[
    {
        "id": 213318,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1994",
        "page_number": 140,
        "title": "RAS-1994",
        "content_text": "121\n\nWhen Gutzlaff had first landed at Chapu an armed force of Chinese was drawn up along the shore. The Chinese soldiers had matchlocks and burning matches ready for a charge, and a Tatar general had placed himself in a temple to superintend the operation; however, wrote Gutzlaff, \"being accustomed to the fire of Chinese batteries which seldom do hurt, and knowing their matchlocks cannot hit, we passed through their line of defence in peace\". The soldiers retreated and crowds of people in the rear being very dense the camp was overrun and tents fell to the ground. After this nothing disagreeable happened. On one excursion Gutzlaff went to a temple on a high hill overlooking the populous region, \"with its abomination of idolatry.\"\n\nToday little remains of old Chapu. The harbour, still used by fishing boats, is overlooked by a broken wall pierced for cannon, with three old cannon still mounted but on modern concrete bases, two being breech loaders and one a comparatively old muzzle loader. There is no sign now of the old city walls, nor of the old Tatar Quarter. It is a sleepy rural town on a former main road now left more or less isolated by the modern highway between Hangchou and Shanghai, by-passing Chapu by some fifteen miles.\n\nThe British Expeditionary Force began the 1842 campaigning season by evacuating Ningpo and Chinghai in early May to raise sufficient troops for the attack on Chapu. The force left Ningpo on 7 May for Chapu where some six thousand Chinese Green Standard troops and some seventeen hundred Manchu soldiers held the beaches and the adjacent heights and were waiting for the British to land and attack. It took the wooden-sided troop transports nine days under sail to cover the sixty miles from Chinhai to Chapu. Theoretically Chapu was strongly fortified but, as had happened before, the Chinese proved unprepared for anything but frontal attack.\n\nThe British Order of Battle consisted of the Force Headquarters under Lieutenant General Sir Hugh Gough, a fleet of seven ships of war, four steamers and troop transports, a naval brigade of some two hundred and fifty men, and four regiments.\n\nThe plan called for three columns, with the Left Column under Lieutenant Colonel Morris, consisting of the 18th Royal Irish under Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas R. Tomlinson (consisting of 492 all ranks),",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g",
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    },
    {
        "id": 213319,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1994",
        "page_number": 141,
        "title": "RAS-1994",
        "content_text": "122\n\nthe 49th Regiment (Hertfordshire Regiment consisting of 25 officers and 426 men) and a Sapper unit. The Force commander, Sir Hugh Gough accompanied the Left Column.\n\nThe Centre Column under Lieutenant Colonel Montgomerie consisted of detachments of Royal Artillery and Madras Artillery, a Sapper unit and a rifle company of the 35th Madras Native Infantry.\n\nThe Right Column, under Colonel Schoedde, consisted of the 26th Regiment (The Cameronians) under Lieutenant Colonel Pratt, the 55th Regiment (Westmorland Regiment) and a unit of Sappers.\n\n6\n\nThe British plan required the 2,200 troops to be landed on the right flank, on the west face of the line of low-lying hills some two miles to the east of Chapu Bay. From there the three battalions would separate, one, the Centre Column, to hold the base, one, the Right Column, to pass round the base of Huang-p'an Shan to cut off the Chinese retreat and the third, the Point or Left Column, to storm the heights of Kuan Yin Shan. On 16 May the Nemesis and the Phlegethon reconnoitred the northern coast of the Bay of Hangchou and on the 18th they landed in a bay some two miles east of the city without opposition, with the Left Column advancing along the heights parallel to the coast, whilst the rest moved inland to the rear of the heights on which the enemy was posted. Elements of the British Naval Brigade, consisting of some 700 men, landed within a quarter of a mile of the harbour and advanced straight for the harbour battery and then on to the town itself. Only about one in ten of the Chinese force had firearms, the rest being armed with bows and spears. The British plan so took the Chinese by surprise that they fell back in disorder, throwing away their arms and fleeing in every direction. The Chinese having made their nominal stand in the hills had left their rear wide open allowing Chapu to be taken without any major problems. After a battle lasting more than four hours, Chapu was taken by the Right Column and the Naval Brigade with the British casualties of nine killed and fifty-five wounded. Of these, in addition to Colonel Tomlinson, the loss to the Royal Irish were one serjeant and three other ranks killed, and Lieutenants E. Jodrell and A. Murray, one serjeant, one drummer and twenty-seven other ranks wounded. Major Jeremiah Cowper was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel on the day following the battle, in succession to Colonel Tomlinson. The Chinese defenders fled to the west, towards Hangchou leaving the British with the town which was promptly looted by the native Chinese.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g",
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    },
    {
        "id": 213320,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1994",
        "page_number": 142,
        "title": "RAS-1994",
        "content_text": "123\n\nCasualties suffered by the Chinese were estimated at some twelve to fifteen hundred, with a powder factory and several arsenals destroyed.\n\nThe incident which has left its mark in regimental histories is now known as the Battle of the Joss-house. A small detachment of the Royal Irish were held up by some three hundred Manchu Tatars who, having seen their retreat cut off by the Naval Brigade, had taken cover in a small Buddhist temple, the Temple of Reverence for Heaven, between two hills, one of which was Kuan Yin Shan, with a single entrance guarded by an internal 'spun wall'. The stubborn valour of the Tatar soldiers cost the Royal Irish dear. After an initial sortie, their detachment commander, Lieutenant A. Murray, drew off his men to wait for reinforcements. The next assault by a small number of men from both the Royal Irish and the 49th (Hertfordshires) had already been repelled with at least one killed and several wounded. A company of the Royal Irish, commanded by Captain Edwards, was intercepted in its advance and, accompanied by Colonel Tomlinson, who had heard what was passing, proceeded to the valley and joined the small body blockading the joss house. While the platoon of the Royal Irish waited for the rest of the battalion to come up, Lieutenant Murray was approached by the Hertfordshire's battalion commander who, having been warned that the temple was strongly manned, was understood to have made \"an injudicious and undeserved remark\" which was overheard by Colonel Tomlinson. They were now a force considered strong enough by Tomlinson to carry the building at the point of the bayonet, and Tomlinson's reaction to what he must have taken as a slur on Irish courage, his regiment or himself, was immediately to call for the men of the Royal Irish and the Hertfordshires to follow him and storm the temple. He rushed in at the temple door where he was shot dead with two bullets through the neck and all who had accompanied him were either killed or wounded. After Tomlinson had fallen, it became almost impossible to prevent the Royal Irish from rushing madly at the temple, for the men burned to avenge their Colonel, whom they described as \"the best officer who ever said 'Come-on' to a grenadier company\". In more formal language, General Gough recorded the same opinion, saying in his despatch that Tomlinson fell \"in full career of renown, honoured by the troops, and lamented by all\". The defenders, who were determined to fight to the bitter end, held out against assaults by the Royal Irish and part of the Naval Brigade, until Sappers under a Captain Pears finally used a 50-pound bag of powder to bring down the thick walls, after a party of Gunners commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Knowles who had brought...",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g",
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    },
    {
        "id": 213323,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1994",
        "page_number": 145,
        "title": "RAS-1994",
        "content_text": "126\n\nsite of the battery of old guns covering the harbour, was a small renovated folk religion temple. Finally one elderly man explained that a newly rebuilt temple stood some two miles up the coast overlooking the sea. It had been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution in the mid-1960s. When eventually we found it we were lucky enough to be guided by another elderly man who we had encountered on the approach track. Before we had time to discuss anything whatsoever he asked who we were and on hearing that we were English he immediately volunteered the fact that the English had been to that spot before, to that very temple, which they had attacked. He added that the English 'general' had been killed during the battle and had been buried on the hillside and he pointed out roughly where the grave had been. He explained that it had been plainly visible until 1949 when the Communists had taken over and had had the hillside planted with young trees which had obliterated the grave.\n\nExtremely interesting though this piece of folk memory was, it did not tie in with the sketch map provided by an officer, Lieutenant Ouchterlony of the Madras Engineers, who was present in Chapu during the landings and the subsequent battle. The Left Column and the Right Column both had landed in the bay at the point where the present rebuilt temple stands, and therefore our informant was right to claim that the English had been there. However, whoever had been buried on the hillside at that spot was certainly not Colonel Tomlinson who fell at the joss house marked on Ouchterlony's map much nearer to Chapu. The site of the Joss house marked on the map, where Tomlinson fell, is within a very short distance from the harbour where the battery of old guns now stands and where the local inhabitants were quite certain that no temple had been there within living memory.\n\nThe fallibility of folk memory is well known and it is not too difficult to understand how over the century and a half since the battle took place the scene of the attack on the temple had been transferred to the other temple where a grave, presumably of a foreigner, was accepted as that of the British senior officer who fell that day.\n\nPlates and photographs accompanying this article will be published in a future edition of the Journal - Editor]",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g",
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    }
]