woi-wurrung, and Boon Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation and the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation. Ballarat National Theatre acknowledges and pays respect to the traditional custodians and to their leaders, past and present. This podcast was made possible because of the financial contributions of the following patrons: Aparajita Raychaudhury, Josh Illichmann, Elaine Tso, Tessa Braun, Sean Rundell, Brianna Cook, Shelley Barnes, Xuan-Trang Nguyen, Sue Skewes, Sarah Macgregor, Lynne Gibbs and Rod Skewes. Thank you from the director for supporting access to technology that allowed this podcast to be made.This podcast was possible because of collaborative support for recording and music performance from Ballarat Grammar Academy: Sound and Performance. It is also supported by grant funding from the City of Ballarat.Support us by purchasing merchandise from our Threadless store. https://ballaratnationaltheatre.threadless.com/Find us on social media to stay in touch with us!Visit our website www.bnt.org.auFind us on Instagram @balnattheatreFollow us on Facebook: Ballarat National Theatre IncShop merch on Threadless https://ballaratnationaltheatre.threadless.com/
Episode 176 is here... the boys discuss 14 years ago, Moments with Felicity, Bdubs, Elliots, Phil's, Gino's, Three Gables, WVU Women's BBall, Tudors, Darian DeVries hire, Portal, Huggins and Loserville, Spring Football practice begins, NCAA Bracket, Scale of DeVries hire, 20+ wins, heaviest thing you moved, and tab issues.
The complete audiobook is available for purchase at Audible.com: voicesoftoday.net/persuasion Persuasion By Jane Austen Narrated by Catherine Bilson, Sarah Jane Rose, Graham Scott, Linda Barrans, and Denis Daly. Persuasion was the last novel completed by Jane Austen and was first published posthumously in December,1817. The heroine Anne Eliot, is something of an old maid – she is twenty-seven years old, still single and is considered by family and friends to have lost her youthful beauty. Several years earlier she had been engaged to Captain Frederick Wentworth, but the engagement was broken due to the insistence of her family that the captain lacked the wealth and status to make a suitable husband. Due to the improvidence of Anne's snobbish father, Sir Walter Elliot, it becomes necessary to rent out the family estate at Kellynch Hall, and the Elliots take up residence in Bath. Anne and Frederick meet again, and Anne is faced with a difficult choice between suitors: the honest and upright, but socially awkward Frederick, and Anne's charming, wealthy and devious cousin, William Elliot.
One of my favourites has joined me for his second appearance on the Grainmaker Wrestling Podcast this week as Elliot Tyler stops by!! We have a lot of fun with this one, talking all things wrestling, and not wrestling! We talk about Elliots return to the ring vs Daniel Makabe, his return to LPW, Super Bowl musical guests, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, binge watching tv shows and so much more!! Check it out!
Episode 172 is here.. the boys discuss dry January, Garrett starts jump school, Jayna was on TV, Walmart, Wizarding Weekend, Vargo's back at Elliots, WVU football schedule release, Women's bball team, Okla St and Cinci review, a beer belch, more men's wins or women's losses, talented disappointments, streaming sucks, and condoms.
Meet our good friend Elliot, Chief of Staff-AY for Authority Brands! Listen as we dive into Elliots world of acquisitions, calling the CEO for a job, being from Canada, what the process is like when purchasing a company and some of his early days!
To learn more about the origins of the opioid crisis, check out HBO- MAX: The Crime of the Century.You can learn more about Brent David Slone and his wife's fight for justice at https://youarewithinthenorms.com/2022/03/26/they-killed-my-husband-brent-david-slone-2016-cdc-opioid-guidelines%EF%BF%BC/If you want to read about the Elliots' tragic demise, visit https://www.cato.org/commentary/after-crackdown-pain-clinic-tragic-double-suicide Giving credit where credit is due: Christine Miserandino revolutionized the chronic illness community by sharing her Spoon Theory with the world on her blog: https://butyoudontlooksick.com Because of her contribution, those suffering with chronic illness are often referred to as "Spoonies" and we often refer to energy stored and expended in units of spoons.If you'd like to be a guest, please reach out to Ann at GotAnySpoons@gmail.com
Elliot Sirius Esse-Lindsay og Jonas Lihaug snakker om hvordan Elliots hjerne fungerer, og hvor forskjellige folk med ADHD er. De snakker om fordeler med hyperfokus, medisiner og temperament. Hva er Guttas Campus? Hvordan har de hjulpet Elliot med å fikse skolen? U(t)rolig er en podkastserie av og for ungdom med ADHD. Målgruppen er unge med ADHD mellom 15-30 år, og er produsert med støtte fra gjennom LNU. adhdnorge.no
Ross and John, are looking back at a crucial win against Queen of the South and we won't mention that John miss the goal (ahem) This week they are joined by guest pundit and one of the founders of the Elliots supporters bus, Derek Steel and he has some stories to tell. Plus all the club news, a look ahead to Kelty and best pubs in Falkirk... Expect the unexpected!
The latest Living Waters Podcast episode takes us on an intriguing journey—one that starts with the nostalgia of childhood memories and culminates in the profound story of missionaries Jim and Elisabeth Elliot. This isn't just another story. It's an introspection into our faith, our trust in God, and how far we are willing to go for our beliefs. This episode begins with the sharing of light-hearted anecdotes about childhood costumes and laughter-induced moments. The guys discuss the historical and sentimental depth of photography, reminiscing about personal experiences with Polaroid and Brownie box cameras. They even delve into the hilarity of Halloween costumes gone awry. The tone of the conversation then shifts from nostalgic to profound as they explore the incredible story of Jim and Elisabeth Elliot. These missionaries ventured into the dangers of Ecuador to reach the unreached Auca tribe. The passion, the risks, and the sacrifices they made in the name of their calling are both inspiring and humbling, and the guys discuss the often-overlooked dangers faced by missionaries and misconceptions about native tribes. The story of the Elliots paints a vivid picture of the perseverance, faith, and incredible courage that marks the lives of such daring individuals. Continuing with the story, Ray, Mark, E.Z., and Oscar examine Elisabeth's journey after the tragic death of her husband and her decision to live among the tribe that took her husband's life. Her acts of forgiveness and the legacy she left behind are extraordinary. The episode concludes with a discussion on the trials of faith, obedience to God's mission, and the importance of witnessing at home before venturing overseas. They highlight the importance of trust in God and readiness to follow His lead, even when the path is fraught with challenges. This episode isn't just about reliving the past or delving into the history of these remarkable missionaries. It's about inspiring listeners to examine their faith, their beliefs, and their willingness to make sacrifices for what they believe in. It's about fostering a deeper understanding of faith and inspiring listeners to take their own journey of faith, no matter what trials and tribulations they may face. The life and journey of Jim and Elisabeth Elliot serve as a testament to the power of faith, courage, and determination. They exemplify the lengths to which one can go when driven by a higher calling and the profound impact one can have when Living Waters' newest pro-life film What Is It? will be released worldwide—and your church is invited to participate by hosting a screening for your congregation.Thanks for listening! If you've been helped by this podcast, we'd be grateful if you'd consider subscribing, sharing, and leaving us a comment and 5-star rating! Visit the Living Waters website to learn more and to access helpful resources!You can find helpful counseling resources at biblicalcounseling.com.Check out The Evidence Study Bible and the Basic Training Course.You can connect with us at podcast@livingwaters.com. We're thankful for your input!Learn more about the hosts of this podcast.Ray ComfortEmeal (“E.Z.”) ZwayneMark SpenceOscar Navarro
Elliot talks about ending up in a Sundays time best seller. And Mike makes some beautifully poignant points about life. Tickets to Elliots fringe show https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/elliot-steel-love-and-hate-speech On the Patreon you get a bonus episode each week. Over 40 episodes of BTEC madness Patreon https://www.patreon.com/btecphilosophers
Since this episode was recorded Elliot has had to delete the clip so this could reignite everything. Sign up to the Patreon and go see Elliot live at the fringe.
DOMMMMMMMMM! Stugotz kicks us off with his Weekend Observations and includes a new game: Lundqvist for your Life. Then, Billy tells us an incredible story from his security run-in at the Florida Panthers Stanley Cup game. Plus, Tyler Herro has been upgraded to Questionable for Game 5, Dan feels robbed over some new info about the Stanley Cup that was in our studio last week, and clams. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right? Join us in following Anne from old haunts to new neighborhoods while she grapples with her own perceptions and those of everyone around her (but especially the other Elliots). Plus, for your entertainment, a bit about Bath and an impromptu book review! For show notes and a full transcript of this episode, visit our website: reclaimingjanepod.com Connect with us: Twitter: @reclaimingjane Facebook: @ReclaimingJanePod Instagram: @reclaimingjane Patreon: @reclaimingjanepod Email: reclaimingjanepod@gmail.com Music by LaTasha Bundy. Show art by Emily Davis-Hale.
Kyrah is one of the best and most exciting up and coming comedians in the UK and was a joy to have her in the studio. Check out the socials and Elliots fringe show is now on sale.
The landscape is changing for Miss Anne as the other Elliots leave for Bath. We're talking about the things that contribute to feeling secure in life – and how that gets interpreted differently depending on gender. For show notes and a full transcript of this episode, visit our website: reclaimingjanepod.com Connect with us: Twitter: @reclaimingjane Facebook: @ReclaimingJanePod Instagram: @reclaimingjane Patreon: @reclaimingjanepod Email: reclaimingjanepod@gmail.com Music by LaTasha Bundy. Show art by Emily Davis-Hale.
Welcome to a new season! Let's meet the Elliots... Vanity, mortality, and haunting the narrative are the orders of the day. For show notes and a full transcript of this episode, visit our website: reclaimingjanepod.com Connect with us: Twitter: @reclaimingjane Facebook: @ReclaimingJanePod Instagram: @reclaimingjane Patreon: @reclaimingjanepod Email: reclaimingjanepod@gmail.com Music by LaTasha Bundy. Show art by Emily Davis-Hale.
Peak Human - Unbiased Nutrition Info for Optimum Health, Fitness & Living
After developing some minor health issues of his own after an extended back-packing trip through Asia, Elliot decided to take responsibility and began researching ways by which he could find resolution without the use of pharmaceutical medications. Elliot soon discovered that the solution to his problems was rooted in nutrition and basic lifestyle principles. Elliot's experience, and the experience of those close to him, demonstrated the power of nutritional intervention. Elliots success in improving his own health journey inspired him to study nutrition at a professional standard so that he could go on to help others along the way. Elliot trained as a nutritional therapist at the College of Naturopathic Medicine in the UK, and later gained a qualification in Functional Medicine. https://www.eonutrition.co.uk/ BUY THE MEAT NosetoTail.org Preorder the film here: http://indiegogo.com/projects/food-lies-post SHOW NOTES 01:20 How Elliot got interested in thiamine 06:50 Are you getting enough Thiamine When animals were given large doses of thiamine before being exposed to head trauma, it was shown to mitigate many of the negative ramifications of the head injury, and allow for normal functions to be carried out at a greater rate than the control group. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0005272818301208 Very high doses of B1 have been found to completely abolish symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. https://www.hormonesmatter.com/new-developments-in-high-dose-thiamine-the-legacy-of-antonio-costantini/ Large doses of thiamine have also demonstrated two almost completely abolished symptoms of fibromyalgia seemingly overnight. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3669831/#:~:text=Some%20observations%20indicate%20that%20the,mitochondria%20or%20to%20enzymatic%20abnormalities. 21:20 Why don't more people know about thiamine? 38:00 Oxalates and thiamine Elliot credits much of his knowledge of oxalates to Susan Owens, who's website can be found here: http://lowoxalate.info/ 54:40 Brian's story with oxalates 59:10 signs and symptoms of oxalates issues 1:10:00 Why Elliot chose thiamine and oxalates 1:17:00 Thiamine and the diet 1:30:00 How to find Elliot Instagram- https://instagram.com/eonutrition?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y= Twitter- Elliot Overton (@EO_Nutrition) / Twitter https://twitter.com/eo_nutrition?lang=en YouTube - https://youtube.com/@EONutrition Website- https://www.eonutrition.co.uk/ BUY THE MEAT NosetoTail.org Preorder the film here: http://indiegogo.com/projects/food-lies-post Film site: http://FoodLies.org YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/FoodLies Follow along: http://twitter.com/FoodLiesOrg http://instagram.com/food.lies http://facebook.com/FoodLiesOrg
Episode 139 the Christmas edition is here... and the boys discuss Christmas shopping, cats and dogs, Justified article, Yellowstone is expensive, Elliots Christmas Party, Oak Hill game, more Elliots, early Sunday morning apologies, Vargo's mom is chill, Barkley at the Fish Fry, Franco Harris, Perez denied waiver (brief pause for the Godfather), Jefferson in the portal and other landing spots, signing day, Buffalo review and look ahead, ghost of Christmas past present and future, more surprised by how we shot the ball or defended, NFL weekend, best old school Christmas movies and underrated Christmas movies, and Christmas party stories.
The Bath paper announces the arrival of the Dowager Viscountess Dalrymple, and her daughter, the Honourable Miss Carteret; and the agony is how the Elliots introduce themselves properly. (For questions, comments, concerns, email us at secondimpressionspod@gmail.com) We have a Patreon! Access our review of Netflix's Persuasion (2022) here: https://www.patreon.com/secondimpressionspod. Our review will be available for free after our analysis of the novel.
Last time we spoke, the ironclad steam warship Nemesis had made a name for herself wrecking havoc upon the Qing navy. Lin Zexu was dismissed and Qishan began negotiations with the British. Hong Kong island was now under British occupation, Chuanbi fell to the British and it seems a treaty would be ratified but both the Emperor Daoguang and Britain's parliament rejected it forcing Britain to continue its war. The British attacked the Bogue, the First Bar island, Whampoa Island and soon Qishan was rushed to Beijing and cast into chains by the Emperor. Then the British attacked Canton hoping to force the Qing government to come to a deal. Emperor Daoguang was being fed false reports from his officials of the ongoing war, but how long could they delude him until everyone realized this was a serious war? This episode is the First Opium War Part 3: treaty of nanjing Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. As usual the reports coming back to the emperor were embezzled. It was said the British were stopped at the walls of Canton by the army of General Fang and repelled. In fact, on top of the Qing forces beating back the British it was said a peasant militia had killed thousands of British forcing them to flee Canton. Some went further than this and said the British expedition was on its last legs. Yishan's report to the Emperor said “the barbarians had begged the chief general that he would implore the great Emperor in their behalf, that he would have mercy upon them, and cause their debts to be repaid them, and graciously permit them to carry on their commerce, when they would immediately withdraw their ships from the Bocca Tigris, and never dare again to raise any disturbance."The Qing court urged the emperor to build upon the great victory and to bring an even larger army into the field against the barbarians. Now that the factory quarter was secure, Elliot turned his attention back to Amoy, but he still had a large problem. The British force was full on facing an epidemic of malaria and dysentery causing numerous casualties. The British warships were becoming hospitals for the countless decimated troops. Elliot had to take the force to Hong Kong island to treat the men. On July 21 of 1841 while Elliot was forming plans to attack Amoy a merchantman from India arrived with opium and a copy of the Canton Press. The newspaper read that Elliot had been dismissed by Palmerston on April 30th of 1841! It turned out the British press had vilified Elliot for making truces with the Chinese instead of pushing for a decisive victory. The Canton truce was lambasted because the 6 million was just a fraction of their demands. Elliot sent word back to Palmerston to ask why he was being dismissed and got a reply. “Throughout the whole course of your proceedings, you seem to have considered that my instructions were waste paper, which you might treat with entire disregard, and that you were at full liberty to deal with the interests of your country according to your own fancy.”. Elliot would make a public statement “it has been popularly objected to me that I have cared too much for the Chinese. But I submit that it has been caring more for lasting British honour and substantial British interests to protect a helpless and friendly people”. Even Queen victoria made a statement about Elliot when she wrote to her uncle King Leopold of Belgium “All we wanted might have been got, if it had not been for the unaccountably strange conduct of Charles Elliot, who completely disobeyed his instructions and trie to get the lowest terms he could”. Sir Henry Pottinger, a diplomat and veteran of the Afghan wars replaced Elliot as superintendent of Trade and given an annual salary of 6000 pounds, twice that of Elliots to rub it in. Sir William Parker was also sent to be commander in chief and both he and Pottinger held impressive resumes and vast military experience. Pottinger served during the Napoleonic wars as a cabin boy at the age of 12 and then later joined the Indian army. Parker at the age of 31 retired with the rank of captain and a large fortune in prize money from the French ships he captured during the Napoleonic wars. Parker had been spending 15 years on his estate in Litchfield as a gentleman farmer before being called out of retirement by Palmerston. Parker and Pottinger arrived in August of 1841 and were met graciously by Charles Elliot before he left with his family back home to England. The opium smugglers were delighted to finally be rid of Charles Elliot and his moralistic distaste for the opium trade. They had hoped the new guys would be more amenable than Elliot and were in for quite a shock. One of the first things Pottinger did was tell the residents of Canton “could allow no consideration connected with mercantile pursuits…to interfere with the strong measures which he might deem necessary, and if they put either themselves or their property in the power of the Chinese authorities, it must be clearly understood to be at their own risk and peril.”. While Elliot was argued to be a Sinophile, Pottinger was the very opposite a Sinophobe. Pottinger did not have any understanding of Chinese culture nor their protocol for saving face in dealings. When the governor of canton came to greet Pottinger in Macao, Pottinger simply sent a subordinate to meet the man insulting him greatly. On August 21 of 1841 the British armada was 32 ships strong, with 4 regiments of over 27,000 men aboard them. Pottinger left 1350 men to garrison Hong Kong and sailed for Amoy (present day Xiamen). Amoy was a granite island around 300 miles north of Macao and not really of any value, it was quite barren, but it was closer to Beijing and thus a threat to Emperor Daoguang. Amoy had been fortified by the Qing recently, they built a few batteries on Gulangyu island which lies just off the coast of Amoy and they prepared defenses all along Amoy's coast. Amoys coast held 96 embrasures and over 200 cannons to defend its harbor. Then the Qing sent a force to garrison it, adding an additional 42 cannons and 10,000 troops. Gulangyu island's batteries had 76 cannons including some more modern artillery smuggled over from singapore. The British armada first made contact with Gulangyu island as it protected the approach to Amoy and the Druid, Blonde and Modeste blasted its fortifications from 400 yards away. As was typical of this war, the cannons at Amoy and Gulangyu were antiquated and in fixed positions. To give you a visual idea of the issue, these cannons could not swivel well, they were basically fixed to the ground, greatly hampering range and accuracy. Thus when the British ships began to bombard them they could not effectively return fire. After 90 minutes of bombardment, the Qing cannons went silent and the British began landing troops without any opposition. Major General Gough disembarked from Nemesis by 3:45pm as Amoy's batteries were neutralized and 26 chinese war junks in the harbor were put out of commission. Despite the ferocity of the British bombardment , Amoy's fortresses cannons began opening fire upon the troops and Gough personally led a bayonet charge towards the fortresses southern wall. The Qing soldiers on the fort began to fire their matchlocks at the British but were overwhelmed by the enemy's gunfire. Soon many of the Qing soldiers routed and when the Qing commander realized the situation was hopeless he marched straight into the sea committing suicide by drowning himself. The reports going back to Emperor Daoguang were “that the Manchu commander rushed out to drive back the assailants as they landed, fell into the water and died” sort of a positive spin on the story. The British forces scaled the forts walls and opened its gates. Inside the fort the British found a large number of opium pipes lying beside the cannons its alleged. When the British found Amoy's treasury they found a record indicating that there were thousands of silver taels, but none were to be found. It turned out the Qing officials had snuck the silver out before the British arrived. Pottinger took no time ordering the armada to refit and continue sailing north, now he wanted to make up for Elliot's giving away of Chusan. On September 25 of 1841, the armada assembled to attack the fort of Dinghai on Chusan for a second time. Dinghai was much better fortified than Amoy and held more cannons. Dinghai's garrison was commanded by General Keo who had a large number of Gingalls. Gingalls are quite interesting and a bit comical to look at. Google one up and you will understand immediately, try to imagine a giant gun that takes a tripod and 2 men to fire. The gingall was one of the most used weapons by the Qing during this part of the century and it was not very effective against the British. The defenders of Dinghai put up an impressive resistance as noted by the British. The British sent the 55th foot to assault them and took the Dinghai fort, losing 2 men with 28 wounded. When General Keo knew the British had won the battle he slit his own throat. The British found 100 iron guns, 36 outdated brass cannons and 540 gingalls in the fort indicated the capability of the Qing military. Pottinger wrote back to Palmerston to make his resolve adamantly clear “under no circumstance will Dinghai and its dependencies be restored to the Qing government, until the whole of the demands of England are not only complied with, but carried into full effect”. Catastrophe hit again when the British ship Nerbudda transporting some British and Indian soldiers went aground off Taiwan. The British soldiers fled in lifeboats leaving the Indians behind who spent 5 days on ship until dehydration and starvation forced them to go ashore on rafts. The Qing forces in Taiwan seized them and imprisoned them. In march, an opium ship named the Ann also went aground on Taiwan and 14 of her survivors were imprisoned alongside the Indians from Nerbudda. The Qing officials were desperate for good news and sent reportes to the Emperor that a large naval battle had been won at Taiwan and 2 ships were sunk. Emperor Daoguang was delighted and rewarded the Taiwan officials with honors and silver. Meanwhile the British armada left a garrison at Dinghai and sailed for Jintai which lies 10 miles east of the mainland. They began to bombard Jintai's forts on October 10 and it proved to be a difficult task as its forts were atop a large cliff. Around 4000 Qing troops garrisoned the city, quite a few were Mongol bannermen. Major General Gough sent a force of 15000 men to flank the fort on the cliff while Wellesley and Blenhem covered their march with bombardment. By the afternoon the British had 3 men dead and 16 wounded, but as they allegedly killed several hundred Chinese. Jintai was taken by the late afternoon and the Qing commander Yukien attempted to drown himself, but having failed to do so committed suicide by overdosing on opium. The British captured around 150 cannons and noticed amongst the majority which were antiquated, the usual sort they kept finding, a few were state of the art. The Qing were replicating the British style cannons it seemed. Many prisoners were taken, but Gough had to let them go; he simply did not have enough men to spare to guard them. Yet before letting the POW's go, the British attempted a rather heinous act. The British marines used their jackknives to cut off the Manchu queues of the Qing prisoners as take away gifts. Before too many of these marines were able to do so, to the credit of Gough he ran to the scene to stop the act. After securing Jintai, the British sent Nemesis up the Yung River and soon discovered it was crossable and that they could navigate it to get to Ningbo. On October 13th, the British armada landed troops on Ningbo 10 miles southeast of Jintai. Ningbo's gates opened for them without a fight as the Royal Irish band played “saint patrick's day in the morning”. The British found the building that held the prisoners from the Kite and burned down the prison. Pottinger wrote to Palmerston that he “looked forward with considerable satisfaction to plundering Ningbo as a reprisal for the maltreatment there of British prisoners” and that is just what he did. The British looted 160,000 in funds and placed a 10% taxation on its citizens. Pottinger also confiscated provisions, Chinese ships, property and the main Pagoda's bell as a prize sent back to India. The Qing authorities left Ningbo and the British failed to set up any form of police and thus many looters ran rampant, Chinese and British alike. Gough and Parker were livid at the conditions, the inhabitants of Ningbo had opened the gates without a fight and should be left unmolested. They both argued Pottinger was allowing British honour to be stained at Ningbo. Now while a lot of these victories seemed easy they were also pyrrhic in nature. Disease continuously reared its ugly head reducing the British troops. Every place they occupied had to be garrisoned and now they were down to 700 able men and had to winter in Ningbo. The humiliated and pissed off citizens of Ningbo began hurling rocks at the occupiers. Soon it became very apparent police were needed at Ningbo and thus a Qing official was set up as the chief of police named Yu Dechang. In reality the British were having Yu Dechang compile a list of the wealthiest residents of Ningbo so they could extort them for more money. Yu was also doing something else, he was spying for the Qing military who was currently massing troops outside Ningbo to retake the city! Emperor Daoguang had taken up action as soon as reports came that Ningbo had fallen. He sent his cousin Prince Yijing to recruit an army to “drive the English into the sea”. Prince Yijing was a 48 year old general and a honored veteran of wars against Muslim rebels in Xinjiang province from a decade earlier. Yijing brought with him quite an unlikely band of literary scholars whose expertise lay in confucian teachings and not the art of war. The scholars also happened to be rampant opium addicts and were deemed by the British later to be “weekend warriors”. On march 10th of 1842, Yijing had a force of 5000, mostly ill trained intellectual types. When they came to the gate of Ningbo they were met with a head impaled on a pike and a sign reading “this is the head of the Manchu official Lu Tai-lai who came here to obtain military information”. Prince Yijing was enraged and ordered his men to scale the walls and charge the center of the city. However the British had spies of their own who had warned them of the incoming assault force. The British had deliberately left the city's western city gate quasi open in order to give the impression they did not mean to defend it. In truth the western gate had been mined heavily and when the Qing rushed to it, the mines exploded killing many. Over in the southern gate the Qing pushed back some British defenders all the way up to the city center. British soldiers reported that the Qing attacks appeared to be visibly impaired by opium, including their 2nd in command General Zhang Yingyun who was leading the rearguard once the city was breached. In the city center Major General Gough with 150 men and a field artillery piece met Zhang's force with massive gunfire. The artillery piece, a single howitzer tore the Qing troops to pieces at such a close range. Corpses began to pile apparently 15 feet high blocking the streets if you believe British sources. Not all of the Qing were these intellectual types by the way, there was a volunteer force of 150 aboriginal Chinese from Golden River. This group were not using matchlocks and instead pikes,swords and spears which were their favored weapons traditionally. The 150 unfortunate and very brave souls had rushed the British position and were completely annihilated. The British lost 5 men and reported to have inflicted up to 600 casualties upon the Qing. Bei Qingjiao a literary scholar with the Qing forces reported Zhang to behaving bizarrely during the battle in the city center. Bei reported that Zhang was commanding with an opium pipe in his mouth and collapsed in a narcotic daze. When his men began to rout, Zhang also abandoned the fight by crawling onto a litter and fleeing. It was also reported the Qing forces had devised a rather comical military tactic during this battle. In order to destroy the British warships, some of the Qing wanted to throw monkeys holding firecrackers at the ships to set them ablaze. This was not the first time the idea was thought of during the first opium war by the way, though there is little evidence it ever occurred. There was also an idea put forward to sent Chinese merchants with smallpox contaminated meat to weakened the British prior to the attack, but General Yijing vetoed this plan deeming it to be too unethical. The battle had a devastating psychological effect on the Qing military. They had suffered nearly 600 casualties and taken nearly no British down with them. The Qing commanders were realizing the British technological superiority was too significant and a defeatist mindset began to set into the Qing military as a whole. For failing to retake Ningbo, Emperor Daoguang sentenced Prince Yijing to death. Prince Yijing would escape death and instead was exiled to Turkestan. When the Qing forces made their retreat from Ningbo and sent over 270 Chinese vessels to blockade Jintai, but it seems the commander of that force, Chen Tingchen did not want to risk an invasion and never landed troops. Instead they found a British shipwreck and salvaged pieces from it to sent to Beijing as proof they had won a great naval victory. Having failed to take Ningbo, the Qing began to poison its food supply which prompted the British to attack a village named Tzeki just up the river in retaliation where many Qing soldiers had fled to. Pottinger returned to Hong Kong in February of 1842 and found the city transformed since he last saw it. Now it really looked like a westernized city, there was a four mile road, 2 dozen brothels and builders busy constructing everywhere. The tea trade was continuing in Canton and so was the opium trade. It was estimated every 4th ship that stopped at Hong Kong was carrying opium at this point. Another 100 ships were sent to China carrying thousands of troops. Gough went from having a force of 3000 to 10,000. By may of 1842 the hostilities would fire up again. On may 18th, the British were sailing further north edging closer to Beijing to put pressure on the Emperor and came across Chapu, a town 75 miles northwest of Chusan island. Major General Gough divided his force of 2220 men into 3 groups with a right and left wing and artillery in the center. The British force landed on Chapu without resistance until they reached a joss house further inland. There were 300 Chinese barricaded inside the joss house who refused to surrender and fired upon the British inflicting casualties. The fight over the joss house went on for many hours as the British stormed parts of Chapu city bombarding its walls with artillery. Gough lost one of his senior officer Lt Colonel Nicholas Tomlinson who died leading a breaching party of the 18th Royal Irish storming the city. Aside from the Joss house fight and the initial breaches the battle went over quite well for the British as the Qing defenders had only seriously guarded one side of the city walls. In Goughs words after the battle “the enemy were completely taken by surprise as usual, they were unprepared for anything except a frontal attack. They gave way on all sides and took to flight, with the exception of a body of some 300 Tartar troops who seized a small joss-house and held it with indomitable pluck and perseverance”. The Royal Irish were infuriated at the loss of their commander and wanted to kill POW's, but British officers intervened. Instead the POW's were subjugated to having their Manchu queues tied up together in groups of 8 to 10 men and marched in public after the city was officially captured. Despite this many POW's were bayoneted. When the British found the main Qing barracks they found a horrid scene. The Manchu had a military tradition of not being taken alive and a large force of Manchu had committed suicide after poisoning their wives and children. Black and bloated faces were seen alongside soldiers with slit throats. The British reported 13 dead and 52 wounded taking the city while the Qing they claimed lost thousands. Next the British sailed forth to attack Wusong which lay at the mouth of the Yangtze River. By taking Wusong they would be able to cut off the important second capital of Nanking from its riverway. They believed taking Nanking would bring the Qing to the bargaining table and would be easier than an attack on Beijing itself. They could also take Shanghai and cut its tax revenue to Beijing. On June 13th, the British armada made it to Wusong after being fired upon by forts along the Huangbu river, an estuary of the Yangtze which caused 3 deaths. They laid anchor off Wusong and began naval bombardments of its port on June 16th. After a few hours the Qing forts stopped returning fire and the British began landing troops to assault them. As was becoming typical, the Qing defenders had mostly fled during the cannon exchange but some stayed put to meet the invaders such as the Qing commander Chen Huacheng. Chen would go down fighting to the end as the British scaled the fort walls and occupied them. Hundreds of Qing soldiers were killed during the invasion and bombardments and by the late evening Wusong was occupied in full. On June 19th, the British marched on Shanghai just a few miles south of Wusong. They found no sign of the enemy there, just 2 pieces of artillery left on the city's walls. The invaders scaled the walls and opened the gates as its residents fled the city. The residents of Shanghai bribed the British with 300,000 dollars to prevent looting, but the British officers simply let their men plunder. An eyewitness saw some of this pillaging go down. A wealthy and respected Qing official named Cao was living in a walled home with a courtyard in the suburbs of Shanghai when some British soldiers kicked down his front door. They began to loot the man's entire food supply and demanded of Cao to show them where he was hiding his silver. They put a knife to his throat and shouted “fan ping! Fan ping!” meaning “foreign cakes” an idiom for silver. Despite their belief the man was hiding silver about, they did not find any. Cao and his family lost all their food and to make matters worse after a few days some Chinese looters came by and stole some food Cao's family had found. Cao was forced to go door to door begging for food to feed his family, but the city had been picked clean. Cao himself wrote “foreigners have contented themselves with loot and rape, but as the city fell without resistance there has been no general slaughter. They are pressing the people into their service to do all their heavy work, such as shifting gun emplacements and gunpowder. They take anyone, buddhist monks, notables, and well known people”. Despite Shanghai's commercial and strategic importance, the British only occupied it for a week before marching towards Nanking. By taking Nanking they hoped to end the entire war, but between them and Nanking was the walled city of Zhengjiang around 50 miles west of Nanking. Zhengjiang held around 1583 bannerman and 2700 Green Standard Army troops and by mid july the British were blockading the route between the Yangtze river and the grand canal. On the morning of July 21 the British landed 4 brigades and attacked Zhengjiang from 3 different directions. The 1st brigade of 2310 soldiers and supported by an artillery brigade made a frontal assault attacking a Qing army in front of Zhengjiang's walls. The 2nd Brigade of 1832 men attacked Zhengjiangs western gate supported by a naval bombardment. The 3rd brigade consisting of 2155 soldiers attacked the northern gate. At 7am the British 3rd brigade landed at Beigu mountain and its grenadiers charges the north gate as bannermen atop Zhengjaings walls fired down upon them using gingalls mounted on tripods. The 3rd brigade managed to set up artillery battered the defenders atop the walls who in the haste were trying to fire back with their own artillery. After an hour the artillery of the bannermen were knocked out and the British grenadiers bayonet charged the gate and scaled the walls bringing the fight to the wall tops. The British 1st brigade landed and took some highlands near Jinshan and by 8am began to attack the Green standard army stationed outside the walls of Zhengjiang. When the 1st brigade began to battle the Green standard army, the British 2nd brigade stormed the western gate as the armada naval bombarded its walls. There were many houses in front of the western gate which the British occupied and fired from at the wall top defenders. The bannermen atop the walls desperately fired using gingalls upon the invaders but could not stop the British grenadiers from reaching the gate. British engineers blew up bombs using gunpowder at the west gate and it was soon breached. The Green Standard army occupied with the 1st british brigade saw the city had been breached and fires were emerging. They assumed the city was a lost cause and the commander of the Green standard army ordered a retreat. Within the city the street fighting was fierce and the British third and second brigades managed to fight towards another pincering the bannermen within the city. The Manchu commander of the bannermen, General Hailin ordered the Manchu to kill themselves rather than fall to the enemy. Again families were poisoned and soldiers strangled or slit their throats. General Hailin gathered up all his court papers into a pile, sat upon the pile and lit himself on fire. Pottinger wrote of this scene “he was worthy of a nobler and better fate”. The non Manchu residents of the city did not share this view however as before his death General Hailin ordered all the non manchu residents executed on charges of treason. I am hardly qualified to explain this, but just know the animosity between the Manchu and Han Chinese at this time was particularly bitter. A poet named Zhu Shiyun who lived on the outskirts of Zhengjiang city gave an account of this event. Of General Hailin he wrote “Hailin was in a very excited state. All over the town he arrested harmless people on the ground that they were in league with the enemy. He handed them over to the Prefect to imprison and flog. It was only at the four gates that he had a cannon pointing outwards. Inside the city his whole activity consisted in arresting passersby on suspicion of their being traitors. Whenever women or children saw Manchu soldiers, they fled in terror, upon which the soldiers ran after them and slew them, announcing to Hailin that they had disposed of traitors , for which he gave them rewards. The Barbarians different and the same were now on both sides of the gates”. The British had around 40 dead, a hundred wounded and allege they killed perhaps a thousand Chinese. In contrast to the Manchu led horror, public opinion in the city improved of the invaders on July 24th when the British hung a rapist and looter from their own ranks. They hung placards to the men warning anyone would face the same fate for such crimes. It should be said, both these men happened to be Indian, a noticeable pattern in this war, the blaming of everything upon Indian soldiers. By August 16, a proclamation was made officially forbidding looting oh and on September the 5th opium was proclaimed fully legal and traded to the residents. Major General Gough used his artillery to blast holes in Zhengjians walls before taking the army to march onwards, making sure the city could be easily retaken later if need be. With the capture of Zhengjiang, the British gained control over the traffic upon the Yangtze river. The British quickly blockaded the Grand Canal paralyzing the region. The governor of Nanking, Yilibu sent word to the emperor summing up the situation “The Yangtze River is a region like a throat, at which the whole situation of the country is determined. Now they have already cut off our salt and grain transportation and stopped the communication of merchants and travelers. That is not a disease like ringworm, but a trouble in our heart and stomach.”. In addition to all of that, the path to march upon Nanking was now wide open. After that it was Beijing that could be marched upon! Emperor Daoguang appointed Yilibu and a Manchu court official named Qiying to negotiate with the British. The emperor gave Qiying plenipotentiary power and ordered both men to do anything necessary to halt the British advance before it reached Beijing. Meanwhile the British were marching towards Nanking with naval forces sailing the river threatening to bombard the city. Yilibu quickly raised the white flag before a shot could be fired. Unlike previous Qing officials, both Yilibu and Qiying recognized the impending disaster should they embellish reports to the emperor. No they knew they had to tell him straight what was occuring to make sure they were not caught doing anything that would bite them in the ass later so to say. One of their first reports back to Emperor Daoguang to explain the situation in Nanking read “should we fail to ease the situation by soothing the barbarians, they will run over our country like beasts, doing anything they like”. Yilibu approached the British displaying the typical arrogance the British had become accustomed to in China. Yilibu sent a low ranking soldier to meet Pottinger. Pottinger as you might remember was …well an asshole honesty, a complete sinophobe who knew not much about the rigid Qing protocol and its hierarchical nature, but he knew when he was being insulted. Pottinger declined the low ranking solider and demanded to meet with Yilibu himself, whom he assumed held plenipotentiary power. Pottinger accused the Qing of performing the same ruse they did with Elliot countless times, making promises without the emperors authority so they could just back out of them later. While Yilibu hesitated, Pottinger made a point by ordering attacks on local villages along the Yangtze river. Yilibu did not hold plenipotentiary power however and the Emperor quickly dispatched a seal to give it to him when Yilibu pleaded for it. As Yilibu stalled waiting for the seal, Pottinger brought up the steam warship Queen and trained her guns on the walls of Nanking and began setting up 18 howitzers on the beach to rain hell into the city. Yilibu panicked and sent his subordinate Zhang Xi to meet the British aboard the Queen. Zhang Xi took a very aggressive stance with Pottinger demanding he stop his threatening actions or else. Pottinger replied he would attack Beijing after Nanking fell, a blunt message. Zhang Xi retorted that the British military successes were only due to the kindness and forbearance of the Emperor saying “who cannot bear to kill or injure human creatures. But if pushed too far would arm every inhabitant of the great empire to fight off the invaders”. The interpreter Thom looked at Zhang Xi and objected to saying his message to Pottinger and Zhang Xi screamed while pounding the table with his fists an spitting on the floor “you kill people everywhere, plunder goods, and act like rascals; that is very disgraceful; how can you say you are not rebellious?”. Zhang Xi was escorted off the ship after his outburst which honestly could have made the British attack Nanking at any moment, kinda a loose cannon of an official. Luckily on August 9th, Yilibu received the seal of plenipotentiary power just as the British brought Cornwallis into firing range of the city walls and landed troops to camp outside them. On August 11, Yilibu offered 3 million off the bat to postpone the British attack upon Nanking, he even said Qiying would bring it himself to Queen Victoria. Pottinger agreed to postpone and begin negotiations. Yilibu then began the classic Chinese ploy of procrastination instead of negotiation. He hoped to weary the enemy down. When Pottinger sent Yilibu a treaty, he pretended to examine it, but in truth was just biding time. Then the British told him they would commence attacks on August 13th. Yilibu was cornered now, he begrudgingly made an appearance aboard the Queen and promised to begin serious negotiations if the British called off the attack. Yilibu and other emissaries met for 4 days traveling back and forth from ship to shore until Yilibu agreed to terms. However despite his potentiary powers, Yilibu argued he still had to send a copy of the treaty to the Emperor for approval. Basically the terms were so terrible he knew he was facing death if he just signed off on them. The British understood Yilibu's predicament and allowed for this, then they invited him and his colleagues aboard Cornwallis on August 20th to wine and dine them. They served the Chinese tea and cherry brandy and Yilibu and Qiying put on a show of Qing manners by bowing before a painting of Queen Victoria. Macartney, Napier and Amherst probably smiling from their graves. While Yilibu awaited Beijing's approval, Pottingers spoke to him about the opium trade. At first Yilibu refused to discuss the subject all together, until Pottinger told the interpreter to tell him the meeting would be kept secret. Then Yilibu explained the decades of hardship opium had brought upon the Qing dynasty and suggested a common solution. Why could the British simply stop the production of the crop in its held parts of India? Pottinger replied that the Americans, French or some other nation would simply take up the business and added “If your people are virtuous, they will desist from the evil practice; and if your officers are incorruptible, and obey their orders, no opium can enter your country.”. Yilibu quickly realized the opium issue was a deal breaker and dropped the matter. Yilibu was under terrible stress, while he was dealing with the British he was simultaneously receiving orders from Beijing to not meet with the British until they sailed away from Nanking. Yilibu ignored these imperial edicts and continued negotiations which was quite brave of him. When the British demanded Fuzhou be opened to British trade, Beijing ordered him not to allow it, but Yilibu ignored that order, also accepting the term. The result of the negotiations was the Treaty of Nanking and it represented a total diplomatic defeat for the Qing dynasty. The original demand for 6 million in reparations for the 20,000 chests of confiscated opium and the cost for Britain's war reparations ballooned to a sum of 21 million. That was half of China's yearly tax revenues back then. Yilibu accepted the amount to be paid in installments. The British gained everything they wanted except for the legalization of the opium trade in China. Despite written instructions from Lord Palmerston to “strongly impress upon the Chinese plenipotentiaries how much it would be to the interest of that Government to legalize the trade,” Pottinger did not press upon the issue after receiving a message from Emperor Daoguang through Yilibu “gainseeking and corrupt men will for profit and sensuality defeat my wishes, but nothing will induce me to derive revenue from the vice and misery of my people.”. The Emperor Daoguang refused to agree to a formal recognition of the treaty and sent another letter to Yilibu to give Pottinger “Our nations have been united by friendly commercial intercourse for 200 years. How then, at this time, are our relations so suddenly changed, as to be the cause of a national quarrel from the spreading of the opium poison? Multitudes of our Chinese subjects consume it, wasting their property and destroying their lives. How is it possible for us to refrain from forbidding our people to use it?”. The Qing government did not want to admit publicly that a shocking amount of the Chinese population were suffering from opium addiction. On August 27th of 1842 Beijing approved what it thought to be the complete text of the treaty of nanking. The draft was signed on August 29th aboard the Cornwallis and Yilibu was so sick he had to be carried onto the British ship to sign it. The signatories, Yilibu, Qiying, Parker, Gough and Pottinger gathered in the cabin of Cornwallis as the seals were fixed. A lunch was served afterwards as the Qing banner and Union Jack flew on Cornwallis's masts. Qiying insisted on stuffing Pottinger's mouth with a candied plum at dessert time stating it was a Manchu custom and symbol of agreement. An English crewmember who witnessed this said “I shall never forget Sir Henry's face determined resignation”. The Qing left after lunch and despite Qiyings playfulness with the plums it masked their despair at the terms of the treaty. The British had agreed to give back Chusan and Amoy after the reparations were paid in full. They demanded access for trade and permanent residence at the ports of Canton, Amoy, Fuzhou, Ningbo and Shanghai. Each port had to have a British consular official and the limited trade through the Cohong system was to be abolished. The pretense that Britain was a tributary inferior nation to the Qing dynasty was to be abolished and now they were to be treated as equal nations. Hong Kong island was to be a permanent British colony and Nanking would be blockaded by Britain's armada until the first reparation payment of 6 million was paid. Yilibu was so terrified of the Emperor he sent an edited version of the Treaty of Nanking to Beijing omitting the points the Emperor and screamed not to allow. The British flotilla at Nanking remained for several weeks until the British crews began to all get sick. By october 12 of 1842 the 6 million was paid and the British fleet departed Nanking. Those shipwrecked prisoners from the Ann and Nerbudda would become unfortunate victims. The Daoguang emperor ordered their execution and on August 10th the captives were taken 3 miles outside the city walls and executed. As reported in the Chinese repository a publication in Canton All the rest—one hundred and ninety-seven [prisoners]—were placed at small distances from each other on their knees, their feet in irons and hands manacled behind their backs, thus waiting for the executioners, who went round, and with a kind of two-handed sword cut off their heads without being laid on a block. Afterwards their bodies were all thrown into one grave, and their heads stuck up in cages on the seashore. Pottinger threatened retaliation for the massacre but the governor of Canton Yiliang said he arrested the ring leaders and they would be punished at Beijing for their crimes. Back in Britain the Treaty of Nanking was hailed, the Illustrated London News crowned “it secures us a few round millions of dollars and no end of very refreshing tea. It gives an impetus to trade, cedes us one island in perpetuity, and in short puts that sort of climax to the war which satisfies our interests more than our vanity and rather gives over glory a preponderance to gain,”. The London Times hailed it and the British fleet “early victorian vikings”. Much like the Treaty, the press made no mention of the reason why the war occurred, ie the illicit opium trade. Now Hong Kong island would fill its function as an offloading point for opium. Despite the Qing governments best efforts, demand in China rose for opium and it continued to flood into China. Many in the British parliament wanted to abolish the trade and many tried. In the end most paid lip service to it. An Order in Council gave Pottinger the power to “forbid the opium traffic in Hong Kong.” Pottinger paid lip service by issuing a lukewarm threat on August 1, 1843: “Opium being an article the traffic in which is well known to be declared illegal and contraband by the laws and Imperial Edicts of China, any person who may take such a step will do so at his own risk, and will, if a British subject, meet with no support or protection from HM Consuls or other officers.” The Opium merchants ignored Britain's sanctions and efforts to stop them were laughable. The Opium trade continued to thrive in China and the end of the First Opium war had done nothing to end the controversy over the illegal trade. Jardine and Mathson both left China and entered parliament as staunch Whig supporters. Their Chinese counterpart Howqua died of diarrhea a year after the signing of the treaty of nanking. Howqua most likely died the richest man on Earth at the time. Lin Zexu was eventually forgiven by the Emperor in 1845 and assigned a new post but died near Canton in 1850 before he could return to service. Emperor Daoguangs wrath over the treaty of Nanking fell unevenly. Qiying was still in his favor, while Yilibu was sent into exile in chains. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. And so the Qing dynasty sued for peace, but at what cost? The underlying problem had not changed, that of Opium. Could China rid itself of the illicit substance or what conflict rear its ugly head yet again?
Last time we spoke, Lin Zexu's efforts against opium were not going well enough and he was losing favor with Emperor Daoguang and it seems his aggressive actions had brought war upon the Qing dynasty. The British warships proved too formidable, their cannons superior and the Qing were losing territory such as Chusan Island. Even the mighty Dagu forts were no match for the British warships who sailed through Chinese waters uncontested. Qishan began talks with the British, telling them Lin Zexu might be fired at any moment and that he would most likely be his replacement. Elliot faced a hostage crisis yet again with the captives from the Kite being held in Ningbo and had to negotiate a ceasefire in the meantime, but now Britain's most powerful weapon had just arrived in China, the Nemesis. This episode is the First Opium War Part 2: The Nemesis Terror Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. The emergence of Steam power in the 19th century is somewhat comparable to the emergence of nuclear power in the 20th century. Its power would make its worldwide debut during the First Opium War. The 660 ton steam warship Nemesis was launched in 1839 and arrived in China at the height of the Ningbo prisoner crisis. Nemesis had an iron hull giving it outstanding armor for its time. The coal consumption for the Nemesis was an absolute nightmare and this made it journey from Britain to China quite a slow process as it had to make numerous coal stops. Nemesis arrived to Macao on November 25 of 1840 and soon crossed the Gulf of Canton to sent anchor in Danggu, awaiting the arrival of the man of war Melville. Nemesis arrived at the perfect time to intimidate the Qing as Qishan and the 2 Elliots negotiated. The 3 men would meet aboard the Melville outside Canton harbor on November 29th and Qishan offered some promising news. Governor General Lin Zexu had finally been fired by Emperor Daoguang as a result of not fully eradicating the Opium trade. The Emperor had said to Lin Zexu “Externally you wanted to stop the trade, but it has not been stopped. Internally you wanted to wipe out the outlaws, but they are not cleared away. This has caused the waves of confusion to arise and a thousand interminable disorders. In fact you have been as if your arms were tied, without knowing what to do. It appears that you are no better than a wooden image” ouch. Lin Zexu tried to make his case to the Emperor stating the barbarians were being ruined by dysentery and malaria and predicted they would be unable to maintain the troops so far from their home and soon have to depart. Lin Zexu begged Emperor Daoguang not to give into the barbarians. They would best deploy the military rather than diplomacy. “The more they get the more they demand, and if we do not overcome them by force of arms there will be no end to our troubles. Moreover there is every probability that if the English are not dealt with, other foreigners will soon begin to copy and even outdo them”. Emperor Daoguang angrily replied to this “if anyone is copying, it is you, who are trying to frighten me, just as the English try to frighten you!”. And so, Lin Zexu left Canton in disgrace, but while enroute to Beijing he was given orders to return to Canton to assist Qishan in negotiations with the barbarians. The 2 Elliots when hearing about Lin Zexu's dismissal were quite relieved, they assumed this meant the Emperor was planning to make peace. Charles Elliots at this time would also lose the help of his cousin George Elliot as George had developed heart problems and had to sail back to England. For the negotiations at Canton, Elliot wanted to bring some more intimidation so he gathered some warships and more troops at Canton. Qishan began negotiations on December 4th, by apologizing for the cannon attack on the British by the Bogue forts and as I said previously handed over poor old Stanton. Elliot began negotiations by demanding 4 ports be opened to trade, Shanghai, Ningbo, Fuzhou and Amoy. He also demanded the surrender of an unspecified island, reimbursement for the confiscated opium chest and of course reparations for the war itself, quite a large pill to swallow. Elliot was also hoping such demands would be met quickly, because the British began to fear both France and Russia would begin joining into the war and plying for their own share in its spoils. Qishan agreed to pay 5 million over the course of 12 years, Elliot however wanted 7 million in 6 years and the surrender of at least Amoy and Chusan. The men eventually agreed to 6 million, but Qishan refused any territorial demands. Elliot resorted to threats “there are large forces collected here, and delays must breed amongst them a very great impatience”. Soon Elliot began ordering his troops to go ashore and perform military drills and target practice. At the beginning of 1841 negotiations were still stagnant. Then a rumor spread that the Emperor had chosen war and Elliot decided to prepare. On January 5th of 1841, Elliot informed Qishan that if an agreement was not reached within 2 days he would recommence war at 8am on July the 7th. Well no agreement came and Elliot made do with his threat. On the morning of July 7th, a force of 1500, soldiers, marines and sailors aboard Madagascar, Enterprize and Nemesis landed at the mouth of the Canton River. Their escort force 4 sailing and 4 steam warships began to bombard the Chuanbi Fort and the walls of Tyocoktow Fort across from Chuanbi. When the 8000 Chinese defenders in the forts saw the British ships they initially screamed at them and waved flags in defiance while they opened fire from their batteries. However the Chinese cannons were all tied down and could not be properly aimed at the invaders and thus after 20 minutes of firing at the barbarians they stopped. When they stopped firing the British took advantage of the cease fire and 2 companies of marines scaled over the walls of the Chuanbi earthen walls at 9:30am. The muddy flats in front of the fort made dragging the artillery pieces a nightmare as the men looked up at the forts to see Qing soldiers screaming and waving flags at them. Yet the British bombardment was targeting the Chinese cannons and soon they were getting knocked out one by one. Many of the Qing soldiers were told the British killed all their prisoners and thus many resisted to the bitter end. A British officer said of the carnage “a frightful scene of slaughter ensued, despite the efforts of the British officers to restrain their men”. By 11am, the Qing banner was lowered by the British whom raised the Union Jack in its place. The British reported they had killed 600 Qing soldiers and took another 100 prisoner. The British reported 30 casualties of their own, but as they put it, not because of any Chinese defender, no only because of accidental explosions from their own overheated artillery pieces. Many Qing defenders fled the city, but Major Pratt of the 26th regiment flanked their retreat forcing many back into the forts. The British warships continued to shell the city killing numerous defenders. Once it looked like Chuanbi was simmering down, the British ships began to fire upon 11 Chinese war junks anchored at the mouth of the river using Congreve rockets. One British officer who witnessed this stated “The very first rocket fired from the Nemesis was seen to enter the large junk ... and almost the instant afterwards it blew up with a terrific explosion, launching into eternity every soul on board, and pouring forth its blaze like the mighty rush of fire from a volcano. The instantaneous destruction of the huge body seemed appalling to both sides engaged. The smoke, and flame, and thunder of the explosion, with the broken fragments falling round, and even portions of dissevered bodies scattering as they fell, were enough to strike with awe, if not fear, the stoutest heart that looked upon it”. Both the Chinese artillery on top of the forts as well as the Chinese war junks did not return fire. Instead the defenders were fleeing or jumping overboard to get away from the naval bombardments. The British fired muskets at them as they did so killing many. Inside one of the forts many Qing defenders were becoming burned and horribly disfigured because they antiquated matchlocks gunpowder would often explode on them. The British gunfire only added to their misery. A staff officer who took part in the battle wrote later in life “The slaughter of fugitives is unpleasant, but we are such a handful in the face of so wide a country and so large a force that we should be swept away if we did not deal our enemy a sharp lesson whenever we came in contact.”. As the British warships bombarded the Chinese War junks the Chinese captains fell into a rout scattering into Anson's Bay just east of Chuanbi. There, the nightmare ship, Nemesis went forward by itself attacking over 15 Chinese war junks. An extremely lucky congreve rocket fired from Nemesis hit one of the war junks powder magazines exploding it to pieces. The 14 other war junks witnessing this continued to scatter and many of their crew jumped overboard to escape. Nemesis did not pursue them any longer and instead steamed up river torching a few war junks as it went along and seizing others before rejoining the armada. 3 more fort remained operation near Chuanbi and next day the British began to prepare their ships to bombard them, but a white flag was lifted over them and a messenger arrived telling the British Admiral Guan was requesting a 3 day ceasefire so he could speak with Qishan. Charles Elliot was quite mortified by the massacre of Chuanbi and accepted the 3 day cease fire. Elliots soldiers however were livid with this decision and wanted to simply march on Canton. To alleviate the men, Elliot ordered them to demolish the walls of Chuanbi and the Tycocktow forts. Qishan then met with Elliot to negotiate at the Lotus Flower Wall due south of Canton city. Elliot brought with him a show of force, 56 royal marine, a 15 member fife and drum band and Captain Rosamel commander of a French corvette named Danaide. Inviting the French captain was a diplomatic courtesy and a method of keeping an eye on the French whom the British like I said feared might take a shot at the spoils of war. Qishan performed the customary wining and dining of Elliot and his entourage and eventually they began their diplomacy again. By January 20th they agreed to what has become known as the Chuanbi Convention. The British agreed to purchase Hong Kong island for 6 million and the Chinese would pay 6 million for the war reparations, sort of a swap in other words. Both nations would exchange ambassadors and now contact between the nations would be direct and official, no more tributary status. Above all else trade would resume and the British would hand over all the forts and places they had captured, including Chusan island. Qishan presumed Emperor Daoguang and his Qing court would agree to these terms and even made plans to exhort the 6 million in reparations directly from the Hong merchants to sweeten the deal. Elliot had to assume Britain would be pleased, because messages took a long time to get back home, but in fact Palmerston and others in Parliament were quite livid Elliot did not get the 20,000 opium chest amount and the war reparation amount they had demanded. The British foreign minister said of the Chaunbi settlement “after all, our naval power is so strong that we can tell the Emperor what we mean to hold, rather than that he should say what we would cede”.Emperor Daoguang was so pised off when he found out about the Hong Kong cession he recalled Qishan immediately to Beijing and ordered the execution of Charles Elliot. Elliot would eventually received word from Parliament about the Chuanbi convention and the it turned out the British government refused to ratify the agreement, uh oh. On the same day the Chuanbi convention was signed, January 20th of 1841, Emperor Daoguang ordered Qishan to stop negotiations with the barbarians, because he was sending reinforcements to Canton from the interior. Thousands of Qing troops were enroute under the command of a 70 year old general named Yang Fang. Yang Fang was so old, it was alleged he was deaf and had to give his men orders in writing. The Emperor also sent with him his cousin Yishan as a new diplomat. Charles Elliot was completely aloof at the looming conflict, nor the Emperor's rejection of the Chuanbi agreement. On January 26th Lt Colonel George Burell occupied Hong Kong island in accordance with the Chuanbi agreement. Similar to the Chusan island situation, Elliot allowed opium to be stored on Hong Kong island. In a letter at the time from Matheson to Jardine he mentioned “Elliot says that he sees no objection to our storing opium there, and as soon as the Chinese New Year holidays are over I shall set about building”. Soon Matheson began building an enormous stone fortress in Hong Kong and moved the companies HQ there. Hong Kong became a brilliant new jewel in the crown of her Majesty. It held a deep harbor and a very small population that would not give too much trouble. The British were overjoyed to leave the malaria dysentery filled nightmare of Chusan for Hong Kong. By February 1st, Charles Elliot proclaimed Hong Kong island an official British territory and its residents subjects under the crown, something the Chuanbi convention never stipulated. Elliot met Qishan again, this time at a place called Second Bar, a small island 20 miles southeast of Canton to put the imperial seal upon the Convention of Chuanbi. Qishan informed Elliot that he had been fired and that the Emperor was pissed off like hell much to the shock of Elliot. Qing soldiers began to mass around the Bogue and as noted by Commodore James Bremmer in his military dispatch “I must confess that from this moment my faith in the sincerity of the Chinese Commissioner was completely destroyed, my doubts were also strengthened by the reports of the Officers I sent up to the place of meeting, who stated that military works on a great scale were in progress, troops collected on the heights, and camps protected by entrenchments, arising on both sides of the river, and that the island of North Wangtong had become a mass of cannon” Elliot decided yet again to take up arms. On february 26, the Modeste, Druid, Wellesley, Queen and Melville began to bombard the forts on Wangtong and Anunghoi island on the Bogue. There were 3 forts on Anunghoi island holding 42, 60 and 40 cannons atop them each. The warship Blenheim alongside Melville, Queen, and four rocket boats approached the southernmost fort, dropped anchor 600 yards away, and fired their broadsides. The Melville approached five minutes later and within 400 yards of the fort, and fired broadsides in quick succession. A British officer who witnessed the scene said "The firing of these ships was most splendid: nothing could withstand their deadly aim ... One or two shot were sufficient for the 'dragon-hearted' defenders of the north fort, who, 'letting' off their guns, fled up the hills." The 3 forts cannons were stationary guns set at such a high elevation that when they return fired they were only able to hit the topsails of the British ships. The Chinese return fire lasted only 15 minutes, by 1:20 pm the forts stopped returning fire and 300 Royal Marines stormed the forts. By 1:30 pm, the 3 forts were captured 250 killed or wounded in Anunghoy. Over on Wangtong island there was 40 gun fort on its western side called Yong'an Fort. Between this fort and the forts on Anunghoi was a large boom chain cable to stop warships and passage could not be made until all the forts were taken. Commodore Bremer aboard his flagship Wellesley alongside 7 other warships began to bombard the fort and its batteries and in less than an hour the Chinese stopped firing back. By 1:30pm Major Thomas Simson Pratt commanded 1037 troops to storm the beach of the island. In the words of British officer Edward Belcher “Opposition there was none. The unfortunate Chinese literally crammed the trenches, begging or mercy. I wish I could add that it was granted”. Belcher also alleges some Indian soldiers would begin executing prisoners when he personally tried to stop them “two were shot down whilst holding my shirt, and my gig's crew, perceiving, my danger, dragged me away exclaiming ‘they will shoot you next sir!”. There were around 2000 Qing defenders on the island and it is estimated 250 were killed and or wounded. The British claim to have only 5 casualties. When the British and Indian force entered the forts they found that the defenders had most likely fled the moment the battle began. Within 2 hours, the forts on Anunghoi and Wangtong were seized with minimal effort. Charles Elliot stated he had almost died in the battle from a Chinese cannonball that nearly hit him as he sat reclined in a hammock on the deck of his ship. You can't make that stuff up…or perhaps you really can if you are the British during the 19th century trying to show off. Honestly folks, when I give reports from this war, a lot of it comes from British primary sources and I can assure you they are embellishing the shit out of it. A thousand Chinese were taken prisoner. Admiral Guan's body lay among the defenders, a bayonet in his chest. The British gave the old warrior a cannon salute from the warship Blenheim when his family retrieved the body and sailed off with it. With the fall of the Bogue forts, the mouth of the Canton River and the gateway to Canton belonged to the British. Lin Zexu wrote of the event "I got home at the Hour of the Monkey [that is 3 p.m.] ... and when night came heard that the Bogue forts and those on Wangtong Island were being invested, preparatory to attack, by the English rebels. I at once went with Deng to Qishan's office and at the Hour of the Rat [that is 11 p.m.] we heard that the Wangtong, Yung-an and Kung-ku forts have fallen. All night I could not sleep." On February 27, Elliot made his way up the Canton River aboard Nemesis when they came across the warship Cambridge which was in trouble. Cambridge had been captured and surrounded by Chinese War junks. When Nemesis alongside some other British steamers approached, the Chinese war junks opened fired on them. When the British ships managed to maneuver into a position where they could fire broadsides they sent a tremendous volley. Added to the shells were congreve rockets which set fires to many of the war junks. The Cambridge was also opening fire upon the British as Chinese crews were operating her. The British bombardment after an hour soon sent the ships scattering about and many of their crews jumped overboard. On the sides of the river were some earthworks defense with batteries and British troops began to land and stormed their positions. Captain Thomas Herbert of warship Calliope said of the event “I landed with the seamen and marines and stormed the works, driving before us upwards of 2 thousand of their best troops, and killing nearly 300”. Lt John Elliot Bingham of the Modeste wrote “As the enemy fled before Lt Stranshams party, they attempted to cross a deep branch of the river in which numbers of them perished and many were shot”. Thus the British claimed to have killed 300 Chinese during this battle near the First Bar Island on the Pearl River at the cost of losing 1 man with a couple wounded. The day after the battle Lin Zexu wrote "I hear that yesterday the English rebels broke resistance at Wu-yung. The regulars from Hunan were stationed there, and had heavy losses, their Commander Hsiang-fu being also among the killed." After the battle was over the British realized they could not tow the Cambridge, so Elliot ordered the ship scuttled. During the firing upon the Chinese war junks, a British sailor died when his musket exploded in his hands. Elliot awaited some other ships and men before continuing to sail towards Canton. On March the 2nd, Commodore Bremer dispatched a force to prod Whampoa Island which held a battery of around 25 cannons and had around 250 Qing troops defending it. The smaller naval force of 3 British warships bombarded the island destroying the cannons and defensive structures with ease. The marines who stormed the island reported around 20 dead defenders and lost a man to grapeshot. Lin Zexu wrote in his diary on the day of the battle “I hear that the English rebel ships have already forced their way to the fort at Lieh-te. Early in the morning I went to talk things over at the General office in the Monastery of the Giant Buddha”. As the armada made its approach to the city the 10,000 civilians fled, including Lin Zexu's family. An American merchant in Canton wrote of the scene “Canton never looked so desolate. The hatred of those who had not fled registered in their faces. They scowl upon every one of us in a way indicative of a greater dislike than I have ever before observed”. Cantons harbor was too shallow for the Nemesis to dock, so Elliot took her completely alone up the Canton river and back down destroying apparently a few forts and 9 Chinese war junks. If that is to be believed, Nemesis truly lived up to its name wow. Poor Qishan was again recalled to Beijing to be punished. He was not only recalled, but arrested and cast into chains. He made it to Beijing by March 12th and his entire fortune of 425,000 acres of land, 135,000 ounces of gold and 10 million in cash was taken from him by Emperor Daoguang. Luckily for Qishan his death sentence was reversed by the Emperor to just hard labor at a military encampment near China's northernmost border with Russia. Lin Zexu did not receive blame for the military blunders and instead remained in power at Canton. The reason as to why this came to be might be because Lin Zexu was as guilty as every other Qing official in sending the Emperor very embellished stories about the war. “Our regular troops sank 2 of their dinghies and shattered the mainmast of one of their warhips after which they retired”. Like the other officials playing broken telephone, Lin Zexu also feared the Emperors wrath and for good reason. By March 13, the rest of the British armada arrived outside Canton and began to blow all the Chinese ships to pieces within the harbor. The armada also bombarded the city's walls knocking out its cannons. On march 19, British marines and sailors landed near the foreign factories district forcing Chinese defenders there to pull back giving no resistance. The next day the British occupied their old English factory and planted the Union Jack back upon its roof. Our old friend Houqua came to Elliot at the English factory begging for a truce on behalf of General Fang. Elliot greeted Houque kindly and agreed, he also told everyone in Canton that trade was to be restored. The months of the opium smugglers were watering at this, but Elliot then dictated that all the opium found on any British ship was to be confiscated. Elliot was trying to make it known they were here for the tea trade and to show Britain was going to be on its best behavior. Unbeknownst to Elliot, the truce was a feint. For the next few days, the British watched Chinese ships full of Qing soldiers sail past the factories vantage point. Despite Elliots talk of confiscating all opium, the smugglers were more bold than ever. With the British armada as armed guards, the smuggler ships came in some carrying more than 1000 chests each! Elliot was furious and tried to stop the opium vessels from unloading their cargo in Canton, but the merchants simply ignored him. Elliot feared getting chewed up by members at parliament if he molested the dealers anymore, knowing full well parliament had a ton of opium lobbyists working full time. Its actually scarily like current governments today. Some, albeit I bet a few politicians in the congress/senates/parliaments of large nations today actually want to put a stop to the worlds most horrible troubles, but lobbyists are a powerful force and when your political job is at stack…well like Mr. Elliot, how much do you put your neck out on the line? Also Elliot had greater issues to worry about, when the British took back the factory the Qing officials set a price upon the heads of any British citizen and a king's ransom of 50,000 for Elliot's head. Ever since the first battle at the Bogue, Qishan and Lin were both sending reports to Emperor Daoguang about how the war was going. Lin Zexu was sending amazing tales of Qing victories, all fabrications. Qishan was sending report, of how corrupt the Qing military had become and how it had fallen to such lengths it could not hope to match the barbarians. Qishan counseled strategic surrender and hinted towards resuming the opium trade. Well we all know what happened to Qishan for his more honest words on military matters. General Yang Fang also urged the Emperor to allow the opium trade to continue arguing that if the British occupied themselves with making money, they would have little time or any desire for war. The Emperor replied to General Fang “If trade were the solution to the problem, why would it be necessary to transfer and dispatch generals and troops?”. Emperor Daoguang ordered General Fang and his colleagues Ishand and Longwen to take back Hong Kong island. By late March, Elliot had decided the next target was to be Amoy, around 400 miles northeast of Canton. Elliot thought it would be a good time to attack Amoy in May, but in the meantime he fell quite ill while in Macao. In the meantime he was receiving intelligence reports from Canton that the city was being surrounded by more and more Qing troops. It seemed General Fang was amassing forces trying to bring the British back to the peace table. Elliot headed the show of military might by putting off the Amoy plans and concentrating on arming Canton. On May 11th, Elliot took Nemesis over to Canton and quickly saw the Chinese were building fortifications outfitted with new cannons. He also saw the Chinese navy was increasing its presence in the area. To that end he sent a letter to the governor asking they cease military preparations but received no word back. On May 21st, Elliot ordered the British and even urged the Americans to leave the factory quarter. All of the British quickly left, just a few Americans stayed and in less than 24 hours the factory quarter was shelled by the Chinese military from the opposite side of the river. The Chinese then began sending fireboats from the river at the nearby British warships. Elliot had Nemesis begin bombarding the Chinese war junks nearby which were using the fireships as cover. The fireships failed to hit any of the British vessels and instead ran into shorelines setting parts of Canton ablaze. Nemesis began firing on fortifications and Chinese artillery positions and by the morning the battle over the sea dissipated. On May 25th, Nemesis escorting 70 other vessels full of thousands of troops made its way to Tsingpu, 2 miles northwest of Canton proper. Tsingpu had a natural harbor from which the British formed a beach head to assemble its forces and equipment. The military strategy involved multiple ships bombarding differing parts of Cantons defenses and 2 invasion forces. The first force which I will call right force was led by the warship Atalanta consisting of 330 men of the 26th Cameronians, Madras Artillery and some Engineers. They were going to bombard the south walls of Canton while they landed troops at the factory quarter to occupy it. The other force was that of Nemesis which landed at Tsingpu, designated as left force consisting of 6000 men with various troops such as the 49th foot, 27th Madras infantry, some Bengal Volunteers and 380 Royal marines. Leading left force was Major General Hugh Gough whom performed a reconnaissance of the area and said “the heights to the north of Canton were crowned by 4 strong forts and the city walls, which run over the southern extremity of these heights, appeared to be about 3 miles and a half distant”. Basically if you had a map, which can be found of this battle the left force has landed northwest of Canton. To its east lies various hills and forts that protect the approach to the large wall defense of Canton city. There were 4 large forts each holding various cannons and troops. Gough's force at 3am was being fired upon by the 2 most western forts of the 4. Then the British managed to place their artillery, 12 pounder howitzers, 9 pounder artillery pieces, half a pound mortars and a ton of Congreve rockets. The British began to fire back upon the 2 western first and cover of fire, Lt Colonel Morris of the 49th advanced up a hill towards the nearest fort, while Major General Burrell led the 18th royal Irish to support his flank. While this was occurring, the Qing sent a large force to hit the right flank, but General Gough saw this coming and ordered some royal marines to close the flank up. With their land based artillery and warships bombarding, the left force was able to capture all 4 forts taking light casualties and when they occupied the forts they held a vantage point looking into Canton city. On may the 25th Goughs force began setting up around these 4 forts, they saw an incoming force coming from the northeast of around 4000 Qing soldiers. They were advancing through an open paddy field and attacked the British 49th at 3pm. The 49th were putting up a good fight, but then General Yang Fang showed up to the scene rallying the troops trying to overwhelm the 49th. Gough quickly ordered the 18th division with some royal marines to reinforce the 49th position and placed Major General Burrell in charge of repelling the enemy. The fighting was intense, but the British force managed to rout the enemy and in turn burnt down their military encampments. By the early morning of may 26th, Gough had prepared his men for an invasion of Canton's city walls, but at 10:00am a white flag appeared overhead. Gough sent the British interpreter Thoms to find out what the Qing wanted. The Qing envoy begged for hostilities to end, Gough agreed to a ceasefire, but said through Thoms that he would only negotiate with the commander of the Qing forces in Canton. “"I had it explained that, as General commanding the British, I would treat with none but the General commanding the Chinese troops, that we came before Canton much against the wishes of the British nation, but that repeated insults and breaches of faith had compelled us to make the present movement, and that I would cease from hostilities for two hours to enable their General to meet me and Sir Le Fleming Senhouse.". No Qing commander came forward, so Gough resumed preparations to attack Cantons walls. Then 7am the next morning, just as the British artillery was getting ready to fire, another white flag was raised and some Qing soldiers were shouting the name of Charles Elliot. It turned out the reason they were shouting this was because Elliot had been negotiating with the Qing during the course of the battle. Now since may the 26 Major General Gough was in a standstill position. His forces were occupying those 4 forts north of Canton city's walls and his transport ships were over at the beach head some 5 miles west of him. So there was Gough with 6000 soldiers just loitering about in the blazing hot sun, basically in the middle of some paddy fields north of Canton. You wont hear from this from my main source which I will add seems to be quite skewed to the British side, but a minor incident occurred. A local villager named Wei Shaoguang accused a British soldier had raped his wife. The local village populace became enraged and soon a crowd of over 10,000 began swarming around the British position. They were armed with pikes, swords and all the common village weapons you can think of. To make matters worse for some of the British, many of their muskets were sodden because of the marshy paddy field geography and were failing to fire when villagers attacked. A 2 hour long siege occurred and the British had to withdraw to one of the western forts which was soon surrounded. Gough sent word to the governor of Canton Yu Baochun telling him if the villagers did not stop the siege his force would commence an attack upon Canton city. Yu tried to stop the villagers, only to be labeled a traitor to the people of Canton. It sounds like a lackluster event, but it actually is the beginning of a larger issue. The villagers had taken matters into their own hands to deal with the foreign invaders because they saw their Qing government appeasing them. This feeling that the Qing were weak or not doing enough would feed into multiple movements that would later break the Qing dynasty. Then on May 29th, General Fang broke the ceasefire and ordered his men to suddenly attack, shouting “exterminate the rebels!”. Fire rafts were launched at the nearby British warships docked at Whampoa, but failed to do any damage. Stinkpots were tossed at British warships and some war junks tried using grappling hooks to board them. Some of Fang's forces broke into the factory quarter and began to pillage it. The British in response sent ships up the Pearl River to bombard the walls of Canton, but no soldiers were sent in to invade the city. The secret reason as to why was because at this point the British troops were being decimated by dysentery. In reality the British had some 2500 able fighting men to face off against a possible Qing force of 20,000 within Canton city. Luckily for the British their warships bombardments were enough to draw out a truce agreement. Now the Qing agreed to pay 6 million in the course of 7 days if the British promised not to sack Canton. The Qing military would pull back at least 60 miles from Canton and the British would pull back to the Bogue and occupy the forts there. There still remained major issues, the status of the opium trade and that of Hong Kong island, trade was still not resumed and the compensation for the 20,000 opium chests confiscated. The British knew the situation was tense and ignored these issues for now to allow Canton to normalize again. The British also made sure to avoid mentions of a military victory over the Chinese as they wanted the Emperor to save face and thus be more likely to accept their deal. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. The British attacked Chaunbi, Bogue, the First Bar island, Whampoa Island and now Canton in their war to bring the Qing government to meet their demands. It seemed by taking Canton a treaty might be formed at long last and perhaps peace could be restored.
Last time we spoke, Lin Zexu had brought the foreign barbarians to their knees and Elliot was forced to hand over 20,000 chests of opium. Lin zexu destroyed the illicit substance riding his nation of its filth. Elliot made a terrible error when he told the opium merchants the British government would compensate them for the confiscated contraband. This would all lead to Captain Henry Smith of the Volage firing the first shot of the First Opium War. Britain was in a financial bind, they needed their tea fix and China was closing off trade to them. How was Britain going to compensate the opium merchants and open up China to keep the tea flowing? That is when Thomas Macaulay made the suggestion to Lord Palmerston, a rather out of the box idea. Why not make China pay for it all. This episode is the First Opium War Part 1 Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on the history of asia and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. Lin Zexu's attempt to send a letter to Queen Victoria proved to be a failure, no one cared. But back in China Lin Zexu's war against Opium earned him a promotion. He went from high commissioner to taking Deng Tingzhen's title as Governor-General. This seems to have bolstered Lin Zexu's resolve to deal with the foreign barbarians as he wrote at the time “Only by knowing their strengths and their weaknesses can we find the right to restrain them”. Lin Zexu shared his countrymens contempt for the foreigners, but he knew he had to learn more about this enemy in order to defeat them. Lin Zexu was a scholar and had a practical mindset for how to go about the task. Lin Zexu began by buying the British warship Cambridge for use to the Chinese navy and anchored it around the mouth of the Canton River. The only problem was that Elliot made sure to order all of Cambridge's cannons removed before it was sold and the Chinese sailors were unable to properly sail the vessel, thus it was literally towed to the canton river. By spring of 1840, there were only a few small limited battles between the Chinese junks and some British vessels still attempting to smuggle opium into canton. Elliot decided the first course of action was to map the Yangtze river so he could provide good intelligence to the incoming British force. He sent a ship from Jardine Matheson & Co called the Hellas, unbeknownst to Elliot, Matheson told its captain Frederick Jauncey to try and sell opium while they navigated the Yangtze to hedge his profits. The Hellas ran into trouble on May 22nd of 1840 when Captain Jauncey ran into what he originally thought were just a few Chinese merchant ships, but were in fact 8 war junks. They opened fire on Hellas and attempted to ram and board her, but Hellas was able to keep the fire fight at a distance until some strong wind picked up allowing Hellas to make an escape. Captain Jauncey earned a broken jaw and almost lost an eye during the battle and a few of his crew were hurt, but there were no fatalities. By the end of May the Hellas limped back to Macao for some medical treatment. On June the 8th, a Chinese fleet of fireships loaded to the brim with gunpowder were sent into the British ships anchored at Capsingmum some 45 miles east of Macao. Many of the British vessels fled for their lives, but the warships, Volage, Druid and Hyacinth rushed forward to stop the fireship attack. They used grappling hooks to tie up the fireships from a distance and towed them away from the rest of the British flotilla thus saving them all. The next day, the long awaited British force Palmerston promised finally arrived in Chinese waters. There was a scarcity of sailors hindering what could be amassed for hte China expeditionary force, due to the ongoing wars and other operations against the French in the mediterranean sea and the forces of Mohammed Ali in Egypt. By the end of June 17 men of war had assembled including 3 line of battle ships, the Wellesley, Melville and Blenheim. The East India Company also lent a hand providing 4 armed merchantmen steamers, the Enterprize, Madagascar, Atalanta and Queen. Following behind the force was 27 troopships carrying the 18th Royal Irish, the 49th Bengal Volunteers, the 26th Cameronians,a corps of Bengal engineers, and another corps of Madras sappers and miners. On its way to catch up to this force was British most devastating weapon, a brand new ocean-going Iron warship, the first of its kind named Nemesis. She was launched in 1839 and deployed to China as her first operation. She was powered by 2 60 horsepower Forrester engines and armed with 2 pivot mounted 32 pounders and 6 6pounder guns. She had watertight bulkhead, the first to be used for a warship at the time enabling her to survive a lot of hull damage. It goes without saying this one warship will have a daunting part to play in this story and the Chinese would nickname her “devil ship”. The British armada did not just bring military assistance, it also was secretly carrying more opium, because of course why not. Over 10 thousand chests were snuck away aboard the ships ready to flood the Chinese market. The large British naval presence would allow the smugglers to offload their opium at Lintin during broad daylight with impunity. The armada gathered itself at Singapore to devise a strategy going forward. There in Singapore, the marines practiced amphibious assaults while Chinese war junks in the distance observed from a distance. By June 1 of 1840 enough warships had gathered at Singapore to launch the invasion of the Qing dynasty. So on June 16 the first ship, a steamer named Madagascar entered the Gulf of Canton followed a bit later by a large part of the armada. Aboard the Wellesley, captain Elliot met with the commander of the expeditionary force, Commodore Sir J. J Gordon Bremer and they discussed strategy. Jardine had made a proposal, to commit some warships to blockade the entire eastern and southern coasts of China and seize the island of Chusan. Jardine argued they should also blockade the mouth of the Bei He River which flowed into the Yangtze, the waterway for food and other shipments directly to Beijing. Chusan island was a critical depot for the Qing, more than a quarter million ton of grain pass through it to go to Beijing to feed the capital. Depriving the capital of a major food source and revenue would bring the Chinese to a peace settlement and thus a British victory. The British Admiralty's Sir John Barrow thought Jardine's proposal was too much, threatening the Qing capital would just result in the Chinese digging in deeper to defend themselves and not bring them to the peace table. Barrow argued they should focus around the gulf of canton, shell the city and seize Hong Kong. Charles Elliot argued a middle ground: take Canton then sail up the Bei He river to threaten Beijing. Elliot also argued they could instead attack Shanghai because attacking such a prominent city would make the Qing lose face and intimidate them. Another man who had just arrived was Elliot's cousin, Admiral Sir George Elliot who had been given co-plenipotentiary powers. He brought with him a peace treaty with orders to make the Qing government agree to every article of it and to continue the way until it was done. Sir George Elliot arrived in the later part of 1840 and ordered a blockade of the Gulf of Canton using 5 warships while he and the rest of the armada sailed north. The British merchants were disappointed, they expected a direct assault upon Canton, they had hoped to open the city back up for trade. Both Elliot's got aboard the Wellesley as the armada made its approach towards Chusan. George Elliot also had with him a letter from Palmerston to inform the emperor Britain intended to blockade and seize various Chinese ports as a response to the Qing siege of the Canton factories. Palmerston also cheekily added that if the Emperor wanted to stop the opium trade he should probably convince his people to stop smoking opium. At the end of the letter Palmerston added that to avoid “unpleasantness” the Emperor was invited to send a delegation to a shipboard meeting with the two Elliots who most likely would park their warships at the mouth of the Bei He River. The Elliots gave the letter to a Captain named Thomas Bourchier whom went ashore with a white flag at Namoy just 300 miles north of Canton. As Thomas entered the harbor some Qing officials came aboard. Thomas explained to them that the armada meant to bombard the city if they did not respect the white flag. As he explained this to them, along the coast a ton of Chinese began to form a crowd near his boat so he sailed off. With his ship a few hundreds yards away from the shore he waited to see what the Chinese would do. Then Thomas noticed cannons being mounted on a nearby fort. Thomas sent his translator named Robert Thom on a small raft with a large placard repeating what retaliation the Chinese could expect if they fired upon his ship. Thom also began to shout the orders at the crowd along the beach, but they simply screamed insults in return. Then some of the people on the beach began to swim out towards Thom's boat and some arrows and gunshots were fired at him. Suddenly one of the cannons from the fort fired and some nearby chinese junks joined them all aiming for poor Thom. Thom dashed back to Captain Thomas and reported to him what had happened. Captain Thomas responded by sending another letter explaining that the British government had no quarrel with the Chinese people, only their emperor. He sent the letter with a courier in another small raft and as it approached the shore the mob rose up yet again and soon gunfire was going off. It is alleged after this Captain Thomas literally threw a message in a bottle before sailing off towards Canton. By July 1st the armada anchored in the harbor of Dinghai on Chusan Island. Dinghai held around 40,000 inhabitants within a 5 sided 22 feet high wall city. It held many towers and was surrounded on all 4 sides by a canal. The city had 16 hundred defenders, but in reality they were all just some fishermen, sailors and quickly raised up militiamen armed with spears, bows and some matchlocks. There were also 12 chinese war junks that had followed the British armada keeping a safe distance. The British noticed one of the Chinese war junks had a banner indicated a high Qing official was aboard and they signaled they wanted to talk. The Chinese war junks invited a British delegation aboard their flagship. Commodore Bremer went aboard with his interpreter and met with the Qing commander of the Chusan garrison. Bremer did not mash words he was quite blunt demanding the “surrender Chusan or face the consequences”. The Qing host was not intimidated however and sent the British back to their boats. When the British were back aboard their vessels, instead of blasting the chinese war junks, well they simply invited the Chinese aboard the Wellesley to wine and dine them. In the 1997 movie “the opium war” this scene is quite well done, I highly recommend watching it. So the Qing officials dined and one Qing officer even analyzed some of the 74 guns aboard Wellesley. That officer was quoted to say “it is very true you are strong and I am weak. Still I must fight”. After dinner, Commodore Bremer demanded their surrender again and gave them 24 hours to comply. The Chinese in the meantime ran ashore and began to stuff a ton of sandbags with rice and other things to strengthen the defenses around Dinghai's walls. The 24 hours passed and Bremer brought the Wellesley closer to the shore, but he had to wait for some more reinforcements to arrive to launch an amphibious assault. By 2pm on July 5th, 6 British warships arrived to the scene and Bremer fired a single cannon targeting a tower on a small fort. The Qing fired a single cannon in response, which led Bremer to start shooting volley's every 10 minutes. As the maelstrom was going on, Lt Colonel George Burrell led the 18th Brigade in an amphibious landing. Suddenly the Chinese stop firing just as the 18th brigade landed ashore. The British took the situation by storm and began bombarding the Chinese war junks to pieces and Dingshai's fort towers. Lord Jocelyn, a military secretary said of the scene. “The Crashing of timber, falling houses and groans of men resounded from the shore. Even after the bombardment ceased, a few shots were still heard from the unscathed junks. We landed on a deserted beach, a few dead bodies, bows and arrows; broken spears and guns remaining the sole occupants of the field”. The 18th brigade found no resistance on the beach. The Qing defenders had fled almost as soon as the first cannons had gone off. A Qing commander on scene, Brigadier Zhang had refused to give up the fight, but had both his legs blown off by cannonade and had to be whisked away on a litter. The local magistrate and some of his subordinates watched in horror as the defenders departed and they all committed suicide. A detachment of the 18th brigade set up 8 9 pounder artillery pieces and some howitzers on a hill which had a vantage point overlooking the city of Dinghai. They then began to shell the now defenseless inhabitants forcing countless to flee for their lives. The British reported not a single casualty during the volley exchange nor the beach assault. Lord Jocelyn described the planting of the Union Jack by the Joss house in Dinghai “the first European banner that has floated as conqueror over the flowery land”. The city of Dinghai was a mile from the shoreline and Colonel Burell slowly marched his men to its formidable walls as artillery rained hell upon them. The residents of Dinghai responded with their own artillery forcing Colonel Burrell to hold back his men from a distance and wait it out until the next day to assault the city. During that lull the British soldiers found some samshu in a local fishing village and proceeded to get drunk as hell and looted the fishing village during the night. An Indian soldier said of the incident “A more complete pillage could not be conceived. The plunder ceased only when there was nothing to take or destroy”. The artillery was going on throughout the night and at around midnight of British 9 pounders hit a gunpowder deposit inside Dinghai turning the city into an inferno. The next morning the British saw most of the defenders were fleeing and sent a detachment of 12 men to approach the south wall to prod it. There was no resistance so the men began to climb the rice bag defenses that had been piled almost 2 stories high in front of the wall. Within minutes they were over the top and could see the city that once held 40,000 people was all but deserted. Lord Jocelyn said of the city “The main street was nearly deserted, except here and there, where the frightened people were performing the kow-tow as we passed. On most of the houses was placarded "Spare our lives;" and on entering the jos-houses were seen men, women, and children, on their knees, burning incense to the gods; and although protection was promised [to] them, their dread appeared in no matter relieved.” The British reported that perhaps 2000 Chinese died, which is complete nonsense, the Chinese state something like 25 died so the actual number is somewhere in between, quite a large range I know. The British themselves might have lost up to 19 men. They found a ton of antiquated weapons and armor as they looted the city such as padded cotton jackets which displayed the disparity between the 2 forces. Robert Thom who witnesses the looting said “No one has been killed in cold blood that I am aware of, and only one or two cases of rape occurred perpetrated it is said by the sepoys”. By the way a lot of the primary sources for this war will lay blame on the Indian soldiers for misconduct and take it was a grain of salt. I am not saying it did not happen, it most certainly did, but the idea that the British redcoats were not taking part in such ventures seems dubious. By Jul 11th, Jardine and Matheson reached Chusan and found out Admiral Elliot was forbidding their opium ships from landing on the island. Yet they pressed their team of smugglers to persist and against Elliots wishes unloaded opium. Chusan would become a storehouse for opium and by November of 1840 43 opium smuggling ships were using Chusan as an offloading point. 12,000 chests of opium would be brought to Chusan by the end of the year. Chusan island would also bring quite a lot of misery to the British. Colonel Burrell refused to allow his troops to occupy the abandoned city of Dinghai fearing repercussions from the Chinese and instead kept his men in a particularly malaria infested paddy field. With the scorching heat and an order that all men keep their top buttons on their uniforms fastened almost 500 men would die to malaria and dysentery. A lot of variables were at work, bad provisions, too much Samshu, stagnant water and the most evil culprit, malaria invested mosquitos took a heavy toll on the British. By October, only 2036 out of 3650 troops would be fit for duty. By december more than 5000 men were admitted to hospitals and 448 deaths would occur. If anyone knows the story of Japan's invasion of Taiwan in the 19th century, it really reminds me of that ordeal. Taking an island by force and with incredible ease, only to fall victim to brutal mother nature. On july 27th, Elliot had gathered many warships at Dinghai and felt he had enough firepower to proceed 500 miles north to Beijing. A week after Dinghai fell, Beijing got the word. However this is where a large problem would emerge for the Qing dynasty. The Emperor was given word through Qing officials, and if the news was bad, the officials would fear enraging the Emperor and more often than naught falsify what they told him. In this case the officials downplayed the severity of the incursion. They told him of alleged weaknesses of the foreign invaders. The governor of Jiangsu Province lying at the mouth of the Yangtze River, Yukien told the Emperor “take our fort at Woosung. From the bottom upward there is the stone base, then the clay base, and finally the fort itself. It is even elevation far above the level of the barbarian ships. If they shoot upward, their bullet will go down and consequently lose force. Moreover the barbarians are stiff and their legs straight. The latter, further bound with cloth, can scarcely stretch at will. Once fallen down, they cannot again stand up. It is fatal to fighting on land”. Yukien would also make remarks about how the barbarians lacked bows and arrows. While this might come off as humorous, I bring it up for important reasons. The Emperor will continuously be given these sort of reports, downplaying of events such as battles, made up stories about victories over the British and much more. The Emperor will be reacting accordingly based on the information he is given and this will be quite the crux of the entire war. The British armada approached the mouth of the Bei He River in a course of 10 days and was only 75 miles southwest of Beijing. However at the mouth of the Bei He River lied one of the Qing dynasty's most formidable defenses, known as the Dagu forts. 2 Dagu forts guarded the mouth, though to Elliot they looked pretty decrepit and deserted. Elliot was still trying to find a Qing official who would take Palmerstons letter to the Emperor and at the mouth he saw several Chinese war junks. Elliot sent a man with the letter to the war junks and the commander of the warships replied that he would send the letter to a higher ranking Qing official who was only a short distance away. Thus Elliot waited to see what would occur and it turned out the Qing official was Qishan, the governor of Chihli province. Qishan sent word to Elliot that his letter was sent directly to the Emperor, but that Elliot would need to wait for a reply. On May 13 of 1840, one of Qishans subordinates came aboard the Wellesley providing the British with food and water and this was followed up for several days with more gifts. Then Elliot was told the Emperor had officially received the letter, but it would be regretfully another 10 days or so for the Qing court to discuss with the Emperor the letters contents. Do not forget, the story I spoke of about the malaria and dysentery outbreak on Chusan was raging by this point and thus Elliot decided it best to scatter the armada in search of cleaner water because the Chusan wells seemed to be the culprit at the time. Some of the ships went hundreds of miles away in search of water and as this all occurred, 10 days had come and gone. When all of the armada regrouped with their fresh water reserves, Elliot decided they needed to speed up the Qing courts process. Elliot ordered the warships Madagascar and Modeste to begin firing at some forts on Chusans outskirts, but before the shelling could begin a messenger from Qishan suddenly appeared. Elliot was invited to meet with Qishan in 3 days time. The meeting would be on july 30th and the location was a fort in southern Chusan. Qishan brought gifts and food with him for the British and had a flotilla built up so the British would not have to walk in mud to the fort. Elliot, Qishan and Jocelyn had a large dinner and then they discussed the Palmerston letter for over 6 hours. Qishan during the meeting made a mention of the precedent set by the Macartney and Amherst missions, that of the tributary system. Elliot insisted both men were not tributaries, but ambassadors holding equal status to the Emperor. Qishan could feel the tension in the room and changed the subject, he pointed out that the occupation of Chusan island was unacceptable for the Emperor. Elliot understood and said the British occupation was temporary, they were merely using it as a base of operations. Then the largest looming subject emerged, Opium. Qishan demanded a promise from Queen Victoria that Britain would stop exporting opium to China. Similar to Lin Zexu, the Qing had a difficult time understanding the representatives of authority for other nations and assumed Queen Victoria held a similar position to their Emperor. Elliot said plainly that he did not have the authority to grant such a concession and then made the remark “if the Chinese wanted the opium trade to end, they should stop using it”. Elliot also made a remark that most of the Opium was coming from other sources outside British influence, but he had little evidence to support this. Qishan swallowed this resentfully but did not quibble over it. Instead Qishan moved to the subject of reparations as Palmerston had demanded compensation for the 20,000 seized opium chests and for war reparations for Britain who was invading China! Qishan flat out called these demands ludicrous, when he said this, Elliot began to write something on Palmerstons letter and when Qishan asked him what he was writing Elliot replied “I am writing what is your opinion on the matter, because many of the Emperor other officials might have differing ones”. Qishan then began to explain to Elliot that Lin Zexu had fallen out of favor with the Qing court and that Qishan agreed with the British that Lin Zexu had mistreated them and employed unnecessary violence. Qishan made a remark that the Emperor was most likely going to fire Lin Zexu and punish him. It seems Qishan was hinting to Elliot that he might be replacing Lin Zexu as his successor and with it plenipotentiary powers. So you get the idea here, Qishan is basically hinting while nothing can be done right now, perhaps when he is in charge he will help the British out. Qishan also kept stating that the British should go to Canton, as it was the center of foreign trade and a much more logical and practical place for them to go to further negotiations. But both Elliot and Qishan knew why he was stating this repeatedly, he wanted the British to get as far away from the Emperor as possible. George Elliot informed Charles Elliot that he felt the armada was quite vulnerable sitting in Bei He Bay and urged him to end the negotiations and leave. Likewise upon hearing the news that Lin Zexu was going to be dismissed soon, Charles Elliot agreed and they too the armada and sailed away. This rather abrupt partie however gave the Chinese the impression the barbarians were done with the war all together. As you can imagine many Qing officials began telling Beijing this. As you can also imagine the British departure was only temporary. By September of 1840 the British armada re-emerged at the mouth of the Bei He River. The Elliots had order the armada to up the pressure on the Qing and Charles Elliot had written a note to Palmerston at this time “It is notorious that the Daoguang Emperor entertains the utmost dread of our enterprising spirit”. What he meant by this, was by sending periodic naval patrols he was trying to scare the shit out of Beijing. Back over in Canton, despite the incredible efforts of Lin Zexu, the opium trade was still rearing its ugly head. Since Jardine & Matheson were now able to shove their contraband on Chusan island it began to flood right back into the Canton market. By the fall of 1840 6500 chests had gotten through the Canton trade from Jardine & Matheson Co alone. Many hundreds of others were flooding in from the other independent smugglers and despite the severity of punishment for using the substance, there was still an enormous demand. The Elliots of course banned the trade of opium on Chusan, but they were not morons, they knew it was simply going to Canton in the end. Of course they were allowing the trade to go on, they were after all quite broke. The Elliots had no other way of raising money to continue the war effort other than relying on the sale of opium. Both Elliots understood the fiscal dependency they had on the opium smugglers and the prohibition of its sale on the island of Chusan was merely symbolic, a way of keeping face, so typically british. Thus vessels were allowed to offload opium near Chusan with zero interference from the British armada, which in turn was patrolling the waters thus protecting the opium dealers in the end. The hope in the end was by symbolically banning the substance at Chusan, perhaps this would alleviate the Emperor while simultaneously allowing the condonation of revenue for the war effort by allowing its trade to ports like Canton. Over in Beijing, Emperor Daoguang hesitated over Lin Zexu, he was not yet comfortable dismissing him. This embolden Lin Zexu, whom began to crack down even more so on the Chinese opium consumers. Lin Zexu put out an edict limiting the amount of time opium addicts had to wean themselves off the drug “while the period is not yet closed, you are living victims. When it shall have expired, then you will be dead victims”. Yet despite his efforts Lin Zexu could do little against the opium vessels which were being protected by the British armada making patrols in the Gulf of Canton, Amoy, Chusan and the Mouths of the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers. Then to the horror of the Chinese the British began seizing Chinese ships along the coast and taking their cargo to sell and finance the war effort. Imagine how cash strapped a nation has to be to start performing this sort of looting. Between June and July of 1840 the British armada had seized 7 large trading vessels plundering their cargo. In retaliation the Chinese raised a price for the heads of any British military personnel at 100$ for a soldier taken alive, 20$ for a corpse, $5000 for a British captain and for a British ship 10,000$, cha ching. Things got out of hand quite quickly, Chinese desperate to make some coin turned to attacking European and American civilians such a missionaries. Gangs of Chinese would hunt them down beating them nearly to death. On August the 5th, Vincent Stanton a tutor of a British merchants children alongside a missionary named David Abeel made the terrible decision to go swimming in Macao' bay. Stanton was kidnapped and brought to Canton. Until this point Macao was seen as the last safe spot in China for foreigners, but the kidnapping of Stanton broke that. Adding to everyone's fears, 8 Chinese war junks docked at Macao sending the Portuguese colony into a frenzy. It turns out Stanton's kidnapping was masterminded by Lin Zexu, it was psychological warfare. He was not able to go after the British warships, but he was able to target anyone on land. The Governor general of Macao, Pinto pleaded with Lin Zexu to return the man, but it came to nothing. The British felt they had lost face, Stanton was one of theirs and they had even tried allowing the Portuguese aid the situation to no avail. 2 weeks after Stantons kidnapping the British had had enough. 4 British warships from the Armada were sent to Macaos Casilha Bay alongside 400 soldiers. The British warships opened fire upon the Chinese war junks whom returned fire. However the Chinese war junks cannons were old and obsolete, they could not match the range the British were firing from. The Chinese crews began to panic when their return fire was literally only matching half the distance of the British and soon jumped ship. Meanwhile the british warships simply continued to rain hell upon the war junks. As noted by British officer “The [Chinese] junks, which were aground in the inner harbour, were utterly useless, for none of their guns could be brought to bear, though several of the thirty-two pound shots of the ships found their way over the bank, much to the consternation of the occupants of the junks." The Chinese crews tried to establish a defense on the coast, but the British soldiers overwhelmed them with musket fire. The Chinese war junks still intact made a break for it, as the rest of the Chinese fled into the fortifications. The British warships battered the walls of Macaos fortifications until their batteries stopped returning fire and the British and Indian soldiers soon scaled the walls. By 5pm the Chinese routed inside the Macao fortifications as the British set fire to multiple barracks. In the end the Chinese suffered upto 60 dead with 120 wounded and the British reported only 4 wounded, but take the number with a grain of salt. In Beijing Qing officials told Emperor Daoguang there had been a major victory at Macao and that many British were dead and multiple British warships laid at the bottom of Casilha Bay. These Qing officials were court officials who were received false reports from the military at Macao. Its sort of like the game broken telephone, where every link embellishes the story to make it more and more positive. All the Chinese soldiers began to abandon Macao and no more Chinese War junks came to its harbor. In the eyes of the Portuguese and British they had saved Macao, in the eyes of poor Stanton…well he was imprisoned in Canton. The Stanton kidnapping distressed the foreign community in China, but there was another incident that scared the shit out of them. A french missionary named Father Jean Gabriel Perboyre was illegally operating in Hubei Province and got captured in September of 1839. He was tortured and interrogated for over a year and on September 11th of 1840 he was executed publicly at Wuchang. The priest was killed by strangulation, but the Qing authorities decided to place his body on a cross after his death. This set a panic into the foreign community as others were likewise captured and killed and the British on Chusan island were falling victim to malaria, dysentery and starvation, because all the food on Chusan had dried up. They began to eat moldy rice from Chusans stockpiles and bread made from worm ridden flour stuck aboard their ships for quite a long time. It is alleged that the pickled beets and pork on the British warships was so rancid even the iron-stomachs of the British couldn't tolerate it. The drinking water likewise was a source of disease, contaminated by the local sewers. The interpreter Thom wrote a letter to Matheson stating “even the natives hold their noses because of the waters smell. Unless we can manage to get the canal and town cleared out, I fear that we shall be getting some contagious distemper among us. The climate moreover is moist and mosquitoes swarm in amazing numbers. Let no man come here without mosquito curtains else he will bitterly repent of it”. The British did not realize the mosquitoes were the culprit of their malaria nightmare as the belief at the time for europeans was that malaria came from rotten vegetables. The dysentry killed more people than the malaria however, coming from the horrid food and water situation. 12 soldiers died in August, the next month 24, while 250 were hospitalized and by mid september a third of the force was too sick to fight. Being a specialist in the Pacific War I do have to say what amazing parallels this will play out for the Japanese and Americans in the island hoping warfare. Not fun to battle the elements, malaria and a terrible provision situation. Then there was horrible incident when a commercial ship called the Kite ran aground on a sandbank on september 15th. The Captain named John Nobles lost his 5 month year old baby, and he, his wife and 26 crew members clinging to the boats wreckage until a Chinese war junk captured them. All of them were put in chains and imprisoned at Ningbo. They were placed in wooden cage, the wife of John Nobles stated “mine was scarcely a yard high, a little more than three quarters of a yard long, and a little more than half a yard broad. The door opened from the top. Into these we were lifted, the chain around our necks being locked to the cover. THey put a long piece of bamboo through the middle, a man took either end, and in this manner we were jolted from city to city to suffer the insults of the rabble, the cries from whom were awful”. Some of captured crew were beat to death, 3 men died of dysentery and those who were Indian amongst them were treated extra harshly. One of the English prisoners believed the Chinese treated the Indians worse, because they ate their rice with their fingers which angered them. When Charles Elliot heard the news of the captives from the Kite he was mortified, particularly because one of the prisoners was a woman! He went to Ningbo aboard the Atalanta to negotiation their release and was immediately told, all the prisoners could go if the British gave back Chusan. The British did not say no, but did nothing to indicate they would hand over Chusan, so the Chinese began to threaten to kill the prisoners. This prompted the Charles Elliot to demand a meeting with Qishan at Chinhai only 10 miles away from the prison at Ningbo. Elliot stated to Qishan if the prisoners were not handed over he would end the peace talks outright. Qishan played some hard ball demanding Chusan returned, but eventually a compromise was made. Elliot agreed to stop British ships from seizing Chinese vessels and blockading the ports and in return the Chinese would still hold the prisoners, but they would improve their living conditions. To show good faith, Qishan released poor old Stanton from his prison in Canton and handed him over to Elliot. The situation did not satisfy the British, but while they danced around with diplomacy, more and more troops from India were being brought to Chusan and the most fearsome weapon Britain had at its disposal had just arrived, the Nemesis. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. Lin Zexu's efforts against opium were not going well enough and was losing favor with Emperor Daoguang, the British were winning battles and taking territory. How will the Qing Dynasty rid themselves of the invaders? Join us next time to find out.
Last time we spoke, the British government was walking a tight rope between getting their tea fix and not being banned from trade with China. When Britain ended the East India company's monopoly over the China trade, they assumed they could not be implicated in the illegal opium trade and they were soon proved very very wrong. Britain had managed to fix their silver problem, but at the cost of draining China's silver and that tight rope they were walking, well they fell. China was becoming chaotic again, revolts were likely to be on the horizon. The Qing dynasty had had enough of the situation and began to crack down in the 1830's more and more so. Now China is sending one man who had proven he knew how to stop the opium trade and soon he would wage war on the illicit trade. This episode is Lin Zexu vs big opium Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on the history of asia and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. Lin Zexu gave the strongest and swiftest voice of approval and he was no ordinary official. Lin Zexu was the son of a schoolteacher and proved to be a great student. He passed the brutal competitive examination in Beijing in 1811 at the age of 26 emerging top of his class. Working as a judge in the 1820's he earned a reputation for fairness and the nickname “Lin, Clear as heaven” or “Lin the Clear sky” which was a testament to his incorruptibility. Over the years of his work he earned great renown as a pragmatic administrator deeply versed in how to deal with water management and flood relief. He was a rare official who could be relied upon to put the welfare of the people ahead of his own gain. He was frankly, incorruptible and because of this, in 1838 he was Emperor Daoguangs favorite minister and reached a rank comparable to Deng Tingzhen in Canton while being 10 years younger than him. He was a beacon of honesty and virtue in a time when the Qing government was full of corruption. One and a million as they say. Lin Zexu's primary concerns had always been domestic, he had no dealings with foreigners as that was exclusively a Canton issue. Foreign relations were very far from his mind and this shaped his way of thinking. His main concerns were with the Chinese, not the foreigners when tackling the problem of opium. Lin Zexu was quite conservative and his support for suppressing opium was based on his abiding faith in moral suasion. When Huang Juezi made his proposal it marked a turning point for Lin Zexu. He seized on the proposal almost like a religious crusade and immediately offered the Emperor a detailed action plan. He recommended the confiscation and destruction of opium pipes and other equipment for using the drug. Local moral campaigns, education campaigns to teach the evils of opium to the people and active suppression of opium dens and corrupt officials. He also recommended medical treatments to help addicts wean off opium. He described various elixirs used to combat opium addiction. One thing of interest to me as my first degree is in neurobehavioral science, Lin Zexu talked about giving patients a mix of small amounts of opium combined with herbs that would make the patients sick. This idea has been used in the field of addiction and can be effective. The Idea is based on operant conditioning, by linking to the act of taking opium with a negative stimulus you might get the patient to be more and more reluctant to take the drug. I will attest this in practice is a hit or miss depending on the drug or action. Anyways Lin Zexu's action plan was quite formidable and was hitting the issue at the source at multiple angles. After sending his action plan to the Emperor, Lin Zexu took the initiative to test it out in his provinces of Hunan and Hubei. In august of 1838 he launched the campaign first setting out to hospitals to treat addicts. Then he jailed dealers, issued proclamations condemning the use of the drug and ordered local officials to round up and destroy whatever opium or opium using equipment they could find. Reports began to pour into Beijing about the success of Lin Zexu's plan. Tens of thousands of pipes were and ounces of opium were confiscated. Mind you 10 thousands ounces of opium was around 10 chests worth, during a time when 30,000 chests were coming into China annually. The pipes and opium were burnt publicly, which was a crucial element to the plan as they needed to prove to the public they indeed were destroying the substance, otherwise the public would assume they were taking it for themselves! Lin Zexu's reports to the Emperor were increasingly triumphant and their tone pressed the urgency to unleash the action plan outside Hunan and Hubei. In September of 1838 Lin Zexu declared opium to be the largest problem the Qing dynasty was facing. “Before opium was widespread, those who smoked it only harmed themselves. The punishments of canning and exile were enough to keep them in line. But when its evil influence has penetrated into the whole country, the effect is tremendous. Laws should be put into rigid enforcement. If left in a lax state, then after a few decades, there will be no soldier in this Central Empire to fight against invaders, nor money to bear the military expenses. I have the fear, that if the evil be suffered to grow at this critical moment there may be no more chance for remedy”. In October of 1838, the Daoguang Emperor was leaning heavily towards initiating the suppression campaign while some of his officials still believed he might legalize opium. Those same officials were feeding Charles Elliot stories that at any moment the substance would be legalized and this influenced his actions. Then on November the 8th a Manchu official named Qishan who was the governor general of Zhili province reported the largest drug bust in the history of the Qing empire to that point. The confiscated opium was found in Tianjin, not too far away from Beijing. Qishan stated the opium had come from Canton through the Cantonese traders who managed to ship it north through various means. The major drug bust indicated to the Qing court, perhaps they needed to perform the same action in Canton. Emperor Daoguang then made the decision to summon Lin Zexu to Beijing in December of 1838. After the meeting, Emperor Daoguang tasked Lin Zexu with a mission to obliterate the opium trade in Canton. Lin Zexu would travel south as an imperial commissioner, holding the power to act on behalf of the Emperor, answerable to no other local officials. He would have command over all naval forces at Canton and Deng Tingzhen would give him support. Thus in early January of 1839, while Charles Elliot expected legalization of opium to be declared at any moment, Lin Zexu made his way to end the illicit trade once and for all. Charles Elliot was being fed false information about the ongoing court battle over the opium question in China and he worried about his lack of authority over the British subjects in Canton. If the opium smugglers provoked a crisis under his watch, he was placed in quite a predicament. The British traders and Chinese did not actually know what Elliot's authority was and on many occasions tried to pry the information out of him. The English newspapers for example repeatedly asked him to clarify what his authorization was, but he refused to ever answer. Elliots became increasingly concerned with British sailors getting into fights with local chinese and organized a naval police force to deal with the issue. Yet when he began doing this he was scolded by Palmerston for overstepping his authority. “You have no power of your own authority to make any such regulations. The establishment of a system of police at Whampoa within the dominions of the Emperor of China was in violation of the absolute right of sovereignty enjoyed by independent states”. By the early winter of 1839 it seemed governor general Deng Tingzhen's ongoing efforts to crackdown on the Chinese opium smugglers was working. As noted by William Jardine “Not a broker to be seen, nor an Opium pipe; they have all vanished. The authorities are seizing smokers, dealers and shopkeepers innumerable. We must hope for better times and brisker deliveries”. Up to this point Deng Tingzhen limited his actions towards the Chinese and did not target any foreigners. Occasional shots were fired between government boats and foreign smuggling vessels, but nothing had gotten out of hand. Then on December 3rd, a small drug bust was performed and 2 Chinese workers were caught smuggling opium for a British merchant. In response to the incident, Deng Tingzhen decided to make an official statement to the foreign community. On december 12 a small force of Qing soldiers went to the gates of the foreign factories and hammered a wooden cross on the gate indicating they were about to execute a convicted Chinese opium dealer. The site of the execution was to be in front of the foreign factories, obviously Deng Tingzheng was sending a message to the foreigners, that they were responsible for the man's execution. Its hard to know who acted out first. Elliot was at Whampoa and did not witness the event to come and those involved on the British side said they had no involvement. Its been theorized British sailors may have perpetuated it, regardless some foreigners decided that the execution in front of their homes was too distrubed and began to tear down the gallows being erected. The local Chinese soldiers did nothing to resist, some even began to help tear it down. A crowd of Chinese formed to watch the event and its remained peaceful, until some rowdy British began shoving their way through the crowd. These British hit several Chinese with sticks and some threw rocks, as you can imagine soon fights began and a full riot burst. Several thousand Chinese came and began pelting the foreigner with rocks prompting the Chinese soldiers to intervene and escort the foreigners back into the factories. In the end the gallow was torn down, but the convicted Chinese smuggler was executed elsewhere. Palmerston demanded to know what had occurred, he was furious the British subjects had the audacity to get involved in Chinese affairs. “On what grounds did the traders imagine themselves entitled to interfere with the arrangements made by the Chinese officers of justice for carrying into effect, in a chinese town, the orders of their superior authorities”. Elliot was quite shaken by the situation. He knew he had to do something to thwart any further incident, but he had no real authority to do anything. He wrote back to Palmerston “that the danger and shame of the opium trade had reached a point where it was falling by rapid degrees into the hands of more and more desperate men”. Elliot then decided to take firm action, on december 18 he issued a proclamation ordering all British vessels carrying opium to depart the inner waters of Canton immediately. He had no authority to confiscate their cargoes, nor to arrest them and thus he fell back on the authority of the Qing government. If any British vessels refused, he would personally turn them over to the Chinese “Her Majesty's Government will in no way interpose if the Chinese Government shall think fit to seize and confiscate the same”. Simultaneously he wrote the governor of Canton pledging his support for the campaign against opium. The opium traders were all very very pissed off. The superintendent, Elliot was supposed to protect them! James Matheson complained to the British press “that Elliot had adopted the novel course of assisting the Qing government in this, against his own countrymen! It appears to be the intention of Captain Elliot to offer himself as a kind of chief of the chinese preventive service”. Another execution of a convicted chinese opium smuggler took place in february of 1839, this time it was done much faster and with a large guard. William Jardine left Canton in late January of 1839, leaving Matheson to watch over the business. Enroute to Canton was Lin Zexu who was being counseled by many Qing officials. Qishan warned Lin Zexu not to start a war against the foreigners. Another official Gong Zizhen who was prolifically anti opium, advised that if Lin should try to shut off the source of opium directly at Canton, then both the foreign and Chinese dealers might start a revolt and China might not have sufficient military power to control them both. He recommended a gradual approach, first take action to reduce imports and only against the Chinese merchants and consumers while simultaneously increasing the military defenses at canton. He argued that China's existing naval forces could not possibly match the British and that efforts should be made to increase coastal and inland defenses. With all that being complete, in time they would be able to shut off the foreign merchants completely. Enroute to Canton, Lin Zexu visited Bao Shichen a official who had written since the 1820's on the subject of shutting down foreign trade to prevent the drain of silver from china. Bao Shichen told him “to clear a muddy stream you must purify the source. To put a law into effect you must first create order within”. Lin Zexu took this to mean he should first begin arresting all the government officials who had violated the ban on opium. Then he must completely shut off the flow of foreign opium imports coming into Canton. Bao Shichen would later state that Lin Zexu misunderstood him completely and that shutting down foreign trade was too dangerous. In March of 1839, Canton was anxious about Lin Zexu's arrival. Everyone knew the great powers invested upon him, but nobody knew how he would use them. He arrived on March 10th and immediately struck hard. He began with mass arrests of the known Chinese smugglers and put up proclamations announcing his mission was to destroy the opium trade in its entirety. He ordered marchants to abandon the trade and for users to hand over their pipes to be smashed. Thousands of pounds of opium and tens of thousands of pipes were confiscated. In 3 months after his arrival, he would arrest 5 times the amount of people that Deng Tingzhen had done in his 2 year reign. As things were going along successfully with the Chinese affairs, Lin Zexu then decided to address the foreign merchants. On march 18 he issued an edict ordering the British merchants to surrender all of their opium to him and gave them 3 days to comply. The Hong merchants as the traditional mediators between the foreigners and the Qing government bore the heaviest blame and Lin Zexu began interrogating them all. Many were brought before him on their knees under threat of execution if they should lie. The foreign merchants initially made no efforts toward surrendering their opium, they all wanted to see how far Lin Zexu would actually go. Lin Zexu was not accustomed to being disobeyed and quickly lost his patience. By March 19 he announced that no foreign merchants would be allowed to leave the Canton factories until they gave up their opium and signed papers stating they would never trade the drug again in China under penalty of death. Boom. If they continued to defy him after the 3 day, he would execute Houqua and other Hong merchants on the morning of March 22. The Hong merchants all panicked and pleaded with the British merchants to help. The British caved in someone and agreed to hand over 1000 chests of opium on the morning of march 22. Word came that the amount of chests would not be enough and thus the British simply held back. Houqua and some other Hong merchants were paraded around the Canton square with iron collars and chains. Lin Zexu threatened to execute them if British merchants did not hand over the opium, but the deadline had passed and many were suspicious if Lin Zexu was bluffing. One person who did not think Lin Zexu was bluffing was Elliot who was in Macao when he heard of the situation. Elliot feared the British merchants would all be put on trial and executed. Elliot resolved to save them by standing up to the imperial commissioner, but also while trying to appease him. Elliot wrote to Palmerston “to save the merchants a firm tone and attitude was all that he needed to efuse the unjust and menacing disposition of the Imperial commissioner, but that he would also appease him by using his best efforts for fulfilling the reasonable purpose of the Qing government”. Elliot arrived at the Canton factories at sundown of March 24 in a rowboat in full captain's uniform with a cocked hat and his sword in hand. He proclaimed to the merchants “given the imminent hazard of life and property and the dark and violent natures of Lin Zexu's threats, they should begin immediate preparations to evacuate the Canton factories. If Lin Zexu refused to grant them passage from Canton to Macao within 3 days, Elliot would conclude that the Chinese intended to hold them hostage. So long as their proceedings were moderate, defensible and just I will remain with you to my last gulp!”. That night Lin Zexu ordered all the Chinese staff in the factories to leave. The cooks, linguists, porters, servants and such all packed up and left. Then Lin Zexu shut off all supplies from entering the factories and surrounded them with soldiers. The foreign factories had become a prison for roughly 350 people, not all of whom were British. There were Americans, Parsis, some Dutch alongside the British. Lin Zexu was careful to order all guards to not provoke nor molest the foreigners, he wanted everything to be peaceful. Nobody was going to starve however, provisions were plentiful in the factories, however the merchants found cooking for themselves disastrous. One report came from the Americans who said Robert Frobes attempt at ham and eggs came out a hard black mass approximating the sole of a shoe. Elliot was terrified they were all going to starve or be executed. Elliot resolved that they had to cooperate with Lin Zexu and hand over all the opium for if they didn't, he feared they would all be executed. In the name of her majesty, Elliot ordered everyone to surrender the opium to him and in return he would sign a promissory note guaranteeing that the British government would pay them its fair market value. The offer seemed too good to be true to the merchants. The Qing authorities could at any moment seize all the opium by force and with it their tremendous losses. James Matheson said “our surrender is the most fortunate thing that could have happened”. Throughout the afternoon on march 27th, the merchants brought Elliot statements of the amount of opium under the control of their firms and he in turn signed notes of guarantee payments by the British government. All told the amount was 20, 283 chests with a market value of roughly 10 million dollars. There was one glaring problem with this solution, Elliot had absolutely no authority to do it. Elliots decision would turn out to be the crux of many events to come. Elliot had no authority nor any instructions to do what he did. It seems in hindsight it was a rash decision made in panic. From Elliots point of view he had to immediately save the lives of the British subjects and the overall trade relations between Britain and China. After making the choice he wrote to Palmerston “I am without doubt, that the safety of a great mass of human life hung upon my determination”. All the merchants who went along with it knew full well Elliots did not have the authority to purchase 10 million dollars worth of opium on behalf of the Crown, but because he had been so ambiguous in the past about his authority, they could all play coy that they went along with it believing he did have the authority. The signed document would give them a strong case against the British government for compensation if and when it came to that. Facing the choice of having their contraband seized by Elliot or Lin Zexu, it was a no brainer they had better chances dealing with their own government to get reimbursement. Both Elliot and the traders assumed there would be a compensation of sorts and with it the termination of the Indian Chinese opium trade for good. They had no idea how events in Britain would unfold as a result of all of this. And so Elliot wrote to Lin Zexu informing him he would be surrendering all of the opium, which would be the single largest seizure of opium recorded in Chinese history up to that point. Lin Zexu wrote to the emperor on april 12 1839 after the seizure detailing how enormous the success was. He got them to seize all the opium in a short time and they made little conflict over it, hell no military force was really necessary “naturally they were cowed into submission”. Lin Zexu recommended they show benevolence towards the foreigners, to forgive them of their past crimes and send them a large gift of livestock, since he imagined they were starving and they no longer had their trade to support them. Yet Lin Zexu did not immediately release them, Elliot was livid! Lin Zexu told Elliot they could only be granted to leave once ¾'s of the opium had been collected a process that would take weeks, possibly months. Elliot sent a secret dispatch to Palmerston begging him for a naval fleet “it appear to me, my lord, that the response to all these unjust violences should be made in the form of a swift and heavy blow, prefaced by one word of written communication”. Elliot further argued for naval blockade of Canton and the Yangtze River, the capture of Chusan island all followed up by a northern expedition to demand the “disgrace and punishment” of Lin Zexu and Deng Tingzhen. Emperor Daoguang should be forced to apologize for the “indignities heaped upon the Queen and to pay an indemnity to satisfy British losses. The Qing government must be made to understand its obligations to the rest of the world. It would take 6 weeks for all the opium to be collected and the Qing officials expected the opium to be sold off to reimburse the countless Chinese traders that had lost out. Emperor Daoguang however ordered Lin Zexu to destroy it all, and that is just what he did. I would like to mention at this time, I covered what is to come, the first Opium war on my personal channel, its a 45 minute or so documentary so please check it out it would mean a lot to me. But what I also want to let you know is there was a British/Chinese movie made on the Opium war called…the Opium War haha, which came out in 1997. I won't sugar coat it, not a amazing film by any measure, but the scene where Lin Zexu destroys the opium is quite impressive and does more merit to the story then me narrating it, so check it out if you would like! Over the course of 3 weeks in June, Lin Zexu destroyed the opium at a specially built site near the Tiger's Mouth. An american missionary named Elijah Bridgeman witnessed it and there are artist renditions of the event. In rectangular pools around 7 feet deep the opium balls were crushed and tossed in. Chinese workers would stir the thick opium filled water into a froth then cover it all with lime and salt for a few days before casting it out to sea. Lord Palmerston learnt of the confiscated opium from the traders themselves before Elliots letter arrived. The letter that informed Palmerston was from James Matheson who was launching a campaign to make the government pay up. Suddenly petitions from all the merchants poured into Palmerstons office. A bunch of drug dealers were shaking down the British government to pay for their lost drugs. There was another major problem, since march of 1839 all trade with China had halted and there was no way to tell when it would open back up. Ships full of cotton textiles were stuck at Macao and tea shipments were stuck in Whampoa. All the non opium traders were petitioning Britain to do something and fast. Collectively the domestic manufacturers of goods that went to Canton held significant political power, much greater than the opium claimants. They demanded “prompt, vigorous and decided measures to reopen Canton and put the regular China trade on a more secure and permanent basis”. What they wanted was a treaty, done via force if necessary. William Jardine arrived in Britain in September right as the news from Canton was spilling in and began a lobbying campaign. For the british government the talk of the opium trade was embarrassing and they wished to make the entire matter disappear as quickly as possible. However the amount of money owed to the opium traders was enormous and the Treasury of England was in no state to compensate them. Palmerston was in a terrible situation and he brought the issue of China to a cabinet meeting at Windsor castle on October 1 of 1839. He was being bombarded by business lobbyists demanding action, Elliots letter pleading for help and the English press. Britain was involved in a war in the Ottoman Empire against Russia, with a dispute between Maine and New Brunswick and an invasion of Afghanistan thus all the ministers did not want to distract themselves too much with the China problem. Palmerston offered a quick solution, he tossed in front of the cabinet several maps of the Chinese coast and explained how a small British squadron could blockade China's crucial ports and rivers to force the Qing government into submission. The plan was almost identical to a plan formulated by James Matheson in 1836 after Napiers death. The Prime minister Lord Melbourne was not so much concerned with the military aspect of the plan, but how were they going to pay the 10 million to the opium merchants, they had no financial resources to spare. They did not want to take on anymore government debt, the debt was already high after the Napoleonic wars. Also it was going to look terrible bad that the British government was paying off drug dealers. Then the solution came, the brand new secretary at war, Thomas Macaulay made a suggestion to Palmerston, a rather out of the box idea. Why not make China pay for it all. Palmerston put forward Macaulay's idea and the cabinet agreed boom. The matter was settled, a naval squadron, not too large would be dispatched to obtain reparation from China for Lin Zexu's taking of Elliot and the other British subjects hostage. On may 21st of 1839, Lin Zexu finally allowed the foreigners to leave Canton and Elliot ordered all British subjects to abandon the factories and go to macao. Despite this more tense events would follow. In early July there was a drunken melee in Hong Kong harbor. The comprador of the British ship Carnatic was arrested and the sailors of the Carnatic demanded his return, but the Chinese refused. Thus 30 sailors on July 12th from the Carnatic and Mangalore, both ships owned by Jardine Matheson & Co went ashore and to the village of Jianshazui on the Kowloon Peninsula. They all proceed to get drunk off Samshu, a fortified rice wine and vandalized the local temple and beat to death a man named Lin Weixi. Elliot was livid when he heard the news, he was trying to bide time in the hopes Britain was sending reinforcements. He immediately tried to rush to Jianshazui to bribe the family of the victim, but the bribery was to no avail. When Lin Zexu heard of the affair he demanded that the culprits be handed over for Chinese justice. At this time Lin Zexu he had just received new regulations from the Emperor that formully mandated the death sentence for opium users in China and for the first time also for foreigners who sold opium.The British assumed it was a death sentence to give the men up. Lin also put up postings that if any Chinese killed a foreigner unjustly they would be executed. Instead of giving up the men, Elliot called for a court of inquiry and charged 5 British sailors with riot and assault, but brought no murder or manslaughter chrages. Lin Zexu accused the British of denying China's sovereignty by issuing a court of their own. Elliot then invited Lin Zexu to send government officials to observe a new trial for the said sailors, but Lin Zexu refused and promulgated an edict that forbade anyone from giving food or water to all the British citizens in China under penalty of death. The situation was growing more and more tense and Lin Zexu tossed Elliot a rope. On August 17 he ordered Elliot to hand over the murderer without specifiyng the perpetrators identity. Thus the idea was that Elliot could simply send whomever he wanted and the matter could be settled. From Elliots point of view however, to handover any British citizen would cause an uproar back home and he refused to do so. On August 24, an English passenger aboard a boat near Hong Kong was attacked at night. The Chinese stripped the man naked, cut off his ear and stuffed it in his mouth. Rumors began to spread that Lin Zexu was amassing thousands of soldiers to invade Macao. Then the Portuguese governor general of Macao, Don Adraio Accacio a Silveira Pinto told Elliot he had been ordered by the Chinese to expel the British from the colony. He also told Elliot that the Chinese were secretly forming a military force to seize all the British in Macao. That very same day 2 ships belonging to Jardine Matheson & Co arrived to Macao, the Harriet towing the Black Joke. Living up to its name, the Black Joke was covered in blood all over her decks and her crew was missing. The crew of the Harriet reported that unidentified Chinese had boarded the Black Joke as it passed the island of Lantao and massacred the entire crew except for a single sailor they had rescued. Governor Pinto was so alarmed by this development he simply ordered the British to leave immediately. Elliot finally took action. Elliot ordered all the British women and children to depart aboard some merchant ships and sail to Hong Kong Island. With no more hostages at stake Elliot now felt free to make a counterattack if necessary, but for now he would bide his time hoping that Britain was sending a squadron. His hopes were raised when a warship from India arrived, the Volage which held 26 cannons, she also brought with her news that another warship, the Hyacinth and 18 gunner was on its way shortly. Thus Elliot and all the men boarded the ships and sailed to the Kowloon peninsula and set up a flotilla just above Hong Kong island. Lin Zexu got a report of the exodus of Macao and felt he had finally won and wrote to Emperor Daoguang “no doubt they have on their ships a certain stock of dried provisions; but they will very soon find themselves without the heavy, greasy meat dishes for which they have such a passion”. On September 1 the Emperor sent Lin Zexu a letter asking if the rumors were true that the barbarians had purchased female children and used them in diabolical rites. Lin Zexu replied that the foreigners employed Chinese adults as plantation workers and miners and a few children, but he did not believe that any black magic was involved in their employment. The Emperor also asked if the confiscated opium contained human flesh which he theorized might explain the illicit drugs preternatural addictive powers. Lin had heard these ridiculous rumors before, but he could not contradict the Emperor as it amounted to Lese Majeste, so he replied that the opium may have contained flesh of crows that second handedly eat human flesh. After dealing with the Emperor letters which said a lot about the perspective of Beijing on the matter, Lin went to Macao to thank the Portuguese governor for his help. Then Lin Zezu learnt of the British flotilla at Hong Kong. Lin Zexu began to issue orders forbidding the supply of food or water to British ships under the penalty of death. Again the Chinese staff were removed and Chinese war junks began to surround the kowloon peninsula and Hong Kong harbor. Signs were raised stating that the wells and streams had been poisoned. Elliot tried one last ditch effort at diplomacy and took 3 ships, the 14 gun cutter Louisa, the 6 gun schooner Pearl and the 18 gun Volage to Kowloon to demand provisions. They soon ran into 3 anchored Chinese war junks who were blocking them from landing. Elliot sent an interpreter to demand they be allowed food and water. The Chinese captains refused to comply and Elliot said if they did not comply by 2pm that day he would be forced to bombard them. 2pm came with no indication of provisions being sent and no response from the Chinese. So Captain Henry Smith of the Volage fired on the nearest Chinese war junk and the first shot of the First Opium War had been made. According to Adam Elmslie a young superintendent clerk was witnessed the event Henry Smith ordered the volley and “The Junks then triced up their Boarding nettings, and came into action with us at half pistol shot; our guns were well served with grape and round shot; the first shot we gave them they opened a tremendous and well directed fire upon us, from all their Guns (each Junk had 10 Guns, and they brought all these over on the side which we engaged them on) ... The Junk's fire, Thank God! was not enough depressed, or ... none would have lived to tell the Story.—19 of their Guns we received in [the] mainsail,—the first Broadside I can assure you was not pleasant.” Thus the outdated cannons aboard the Chinese war junks were aimed too high completely missed all the British ships. The ships continued to exchange fire and the shore batteries opened fire to support the war junks. By 4:30pm the British had used up almost all their ammunition and made a getaway with the war junks in quik pursuit. Adam Elmslie had this to say when the fire fight recommenced. “The junks immediately made sail after the Louisa and at 4:45 [pm] they came up with the English vessels. We hove the vessel in stays on their starboard Beam, and the 'Pearl' on the larboard [portside] Bow of the van Junk, and gave them three such Broadsides that it made every Rope in the vessel grin again.—We loaded with Grape the fourth time, and gave them gun for gun.—The shrieking on board was dreadful, but it did not frighten me; this is the very first day I ever shed human blood, and I hope it will be the last”. During the second engagement the Chinese war junks retreated to their previous positions and the 3 British ships returned to the flotilla causing a stalemate. The captains of the Chinese war junks sent word to Lin Zexu of a great naval victory over the British claiming to have sunk a number of enemy ships and inflicting 50 casualties. The truth was there were no British casualties and no ships sunk however, in fact the Chinese had 2 killed and 6 wounded. Captain Henry of the Volage bagged Elliot to let him attack the Chinese war junks near Hong Kong harbor certain of victory, but Elliot refused fearing the outbreak of a wider battle and wanting the foreign ministers approval first before escalating things anymore. Despite the reported victory of the Chinese war junks, food and water was sent to the British ships. Lin Zexu was facing a personal and painful problem, an excruciating hernia. Chinese doctors were trying to help him to no avail, so Lin Zexu visited the office of one Dr. Peter Parker, no not spiderman, this was a Yale educated missionary. Parker fitted Lin Zexu with a truss that helped with the pain. After this Lin Zexu began reviewing the military situation at hand, at this time he wrote a poem about the battle of Kowloon “A vast display of Imperial might had shaken all the foreign tribes/And if they now confess their guilt we shall not be too hard on them.”. The Chinese began to war game while at Hong Kong the Hyacinth arrived to reinforce Elliots Flotilla. Lin Zexu continued to demand the surrender of the sailors who killed Lin Weixi, but as time went on the anger caused by the event had dissipated. Then a sailor allegedly drown from one of Jardine Mathesons & Co's ships and the Chinese volunteered to let that dead sailor be identified as the murderer, case closed. Yet trade between Britain and China did not resume and Lin Zexu kept demanding all those who wished to trade in China sign the contract promising not to deal opium under penalty of death. Elliot told the traders not to sign the waivers and to simply sit tight for the time being as he waited for a British fleet. Some of the traders undercut his orders however and went ahead and signed the waiver and thus were allowed to trade legal cargo. One of these traders was Captain Warner of the British cargo ship Thomas Coutts and Lin Zexu was so impressed by the man he asked him to take a letter back to Britain for Queen Victoria. The letter was a remarkably frank document that explained the situation in Canton. It described all the evils of the opium trade and how it was hurting China and the response the Qing government was making to the opium crisis. It also stipulated how they could amend the situation to get rid of the opium menace and resume legal trade. Captain Warner alleges he made good on the promise to bring the letter, first to Lord Palmerston, but his office refused to receive the letter, and there is little evidence Queen Victoria read the letter in question. The Times of London did publish the letter however, it seems Captain Warner must have simply given it to them in the end. When Lin Zexu found out another British warship had joined the Flotilla he took action. He suddenly proclaimed the corpse of the drowned sailor was no longer sufficient for the murder of Lin Weixi and renewed his demands for the murders to be handed over. Failure to comply would result in the expulsion of the entire British colony. In the fall of 1839, 38 British trading vessels and 28 trading companies aboard them remained in Hong Kong harbor. Elliot begged the governor of Macao to let them come back, but he refused fearing the Portuguese would be dragged into what looked like an impending war. Then on October 20th, Elliot received a letter from Palmerston informing him that early next summer, 16 British warships with 4000 men were enroute to rescue the flotilla and to sit tight. However in the meantime more captains were signing the waiver and at the end of October Lin Zexu ordered all British ships to leave within 3 days time. Elliot set sail aboard the Volage with Hyacinth backing him up, for the Bogue as the British called it, it is also known as the Humen, it is a narrow strait in the Pearl River Delta. When Elliots ships reached Chuanbi near the mouth of the river on November 2nd, they came face to face with a Chinese fleet consisting of 15 war junks and 14 fire ships commanded by an old and revered Admiral named Guan Tianpei. Elliots ships came to a halt when he ran into Guan's fleet and they began to exchange a series of messages trying to ferret out the intentions of the other. Guan threatened to seize either ship if it was holding the murderer of Lin Weixi “All I want is the murderous barbarian who killed Lin Weixi. As soon as a time is named when he will be given up, my ships will return into the Bogue. Otherwise, by no means whatsoever shall I accede”. Elliot failed to persuade Guan that he was no threat and the admiral fleet began to maneuver into a position to attack the 2 British Warships. As this was occurring, the Royal Saxon arrived on the scene on its way to Canton. Elliot was anxious to not allow another Captain to sign the opium waiver and fired a warning shot across the Royal Saxon's bows to prevent the ship from entering the river. Guan proceeded to anchor hit ships in between the British warships and the Royal Saxon. Captain Smith pleaded with Elliot to allow him to attack before it was too late and Elliot gave in. The 2 British warships closed in and began to fire their broadsides. The stationary guns aboard the Chinese war junks could not be aimed effectively and fired right over the British masts. One lucky British volley hit a war junks magazines causing it to explode tremendously and sink. This caused the Chinese captains to panic as the Volage continued to score hits at point blank range. 3 more junks were hit and sunk and some of the crews aboard other ships literally jumped overboard. The entire Chinese fleet baegan to scatter and flee, all except for one ship, Admiral Guan's which suicidally stayed to return fire. Guan's ship posed a minimal threat and Elliot impressed by the old Admiral's courage, ordered Smith to stop the barrage and allow the damaged flagship of Admiral Guan to sail off. The Chinese fleet had 1 junk exploded, 3 sunk, countless damaged and the Volage sustained light damage to its sails while Hyacinth's mast received a hit from a 12 pound cannon ball. 15 Chinese sailors were dead with 1 British wounded. The battle of Chuanbi was over and the way to Canton was now open. News of the sea battle reached England and the government remained in denial about the cause of the conflict IE: the opium trade. A group of lobbyists led by William Jardine began to pelt the British press to save the opium trade while simultaneously demanding the British government reimburse the opium merchants. Parliament began to debate how to go about the situation and there emerged an anti-war camp and a war camp. One anti war advocate, Sir William Ewart Gladstone said “Does he [Macaulay] know that the opium smuggled intoChina comes exclusively from British ports, that is, from Bengal and through Bombay? That we require no preventive service to put down this illegal traffic? We have only to stop the sailing of the smuggling vessels…it is a matter of certainty that if we stopped the exportation of opium from Bengal and broke up the depot at Lintin [near Canton] and checked the cultivation of it in Malwa [an Indian province] and put a moral stigma on it, we should greatly cripple if not extinguish the trade in it. They [the Chinese government] gave you notice to abandon your contraband trade. When they found you would not do so they had the right to drive you from their coasts on account of your obstinacy in persisting with this infamous and atrocious traffic…justice, in my opinion, is with them [the Chinese]; and whilst they, the Pagans, the semi-civilized barbarians have it on their side, we, the enlightened and civilized Christians, are pursuing objects at variance both with justice and with religion…a war more unjust in its origin, a war calculated in its progress to cover this country with a permanent disgrace, I do not know and I have not read of. Now, under the auspices of the noble Lord [Macaulay], that flag is become a pirate flag, to protect an infamous traffic.” Palmerston blamed the purchasers of the opium and not the sellers and that the effect of halting the opium exports to China would just drive Turkey and Persia to sell it instead. “I wonderwhat the House would have said to me if I had come down to it with a large naval estimate for a number of revenue cruisers…for the purpose of preserving the morals of the Chinese people, who were disposed to buy what other people were disposed to sell them?” After 3 days to debate the house of commons voted on April 9th of 1840 271 vs 262 to proceed for war. On 20 February 1840 Palmerston sent 2 letters, 1 to Elliot and 1 to Emperor Doaguang. The letter to the Emperor informed the Qing dynasty that Britain had already sent a military expeditionary force to the Chinese coast. These measures of hostility on the part of Great Britain against China are not only justified, but even rendered absolutely necessary, by the outrages which have been committed by the Chinese Authorities against British officers and Subjects, and these hostilities will not cease, until a satisfactory arrangement shall have been made by the Chinese Government. Palmerston's letter to Elliot instructed him to set up a blockade of the Pearl River and forward the letter from Palmerston to Emperor Daoguang. After that Elliot was to capture the Chusan Islands, blockade the mouth of the Yangtze River, start negotiations with the Qing officials. Palmerston also issued a list of objectives that the British government wanted accomplished, with said objectives being Demand to be treated with the respect due to a royal envoy by the Qing authorities. Secure the right of the British superintendent to administer justice to British subjects in China. Seek recompense for destroyed British property. Gain most favoured trading status with the Chinese government. Request the right for foreigners to safely inhabit and own private property in China. Ensure that, if contraband is seized in accordance with Chinese law, no harm comes to the person(s) of British subjects carrying illicit goods in China. End the system by which British merchants are restricted to trading solely in Canton. Ask that the cities of Canton, Amoy, Shanghai, Ningpo, and the province of northern Formosa be freely opened to trade from all foreign powers. Secure island(s) along the Chinese coast that can be easily defended and provisioned, or exchange captured islands for favourable trading terms. It was left to Elliot as to how these objectives would be fulfilled, but noted that while negotiation would be a preferable outcome, he did not trust that diplomacy would succeed, writing; To sum up in a few words the result of this Instruction, you will see, from what I have stated, that the British Government demands from that of China satisfaction for the past and security for the future; and does not choose to trust to negotiation for obtaining either of these things; but has sent out a Naval and Military Force with orders to begin at once to take the Measures necessary for attaining the object in view. And so because of a drug cartel, run by some ruthless characters like Jardine & Matheson, Britain choose to go to war with the Qing Dynasty and begun a century of humiliation for China. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. The incorruptible Lin Zexu was the perfect man for the job of putting an end to the opium problem. However the nefarious opium dealers would not go down without a fight and in the end this all would result in the first opium war. Buckle up it's about to get messy.
Last time we spoke about the numerous attempts of Britain to open the markets of the Qing dynasty. First we talked about the disastrous and quite embarrassing Macartney mission to China which would begin a series of more and more bad relations. After Macartney's mission came a significant increase in opium export to China via India on the part of the East India company. The British were literally and economically dependent on Chinese tea and were beginning to use nefarious methods to get their fix. Then came the Amherst mission which was even more of a catastrophe than the Macartney mission, the man did not even get to meet the Emperor. And so the Canton system of trade went unchanged, but for how long could this system manage the ever increasing demand from the British for more trade? Events are about to unfold which will see a entire nation swept up into a drug cartel. This episode is how to start a drug cartel in the 19th century Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on the history of asia and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. The year was 1830 and the 13 factories of Canton were rustling with business. The rules that governed the hundred or so foreigners who populated the factories were as strict as ever. After the Amherst mission George Staunton remained in Canton and took up a job working for the East India Company. What had changed the most since Staunton had come to Canton as a little boy was that competition was increasing. By 1830 the private traders taking up residence in the Canton foreign factories increased and they came from numerous nations such as India, Armenia, Britain, America and such. They were all competing with the East India Company which held a monopoly over British trade in Canton, but the private British traders now outnumbered the company 2 to 1. All of the private traders resented the company, as one scornful American put it “by its improper interferences and assumptions of superiority the company has earned the same dislike and unpopularity which a despotic and tyrannical government has entitled it to, in all other places where its influence extends”. The company was a mammoth, many of its armed vessels were at Canton, but it had become sluggish and slow to react. The trade between India and Canton which was making private merchants filthy rich was not being carried on the company's ships, the reason being that that cargo was opium. Some private merchants built ships and anchored them 60 miles away from Canton on some outlying islands, not daring to come any closer to the port. They would station their “receiving ships” there at places like Lintin Island far away from the Canton authorities and these ships would act as floating warehouses for drug deals. Foreign vessels came from India with cargoes of opium and would stop at Lintin, offload their chests and then proceed to Canton with their cargo contained no contraband and thus clean for inspection. Their captains came to port and met with Hong merchants, though some dealt with black market merchants. After agreeing on a price, the foreign merchant took their payment for the opium and the Chinese dealers sent their own boats to Lintin to retrieve the shipments. The warehouse ships anchored at Lintin did not own the cargo, they were merely holding it for other unknown merchants who assumed the risks of getting it there. The Chinese smugglers then took the responsibility for the illicit drugs when they smuggled it into China. The Chinese smugglers also bribed government officials to ensure no inspections would be made at Lintin island or that such inspections would be announced in advance. One captain of a warehouse boat, Robert Bennet Forbes earned 800,000 dollars of today's currency per year for these operations. The opium grew magnificently well in India and the East India Company would go bankrupt without the profit it gained from the illicit trade. Although the East India Company consistently avoided carrying opium to China on its own ships, that did not mean it did not take part in the trade network. The company dominated the opium supply within India and held auctions in Calcutta where it would sell to the smugglers. Everyone got a piece, the East India Company, the foreign smuggler and the Chinese merchants. The proceeds after all when said and done was payments of silver which were handed over to the East India Company's treasury whom would give the smugglers in return bills to use in India or Britain. Thus the company would enjoy a constant flow of silver. Now the East India Company did its best to contain the cultivation of opium in India, but as time went by Indian entrepreneurs realized the massive gains that could be made and began to produce opium and ship it to ports on India's coast. The East India Company needed to keep a tight lid on how much opium made it to Canton to ensure prices remained high and that the Qing dynasty did not crack down on the trade. But in their efforts to thwart the opium cultivators trying to compete with them, they ended up simply increasing production exponentially. The company literally began to buy out its competitors to try and control the production of opium, but by that point the price per chest of opium had dropped to nearly half its value. This would have a disastrous side effect. Up until this point in the 1820's, opium remained an expensive luxury good, but with the price of it dropping soon the non wealthy in China began to purchase it and the trade expanded. By 1823 opium surpassed cotton as the largest Indian export to China. By 1828 opium was looking like the only commodity left that could reliably secure a profit for merchants in the area. 10,000 chests of opium made its way to Canton in 1828. By 1831 nearly 20,000 chests reached Canton, quadrupling the trade over the course of a decade. Those chests did not include another 8% coming from Turkey via American smugglers, nor western Chinese grown opium. Those nearly 20,000 chests, 18956 to be more precise were worth nearly 13 million at the time, making it the most lucrative commodity trade in the world. The independent traders, IE: smugglers formed their own community in Canton that rivaled the East India Company's factory. Their leader was the infamous William Jardine, a Scot with a degree in medicine from Edinburgh. Jardine had come to Canton as a surgeon's mate for the East India Company in 1802. When he graduated to full surgeon he was given a small space in the ship to carry his own cargo. He soon found that an illicit trade in Canton would provide him more profit than his work in medicine. Thus in 1817 after working 15 years for the company he quit to become a free merchant. After 3 years of his new life as a trader he ran into a fellow scot of higher birth named James Matheson who had like him begun the illicit business. The 2 men complemented another, Matheson was 12 years younger, more outspoken and temperamental and quite a good writer. He also had social connections back home in Britain and a lot of money. Jardine was more reserved and had a better head for business, but it was Matheson who was more willing to take big risks. In 1823 Matheson tried to sell some opium in Canton and failed horribly, but his family's wealth kept him afloat. In 1828 the 2 purchased a firm called Magniac & co and would rename it in 1832 to Jardine Matheson & Co. Stands to this very day. Their company began doing business with opium merchants in Bombay and elsewhere in India. They settled down to live in “creek factory”, just 2 doors down from the East India company factory. They opened a newspaper called the Canton register which began a campaign to abolish the East India Company's monopoly in Canton. To allow their illicit business to work, Matheson got an appointment as a Danish consul and Jardine a Prussian consul. They both mingled with many of the big smugglers in Canton like a Parsi named Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy and competed with other companies such as the Russel & Co. The Russel & Co was an American firm which would end up handling 1/5 of the Indian opium coming into Canton, so do not believe this was exclusively a British enterprise. On the other side of this, the Qing government efforts to suppress the illicit trade were infrequent and half hearted in part because many officials were themselves involved in the business. Officials along the coast and those in Canton were many of the former corrupt officials that worked under Heshen and thus were not strangers to working the system. Despite its official illegal status, the Canton opium trades flourished. A Hong merchant named Wu Bingjian, but known to the foreigners as Houqua rose to prominence. As stated by Thomas Forbes in 1828 “Houqua as a man of business I consider the first in the country”. Houqua was the most influential trader in Canton. He was in his mid 60's, had drooping eyes, a pointed goatee and a long neck. Houqua handled all the business of the East India Company's factory in Canton along with other factories. He was revered by the foreign community for his honesty and business sense. Teas marked with his imprimatur were considered the best quality in the world. Houqua became a household name even in Britain and America and as it happens was likely the richest man in the world at one point. In the 1830's the Americans estimated Houqua was worth perhaps 26 million. Houqua lived on an island across from Canton and in a spare office there John Murray Forbes worked for Houqua as his secretary. Forbes at the age of 18 would be chartering multiple ships loaded with Houquas tea and would receive a generous 10% commission. Now going back in time, in 1820, Emperor Jiaqing died and Emperor Daoguang took the throne. In 1810 Emperor Jiaqing revived his grandfather Emperor Yongheng's opium ban and by 1813 despaired at how it was spreading amongst the elite, even within his own palace. Apparently imperial guards and Qing officials in the palace were abusers of it. After his death, Emperor Daoguang carried forward his fathers opposition to opium. He said early into his reign “Opium is a great harm to the customs and morals of the people”. He ordered an end to the coastal drug smuggling, targeting corrupt officials who were allowing opium to come into China. “If there are traitors who try to collect taxes off opium to enrich themselves, or wh personally smuggle it into the country, punish them immediately and severely in order to expunge this massing of insects”. The same year he made these edicts a large number of scholars from coastal provinces showed up to take the civil service examination in Beijing only to die of convulsions from opium withdrawals over the 3 day test. How many addicts there were is hard to estimate. In 1820 with nearly 5000 chests being imported each year that would support roughly 40,000 habitual users, less than a hundredth of a single percent of the population. But by 1830 opium usage was exponentially increasing, the Daoguang emperor's initial concerns became full on alarm. He wrote an edict in January of 1830 “Opium is flooding into the interior, the multitude of users expands day by day, and there are more and more people who sell it; they are like fire and smoke, destroying our resources and harming our people. Each day is worse than the last”. The reports pouring in from provinces were shocking. From Zhili province a report read “there are opium smokers everywhere, especially in the government office. From the governor general all the way down through the ranks of officials and their subordinates, the ones who do not smoke opium are very few indeed”. In response the the growing reports, in 1831, the Daoguang emperor order greater efforts be made to suppress the opium smuggling. Yet despite his orders, Beijing was unable to exert control over the provinces so affected because the local kingpins were proving themselves to be better providers for the locals than the central government. It was the kingpins employing people, providing income, security and by far could strike fear upon the populace if they were angered. When government officials would show up to crack down in the provinces, village mobs would attack them and turn them right back. This made Daoguang and his court tred very carefully as they understood how a full on rebellion was very possible. Thus Daoguang advisers cautioned any general campaign to stamp out opium smoking, do not go after the petty commoners suffering from financial hardships and addiction, but instead focus on hindering the smugglers. Between 1831-1833 many minor conflicts occurred that would have amounted to nothing if it was not for the efforts of independent opium dealers looking to get rid of the East India Company. Of particular note was Jardine Matheson & Co who constantly wrote back to London the problems arising from allowing the company to hold a monopoly. Eventually the efforts of the smugglers paid off as in 1833 it was put to a vote to terminate the company's monopoly. By the autumn of 1833, news reached Canton that the East India company's monopoly would not be renewed when its charter expired the following May. Not only would it lose its monopoly, the East India Company would also no longer be allowed by the British government to continue its trade with China. The East India Company that had dominated trade for more than 2 centuries in Canton would vanish. The Hong merchants were quite apprehensive at the news, it was not clear to them how the trade would now function. The Viceroy of Canton ordered the British to appoint a “tai pan” a chief executive who would be held accountable by Chinese officials for British trade conduct in Canton. The British government recognized the need to replace the role of the East India company with an alternative arrangement and agreed to create 3 superintendents of trade, a Chief superintendent, supported by 2 subordinates. “The Chief superintendent of trade would preside over a Court of Justice with criminal and admiralty jurisdiction for the trial of offenses committed by his majesty's subjects in the said dominions or on the high sea within a hundred miles from the coast of China”. Now if you read that closely you realize, Britain just stipulated claims of extraterritoriality within the territory of the Qing dynasty. Jardine and Matheson both worried the position of the superintendent would fall to George Stauton who arguably was the most qualified person for the job. But Staunton was an East India company man and they both worried he would bring with him the same bureaucracy that impeded upon the dealings of the independent merchants. Jardine and Matheson also took a hardline against Stauton between 1831-1833 trying to get the company abolished, he most likely would now return the favor. But to their joy, Staunton did not get the job, it went instead to William John Napier. Napier was a tall, redheaded and gallant captain of the Royal Navy and a veteran of the Napoleonic wars and fought in the legendary battle of Trafalgar. His qualifications and expertise in the trade of China amounted to nothing at all. Napier had zero experience in diplomacy, nor trade and he knew nothing about China. The cherry on top of all of this was that he was a proponent of free trade. He was to put it frankly, absolutely perfect for the smugglers. For Napier it seems he fantasied about the power he might be capable of wielding in China, a country he understood to be “an enormous Empire of 40,000,000 that hands only together by a spiders web. What a glorious thing it would be to station a naval squadron along the coast and how easily a gun brig would raise a revolution and cause them to open their ports to the trading world”. Napiers ambitions were known to some, such as Earl Grey who sent him a private letter politely asking Napier to “exercise the most careful discretion in all your dealings with the Chinese. Given the suspicious character of the Qing government and the Chinese people, nothing must be done to shock their prejudices or to excite their fears”. Lord Napier was expected above all to keep the peace at Canton and to do no harm to the trade relations between Britain and China. Earl Grey had told him in person “persuasion and conciliation should be the means employed rather than anything approaching to the tone of hostile and menacing language. In the very worst case, should this not work, you are to show submission for a time and wait for new instructions from Britain”. Thus Napier was forbidden from pursuing any aggressive action. Napier also received instructions from Lord Palmertson at the foriegn office which likewise told him much of what Earl Grey said. Palmertson said the highest priority was to avoid any conflict with the Chinese. It was desirable to establish a line of communication with Beijing, but Napier was not an ambassador and should not go to Beijing even if opportunity arose because he “might awaken fears, or offend the prejudices of the Qing government”. Palmertson also asked Napier to find out if it was possible to make a survey of the Chinese coast, but not to make a survey. Lastly Palmertson instructed Napier not to negotiate with the Qing officials at Canton. If the opportunity presented itself, Napier was to write back home and await instructions. Just before departing, Napier would ask to be supplied with plenipotentiary powers just in case an opportunity to meet the Emperor arose, and was flat out denied this. Napier sailed off from Plymouth on February 7 of 1834 on the 28 gunship Andromache, taking with him his wife and 2 daughters. While enroute, Napier read all that he could of the 2 previous missions particularly Amherst's notes about the status of China. Napier was excited to read about how Amherst described China as a nation oppressed by an alien dynasty and that the Han people wanted free trade. He became more and more convinced that his idea of sending a single squadron could force the Qing government to open every port in China to britain. He arrived at Macao on July 16 of 1834 and had instructions from Lord Palmertson to go straight to Canton and announce himself directly. This was an error on Palmertsons part as he obviously did not know that all foreigners were supposed to first go to Macao and await Chinese authority to come to Canton. This mistake would lead to terrible results. OnJuly 23 Napier sailed for Canton and got to the city on July 25. He went to the factory compound at Canton and read aloud his commission to all the British traders.Then he wrote a letter to announce his arrival to the governor general. The governor general was Lu Kun who refused to accept the letter because Napier had come to Canton unannounced without applying for a permit to enter Canton. Lu Kun said he had no idea why Napier was here, only that he had arrived on a warship and claimed to be in charge of British trade. Lu Kun was aware that Napiers arrival meant the East India companies role was ended in canton and that a new set of regulations for trade were going to be needed. However Lu Kun did not have the authority to establish any new regulations himself without orders from the emperor. So ironically both these men have the same issue. Lu Kun asked Houqua to meet with Napier to sound out the business and report back to him so they could inform Emperor Daoguang. On July 26 Houqua met with Napier and explained that the governor general required a Taipan to communicate and do trade, as they had done in the past. Napier brushed this off and said he preferred to communicate directly with the governor general. Napier ignored Houqua and sent a delegation of british merchants through canton to deliver his letter to Lu Kun. No Qing officials would dare accept the letter and Houqua pleaded with Napier to give him the letter so he could deliver it. Napier was insistent to directly address Lu Kun and refused. The next day, Houqua advised changing the letter into a petition implying Napier into a supplicant status. This greatly pissed off Napier. To add to Napiers anger, Lu Kun did not know what title to use for Napier so he wrote the term “yimu” meaning “headman” which was used for tribal chiefs and Napier's staff translated this out of context to mean “barbarian eye”. This came off as derogatory for the British. Napier was making a large error, he thought he was dealing with China, but in reality he was only dealing with a single individual. That single individual, Lu Kun was in a position that should he disappoint the Emperor he would lose his job. All Lu Kun cared about was following protocol and not accidentally setting any new precedents. He had no authority to negotiate a new system of trade and to even border on that was to lose his job. Any of the former East India company veterans or many of the independent merchants could have easily explained this to Napier, but they didn't. Napier did not trust the former company staff and the independent merchants were vying for new trade negotiations. Napier ended up listening to the council of fellow Scots, Jardine and Matheson. Jardine and Matheson had gone to work on Napier from the very beginning helping him establish himself in Canton. By august 9th, Napier still was unable to get his letter delivered and was becoming furious. Napier wrote to Palmersson complaining about the situation and that the Chinese were demanding he leave Canton and return to Macao. Napier went on to showcase his personal views “His majesty's government should not be ruled by the ordinary forms prescribed among civilized people. Lu Kun is a presumptuous savage. He was an alien Manchu, like the Daoguang emperor himself whom were nothing more than intruders in the country. The real people of China, the Han Chinese all wanted British trade, it was just this illegitimate government that was holding them back. The Manchus may have been fierce and strong once upon a time, but now after generations of rule they were a wretched people, inconceivably degraded, unfit for action or exertion. The British would be best off using its military power to force the Manchu government to open China's ports once and for all”. So in only 3 weeks the man sent to maintain peaceful trading relations was basically calling for war. On August 23 some Qing officials showed up sent by Lu Kun asking when Napier was going to return to Macao and Napier responded he would go entirely according to his own convenience. Napier felt the trade relations were now threatened and decided to take his case to the people. Napier was certain the independent merchants and local cantonese would rally to him because they all wanted free trade. He began creating posters declaring how“He had been insulted and humiliated by the corrupt governor general Lu Kun whose ignorance and obstinacy were allowing the Hong merchants to shut down Britain's trade at Canton.Thousands of industrious Chinese who live by the European trade must suffer ruin and discomfort through the perversity of their Government. The only thing his people want is to trade with all China, on principles of mutual benefit, and that the British would never rest until they reached that goal”. The next day another poster went up, this one made by the Qing “a lawless foreign slave, Napier has issued a notice. We know not how such a dog barbarian of an outside nation as you, can have the audacious presumption to call yourself superintendent”. The poster also suggested cutting Napiers head off and displaying it on a stake. On the evening of september the 4th, as Napier was eating dinner with some guests, servants rushed in to warn him that armed men had appeared at the front gates. Napier went to the gates to see Qing soldiers had surrounded the factory building and an official was nailing an edict from the governor general to the factory wall as he announced the official shutdown of trade and ordered all Chinese employees of the factory to vacate immediately. Soon all the Chinese staff, servants, porters, guards and such left the factory, leaving Napier with just a handful of companions. Napier heard someone in the crowd say he was going to burn down the factory that very night and Napier knew action had to be taken. Napier called upon his 2 nearby gunboats, Andromache and Imogene, both 6th rate Royal Navy frigates with 54 guns between them. Napier believed under the circumstances he had sufficient reason to defy his orders from Britain and ordered the gunboats to force passage through the Tiger's Mouth. They were to deal with whatever resistance was made upon them and to take up positions in Whampoa and protect British subjects and their property. After ordering the ships off he addressed a letter to Lu Kun and the Hong merchants declaring “you have opened the preliminaries of war. His imperial majesty will not permit such folly, wickedness, and cruelty as you have been guilty of, since my arrival here, to go unpunished”. Unfortunately, the British governments actual response to Napiers call for war would not reach Canton until it was far too late. The British governments response was of course, to tell him to back down and to follow instructions and behave. “It is not by force and violence that his majesty intends to establish a commercial intercourse between his subjects and China”. The 2 warships forced their passage through the Tiger's Mouth and exchanged fire with the Chinese forts that guarded it. Napiers 2 frigates unloaded more than 700 rounds into the Chinese forts, 2 British sailors were killed with 5 wounded.The forts were hammered into silence and thus ended what is called the Battle of the Bogue. The Chinese forts lacked the firepower that the British cannons held. The 2 warships proceeded to Whampoa, but the Chinese built heavy obstacles upriver, such as a large cable drawn across the river with hundreds of fire rafts loaded with gunpowder and a fleet of war junks to try and block the passage towards Canton. The 2 warships were not able to get close enough to Canton to be visible from the factories in it. The shock and awe that Napier had wanted to inflict did not come to fruition. The British merchants refused to followed Napiers lead, most simply wanted trade to resume, not a war. Jardine and Matheson were some of the very few who supported Napiers hardline stance, but most asked Napier to obey Lu Kun's orders and to go to Macao immediately. Many of the merchants began to petition Napier complaining how much financial losses he was causing them. Meanwhile Lu Kun made it clear he had zero problems with the merchants, it was Napier alone as to why trade was shut down and that normal commerce would resume the second he left. Napier felt betrayed by his own people and was humiliated. Napier was quite alone in the empty factory building, out of reach from his 2 gunboats and the Qing were making sure no provisions reached the factory. He realized the consequences if British trade suffered serious harm from his personal actions and coincidentally he was beginning to become quite ill. Thus Napier backed down, on september 21 he ordered the 2 gunboats to pull out and he left Canton a broken man. Trade resumed to normal a fews days after his departure. Britain's first chief superintendent of trade, a proud veteran of Trafalgar and the Napoleonic wars had been brought to his knees by Lu Kun. After a 5 day trip under heavy Qing military escort, Napier arrived in Macao pale and feverish. He died 2 weeks later. The British public did not mourn the loss of Napier. The Duke of Wellington summed up their views by stating “the attempt to force upon the Chinese authorities at Canton an accustomed mode of communication with an authority of whose powers and of whose nature they had no knowledge had failed, as it is obvious that such an attempt must invariably fail, and lead again to national disgrace”. Jardine and Matheson alongside 85 other independent merchants all signed a petition to the new King of England William IV, demanding revenge for Napiers humiliations. Within China the situation was getting worse. Patronage, bribery and embezzlement were becoming the norm among civil officials. Opium was weaving its way through the fabric of Chinese society. In spite of Daoguang's edicts to control the illicit drug the trade was growing exponentially. A major north south land transport route for opium emerged through Hunan province and with it some uprisings sprang up. The Qing government sent military forces to pacify the uprisings but ironically the soldiers that were sent were heavy users of opium and performed terribly. Forces which were sent to opium heavy regions would fall victim to the substance. The Chinese economy was falling into a depression. Grain prices deflated, driving down the income of farmers. Unemployment rose and the Qing government tax revenues were declining. Soon it became expensive to maintain public works like flood control which led to shoddy construction giving way to destructive episodes of flooding. With the flooding came agricultural failures and with that famines. China's monetary system was collapsing, a major problem was the side effect of the opium trade, the exportation of silver. The Hong merchants paid for the opium with silver, but could not accept silver as payment for tea or silk because it would indicate that they had exported silver in the first place which was illegal. Thus silver was pouring out of China and not coming back in and on top of this, since the 1820 the worlds supply of silver had been coming from mines in Mexico and Peru, but national revolutions in Latin America had shut down those mines. The combination of these 2 factors had a disastrous effect on China. Silver was the international currency, but copper coins were an important part of China's internal economy. A tael of silver was worth 1000 copper coins during normal times, moving such a large amount of copper was logistically unstable thus silver played a crucial role in China's economy. Silver was the basis of tax payments, a medium for all long distance trade conducted within China and abroad. But copper was used as a medium for the local economies, the marketplace and menial wages. The income and savings for all the lower classes of China, farmers laborers, craftsmen was all paid in copper. As silver flooded out of China it became more and more valuable and this skewed its exchange with copper to the point of absolute mayhem. By 1830 a tael of silver was worth 1365 copper coins and soon it rose to 1600, then to 2000 by the late 1830's. With the inflation came a need for higher taxes, but the lower class could not afford to pay them. The Qing court debated many ways to remedy the situation. Some said they should merely open ports to appease the traders, some went as far as saying they should simply lift the illegal status of opium so it could be traded accordingly and proper taxes could be levied. In the end Emperor Daoguang increased his hardline stance against opium. Now commoners and soldiers convicted of smoking opium would be punished with 100 lashes and 2 months in the cangue (plank of wood with their hands and neck inside). Even family members of opium users could be punished, such as a father failing to control his children from smoking it. Now when Britain got rid of the East India Company's monopoly, the responsibility for the conduct of British opium traders in China shifted from the company to the British government itself. The government of Britain tried to pretend the trade did not exist, but the public was learning more and more about it, especially after the Napier affair. Back to Jardine & Matheson's petitions to the king, they demanded a full fledged ambassador, backed up by a war fleet, to demand reparation for China's apparent crimes. More and more letters came to Britain demanding war like action and that just a small force of 2 frigates and 3 or 4 armed vessels could blockade most of the sea trade for the Qing empire. “Intercepting its revenues in their progres to the capital, and taking possession of all the armed vessels of the country”. Such actions they argued would not see full scale war, it would just lead to more amenable trade relations. The new man to replace Napier was a longtime East India company man named John Davis. And to their misery he immediately rejected their demand for reparations and was adamantly against their free trade movement. Davis subscribed to the idea that China trade should be conducted with caution and respect. As Jardine & Matheson continuously called for war, Davis sent word back to Palmersson in Britain to ignore them. Davis was far more optimistic that Britain could find a peaceful way after the embarrassing Napier situation. Jardine & Matheson would not quit, and Matheson went back to Britain to drum up support for a punitive expedition against China. While Matheson held no significant influence over the British government, fortunately Lady Napier did whom he was pushing to rally support for the cause. He used Lady Napier to gain an audience with Lord Palmerston, but as much as he tried to persuade the man, Palmerston like many other officials believed the Canton trade would regain its balance naturally with time and noninterference. Before leaving to go back to China in 1836, Matheson created a hundred page pamphlet titled “the present position and prospects of the British trade with China”. The piece argued for the necessity of a british naval expedition to open China or trade would simply come to an end. Back in Canton, Davis appointed Charles Elliot as secretary to the committee of superintendents. Charles Elliot was a light haired, thin lipped captain in the Royal Navy. In 1830 he was appointed protector of slaves in British Guyana where his job was to investigate the most abusive practices of the British plantation owners and represent the interests of the slaves who suffered under them. The experience hardened Elliot into an abolitionist. Lord Palmerston saw him as a convenient person at the right time to take up the cause in China against opium and had sent him alongside Napier. Eliot was a calculating man, obsessed on how his actions would be interpreted back home in Britain, angling to improve his career. Davis took a strong liking to Elliot, he was flexible and not as headstrong as Napier. Davis also knew he was not expected to hold his position long, the chief superintendent should not be a former company man. Davis wanted to save face and resigned preemptively. When he resigned he lobbied for Elliot to be made the new superintendent. And thus Elliot got the job to his surprise. Elliot would likewise have a new governor general to deal with, Lu Kun died and was replaced by Deng Tingzhen. They started of on the right foot, Elliot presented his credentials as the new superintendent of trade at Macao and asked for permission to come to Canton. His polite and respectful approach was approved by the emperor and he was welcomed to Canton and took up residence at the old British factory. In Chinese he was referred to as Lingshi “consul” a respectable title that could not be confused with barbarian eye. In november of 1836, just 5 months after Elliots arrival, the Daoguang Emperor issued an edict banning both the importation and use of opium throughout China. Deng Tingzhen proclaimed “The smoke of opium is a deadly poison. Opium is nothing else but a flowing poison; that it leads to extravagant expenditure is a small evil, but as it utterly ruins the mind and morals of the people, it is a dreadful calamity.” The crackdown was immense, Qing forces under Deng chased down Chinese smugglers and destroyed their transport ships. They went after dealers on land breaking the supply lines leading the Chinese smugglers to demand higher and higher fees from the foreign traders to transport the opium. Jardine wrote letters back to Bombay stating the once flourishing opium traffic was falling apart “the Drug market is becoming worse every day owing to the extreme vigilance of the authorities, and we see no chance of amendment”. Though Elliot hate the opium trade he knew it was a evil necessity for Britain and feared an outbreak of violence between the Chinese government forces and the increasingly desperate British opium traders. Because the traders were resorting to more dramatic actions Elliot feared the honest traders in canton would soon face consequences because of the opium traders. Then the Hong merchants sent word to Elliot from the Emperor urging him to banish the British opium traders vessels from Canton, but Eliot pleaded that his government never gave him such authority. Elliots orders the Foreign Office were to make sure Britain's drug of choice, tea, made it safely out of China and into the teacups of English drawing rooms for the ritual afternoon tea”. They were also to ensure the safety of British subjects in China. Without any authority to stop the opium smugglers he sought action that would at least thwart violence. Elliot wrote to Palmerston in 1837 asking if Britain could make a diplomatic intervention in China to reduce the risk of losing the tea commerce. Elliot, Deng Tingzhen the Chinese and independent merchants all were under the belief the Emperor was on the verge of declaring opium legalized. Indeed Deng and many other high ranking Qing officials had pressed the case for legalization for quite awhile and the Emperor had been showing a lot of interest in it as a solution for the silver crisis. Elliot proposed sending another ambassador accompanied by a peaceful naval force to argue in favor of legalizing opium. His thinking was that by displaying power, but not guns blazing, could in a respectful manner impress the Qing the importance of the tea trade to both nations. Elliot also had a lot of suggestions for the ambassador. For one that he should inform the emperor that half of the opium was coming from free areas of India that Britain did not control. Also that if Britain stopped its opium traders, other nations would simply fill its space. In light of such logic the only outcome had to be legalization of opium. Palmerston was aghast, Elliot of all people who was so against the illicit trade was now arguing on the side of the opium smugglers? Palmerston could not agree to such an idea to argue the cause of the smugglers to the emperor no, instead he proposed a “china courts bill” that would grant Elliot formal legal authority over the British subjects in China. He foresaw the creation of a British court of law in Canton, under the superintendent with jurisdiction over all British subjects 100 miles of the Chinese coast. Thus Elliot would have authority both in civil and criminal disputes. Palmerston hoped Elliot would be able to keep the free traders in line and banish the worst offenders, thus appeasing the Chinese. Palmerston never thought such an act would be seen by the Chinese as interfering with their own jurisdiction and authority. The bill was a complete breach of Chinese sovereignty, and thus when it went through parliament it was utterly destroyed. Meanwhile back on the Chinese side, Deng Tingzhen was continuing to make progress at crushing the opium trade. But then in 1838 a Qing official named Huang Juezi submitted a new method of crushing the opium trade and stopping the loss of silver. His proposal “thus, the way to defend against this calamity, lies not with foreign merchants but with the wicked chinese”. He argued it was impossible to block the opium by embargo and it risked foreign trade. To go after the traffickers had proven to be ineffective, because of the extremity of official corruption. Thus they should target the Chinese consumers. As he summed it up “if there were no common users of opium in China then there naturally would be no dealers, no traffickers and no international smuggling trade to drain silver out of China”. It was going to be an exceptionally harsh policy, but Emperor Daoguang was intrigued and brought the proposal to the court. The majority of officials were against it, but the vast majority were also against legalization. One official who was for Huang Juezi's proposal was Lin Zexu the governor general of Hunan and Hubei provinces. Ah yes, for my Chinese listeners or those familiar with Chinese history, one of the most famous figures has emerged onto the stage. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. The British were walking a tightrope between getting their tea fix and not being banned from trade with China because of the Opium smuggling. Silver was flooding back into Britain while being drained from China and enough was enough for the Qing dynasty, now they would wage war on the illicit drug.
LAP 25 IS LIVE! In this episode, Billy, Trey and returning guest hosts Andrew & Rob discuss the first ever next-gen race at Pocono, Hamlin winning... until he didn't, what this DQ means for Elliots playoff point lead, tough days for non-winners, Chicago street course being confirmed, Kurt Busch's possible retirement hints, Indy road course expectations, and more! Tune in on all your favorite streaming platforms
Chess 4 Life An incredible conversation today with Elliot Neff about Chess. You may think of chess as just a game but as I've learnt today, it's much more! Through Elliot's journey in playing chess and becoming a Chess Master, he went on to develop a program to help children excel in life. Elliot and the team and Chess4Life have developed programs to help make a positive impact on the lives of 1 million kids each week. Elliot shares the educational mindset and life skills that chess can teach. Amazing! Pick up a copy of Elliots book, A Pawns Journey, using this link. Guest Bio. Elliott Neff is a National Master in Chess, author of A Pawn's Journey (October 2018), and CEO of Chess4Life, which exists to help kids develop life skills through the game of chess. What began for Elliott as a childhood fascination with chess has blossomed into an opportunity to positively impact tens of thousands of kids per week through Chess4Life programs, and a vision of impacting 1 million youth per week. Elliott's coaching expertise is reflected in his certification as a USCF Level V Coach, an honor that fewer than a dozen top level coaches in the US share. Elliott's work is endorsed by many, including: Grandmaster Varuzhan Akobian Mary Miller, co-creator of The Dream Manager program Robert Katende, Founder and Director of SOM Chess Academy in Uganda, coach to Phiona Mutesi of the Queen of Katwe. Elliott is a husband, father, entrepreneur, and author.
The Elliots are growing distressed for money. (For questions, comments, concerns, email us at secondimpressionspod@gmail.com)
After a week off I am back!!! I get into why I took a week off and my journey with being productive on the weekends. I then move onto the chaotic Euphoria finale where I express my disdain for Elliots dreadful hymn, the sadness of Ashtray's fatal death, & why overall the finale left me disappointed in more ways than one. After that I rant about the RHOSLC reunion part one and all I can say is...justice for Lisa Barlow!!! I then talk about the latest episodes of Summer House & RHONJ. Enjoy!!! :)
Fun-Tana! In this episode, Billy and co-host Trey breakdown an exciting California trip, how the next-gen car has been looking so far, a wild finish with some unexpected names fighting for the top spot, Larson and Elliots tangle, tire / broadcast issues, and give insight on what we expect out in Vegas. (0:00) Intro, (0:55) California Craziness, (5:25) Larson and Elliot, (12:52) Tire Problems... Again, (16:47) Other Race Topics, (25:00) Matt Kenseth Can Broadcast, Fox Needs Work, (31:56) On / Off Throttle: Fontana Staying, (35:30) Vegas Preview, (38:38) NEW SEGMENT: Who Ya Got?, (41:20) Outro.
The Elliot family has never gotten along on the holidays. A tradition of being together at their family's coastal homestead was always marred by fighting, bad gifts, and mysterious malfunctions they always joked were due to the ghost of a long dead relative. But what if the curse on the Elliots is real? What if an angry spirit dwells in the house, and this Christmas it wants them to leave it alone? As the family (and Terry) gather once again to get on each other's nerves, this Christmas will be an evening with the Elliots they will never forget…StarringMeggie GatesAdam GilbertLaura Petro Hobert ThompsonLucia Whalen
This week the boys discuss the Richmond race, JGR domination, Elliots pit stop, the new 2022 Schedule, Where the term "lucky Dog" came from and more.
Bloggers Marc & Angel share the story of stopping to talk to a lady that they would run past every Sunday morning on their jog around a lake near their home. Curious as to what she did every week they approached her. At her feet was a metal trap with several turtles walking around it. In her lap was still another turtle; she had a brush and was scrubbing its shell. After their question, the lady explained that algae weakens turtles' shells, slows them down, and prevents them from absorbing heat. Every week she came out to scrub their shells, making their lives just a little easier. We all make a difference, maybe not all at once or to large groups. But we can approach every day with the purpose that we will make a difference. This week we appreciate community organizations that do just that.
This is my first time co-hosting. This podcast is available on 2 platforms. Mine and Elliots. It started so well: We spoke all things Roman, The conversation naturally progressed to many other topics! It was great recording this so I kept a lot of it it in. A great accent contrast here. Go check out Elliots work at “Anthology of Heroes” and follow him on social media. Support a budding podcaster... Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
Happy Valentines everyone today on this episode we have a couple special guests. We have Chances wife Ashley and Elliots girlfriend Kristen!
Elisabeth Elliot was a well-loved Christian missionary, author, and speaker. Her first husband, Jim Eliot, was attacked and killed in 1956 while attempting to make missionary contact with the Auca tribe of eastern Ecuador. Prior to her death, Danielle was privileged to be her caregiver, gaining a unique and beneficial insight into Elisabeth Elliot's life. You will appreciate the insight she gained from this life-shaping experience. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/mark-cravens7/support
Back to the Borders! In this episode, which draws mostly from Keith Hunter's article "The Recolonization of Liddesdale" found on Academia.edu, we jump into the origin of the Elliots. How did they arrive in Scotland? Were they always a Border clan? We also see the fighting character of the Elliots as a reoccurring theme in their history. This is available on Podbean.com, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. https://www.academia.edu/36732170/Recolonization_of_Liddesdale.doc
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