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Writing after the surrender of the Taku Forts he said: I have torn up the earlier part of this letter, because it is needless to place on record the anxieties I felt at that time. To revert to the portion of my history which was included in the part of my letter that I have destroyed, I must tell you that it was on the 12th that the troops first moved out of Pey-tang.
I need hardly tell you the events that have occurred public events I mean since the 28th, as they will all be recorded by 'Our Own. We moved on the 29th to a different anchorage, some five miles nearer Pey-tang. ... All the evidence was to the effect that the Pey-tang Forts were undefended, at least that there were no barricades in the river, and therefore that the best way of taking them would be to pass them in the gunboats as we did the Peiho Forts in 1858, and as we also passed Nankin that year ... but it was resolved that we should land a quantity of men in the mud about a mile and a half below them.
On the 1st of August the landing of the allied troops was effected in perfect order, without the slightest opposition on the part of the inhabitants, at the point already mentioned, viz. near the little town of Pey-tang which is situated at the mouth of a river of the same name, about eight miles north of the mouth of the Peiho.
All these details were given at full length in my annihilated letter, but already they seem out of date. Tangkow. August 23rd. Grant has been marvellously favoured by the weather, for the rain, which arrests all movements here, stopped the day before he moved out of Pey-tang, and began again about an hour after he had taken the Taku Fort, which led to the surrender of the whole.
He told me he had gone a mile or two up the Pey-tang river, been allowed to land, seen the fort, which is quite open behind, and contains about a hundred men. However, I suppose we must not crow till we see what the Tartar warriors are. Three P.M. The French Admiral has just been here.
From some passages I infer that, in the Roman Catholic view of the case, the rite of baptism may be administered even by an unbeliever. Two P.M. Hope Grant has teen on board. He tells me that the mouth of the Pey-tang is not staked, and that the 'Actaeon's' boat went three miles up the river.
What Lord Elgin saw of the operations is described in the following letter: August 2nd. There have been a few days' interval since I wrote, and I now date from Pey-tang, and from the General's ship the 'Granada, a Peninsular and Oriental steamer; for I owe it to him that I am here.
Three shots were fired at it from the gunboats which had passed through during the night, and some twenty labourers walked out of it to seek a more secure field for their industry in some neighbouring village. Afterwards our troops went in and found it empty as the other; so ended the capture of Pey-tang.
During the greater part of this time Lord Elgin was on board the 'Granada, moored off Pey-tang, suffering all the anxieties of an active spirit condemned to inactivity in the midst of action: responsible generally for the fate of the expedition, yet without power to control any detail of its operations; fretting especially at the delays which are, perhaps, necessarily incident to a divided and subdivided command.
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