Battle of Taku Forts (1859)

Second Battle of Taku Forts
Part of the Second Opium War
The Taku Forts
Date June 24–26, 1859 Location Taku Forts, Hai River, China Result Chinese victory
Belligerents
United Kingdom  France  United States	Qing China
Commanders and leaders
James Hope (WIA) Josiah Tattnall	Sengge Rinchen
Strength
United Kingdom Land: ~1,160 Sea: 11 gunboats 4 steamers	4,000 60 artillery pieces 6 forts
Casualties and losses
British: 3 gunboats sunk 3 gunboats grounded 81 killed 345 wounded French: 12 killed 23 wounded American: 1 launch damaged 1 killed 1 wounded	32 killed or wounded

The Second Battle of Taku Forts was an Anglo-French attack against the Taku Forts along the Hai River in Tianjin, China, in June 1859 during the Second Opium War. A chartered American steamship arrived on scene and assisted the French and British in their attempted suppression of the forts.

Taku is a village near the mouth of the Pei-ho River, which flows between low, muddy banks and runs into the Gulf of Pe-cho-li. Thirty-four miles above the river is Tientsin, constructed at the fork of the Pei-ho with the Grand Canal. Tientsin is the port of Peking and a place of much commerce. Peking is the capital of China and is about eighty miles above Tientsin. In the year 1858, French and British forces had battled their way to Tientsin, passing the Taku Forts at the Pei-ho's mouth with little difficulty, the works were insufficiently armed and held by a weak garrison which put up little defense. When Tientsin was occupied, the Chinese sued for peace, thus the first period of the war ended and a treaty was signed there containing among other stipulations, an agreement that the envoys of British and France were to be received at Peking within a year, and that the treaty was to be ratified there. Now the Chinese, as soon as the allies withdrew from Tientsin, began to regret having consented to allow the foreign ambassadors to enter their capital and attempted to have it arranged so that the treaty would be ratified elsewhere.

The United Kingdom and France insisted on the original agreement and the envoys of the two countries arrived off the mouth of the Pei-ho in June 1859 and announced their intention of proceeding up the river to Peking. A British fleet, under the command of Admiral James Hope, escorted them for protection against the Chinese fortifications. They had learned that they might be opposed, so prepared themselves.

It was found that not only had the forts at the river mouth, which had easily been silenced the year before, been put into a state of repair, also, the river was blocked for stopping anything larger than rowing boats by a series of strong metal barriers. The Admiral was informed that these had been placed on the river to keep out pirates and it was promised by the Chinese government that they would be removed. Despite the promise, the local Mandarins began to start work on strengthening the defenses of the river. On June 21, Admiral Hope sent the Chinese commander, Hang Foo, a letter warning him that if the obstructions were not cleared out of the channel of the Pei-ho by the evening of the 24, he would remove them by force. Three days of peace passed and the Chinese failed to remove their defenses so the Anglo-French fleet began to prepare for battle.

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Wikipedia