The War in China.
While Napoleon the Great was a captive in St. Helena, Lord Amherst touched at the island on his return from China, and paid him a visit at Longwood. When the Ambassador had retired, the Emperor entered into a long discourse with O'Meara, upon the failure of his Lordship's mission, and the causes which led to it. In the course of his remarks he said that it would be very impolitic in the British Government to enter into a war with the Chinese. They could easily beat them at first, he said, but they would teach them how to fight, and when they had one learned their numbers, that they would become the most formidable people upon the face of the earth. Part of this prediction seems to becoming true.If the first war undertaken by England against China, about twenty years ago, her operations were confined to Canton and its vicinity. Her men-of-war easily sunk the wretched junks that attempted to oppose their advance, and her troops quite as easily dispersed the Chinese forces armed with matchlocks or bows and arrows, many of whom threw somersets and uttered terrible yells, helping, in their semi-barbarian ignorance, to frighten them from the field. The English troops could afford to laugh at their antics, and to boast that they "shot them flying" Just as easily, a few years ago, in company with the French, they again inflicted a severe chastisement upon the same foe. But since the seat of war has been removed into the Northern provinces, they have encountered a very different kind of resistance. No instance in history, that we know of, except the defeat at New Orleans, can compare with the defeat on the Peiho in 1859. In the battle which took place a few months ago, the Chinese, although defeated, displayed prodigies of valor. We doubt whether any troops in the world could have stood the destructive fire which was poured upon them from a distance so great that they could not return it, longer than they did. Nor, when it came to a hand to hand fight, did the Chinese display any want of desperate valor. With weapons every way unequal, without discipline, and without even the stimulant of hope to keep up their spirits, they fought to the last extremity.--When at last compelled to retreat, they left the ground strewed with their own bodies and those of the enemy.
Lord Elgin, however, is advancing in the rear of a great force upon Pekin. The Chinese have been beaten, but at the last accounts, they were ready to fight again. It seems evident to us that they do not mean to give up their capital without a desperate resistance.--It is almost impossible, nevertheless, that they should eventually succeed. They will be beaten, and the allies, after wading through a sea of blood, will arrive in Pekin, and dictate the law to the Emperor. What then! This is scarcely the beginning of what they will yet have to encounter. They have taught the Chinese how to fight. It is a lesson which they will not be apt to forget, and the consequences may yet be of the most serious character. The Chinese have learned that they are superior to themselves only because they have better arms, and that, man to man, and arms equal, they have no advantage whatever over them. They will take care to provide themselves better in future, and the catastrophe of the Peiho, where they had erected fortifications in the best and most scientific style, shew what they can do in imitating their enemies.
It would have been far better to allow the Chinese to remain in ignorance of their real strength. The allies have found, to their cost, that a war with them is becoming every year a more serious matter. Its costs too much to be indulged in as a mere luxury; and, in our view of the subject, it is not likely to produce any impression which will last longer than their armies remain in the country.
