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common as were allied reprisals. The city itself was at a standstill. Large numbers of Chinese had evacuated and the British traders had long since departed.
Considering the size of the allied force it is amazing they felt they were able to hold the city at all. In mid August the British had only four to five thousand troops in Canton and the French somewhere between 400 and a thousand. The French numbers were especially limited due to preparations, then under way, for an expedition to Indochina. Moreover, the thirty to forty ships of the British overshadowed the mere three ships available to the French members of the occupying force.
5.3
Baron Gros, responsible for the city's occupation, warned Paris that the situation was especially grave and that he had word that the authorities, although aware that a peace treaty had been signed, were nevertheless pressuring the Chinese to continue their opposition to the occupation. To Gros' additional frustration the attacks continued throughout early August and the heat, which was apparently unbearable, made sorties against the braves impossible. Some sections of the city had simply been abandoned. Things were so tense that Po-Kuei, the Chinese Governor, who had been willing the previous winter to co-operate with the allies, tried several times that summer to abandon his post. Apparently the French had to literally force him to return and co-operate.
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Happily, though, as news of the treaties signed to the north spread more widely, the resistance subsided. By early September the population had begun to return to the city and the allies, feeling more at ease, again allowed junk traffic near the city walls. Although it would be quite some time before things returned to a reasonable semblance of calm, they had, it now seemed, survived the long hot summer of 1858.
The Occupation and the Coolie Trade
Although tensions in the immediate environs of Canton did not again reach the levels of the first summer of the occupation, there nevertheless remained issues which threatened to provoke even worse resistance to allied control. Chief among these concerns were those aroused by the kidnapping of locals by coolie merchants.