but little loss of life; and the soundness of the judgment which
selected the point of attack was proved by the immediate surrender of all
the remaining defensible positions on both sides of the river.

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. 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 saw them defile past, and in the
afternoon rode out to the camp, but was turned back by a large body of
Tartar cavalry, who menaced my flank, and as some of my people had
just discovered, in the apartment of the Tartar General at Sinho, a
letter stating that they were determined to capture the 'big barbarian
himself' this time, I thought it better to retrace my steps. The
second action took place on the 14th, and on the 15th I rode out to
see the General, and had a conference with him. On the 17th I went to
the gulf to see Gros. I have had dozens of letters from the Chinese
authorities, and I have answered some of them, not in a way to give
them much pleasure. 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annihilated letter, but already they seem out of date.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. I must also say that the result entirely justified the
selection which he made of his point of attack, and, as this was
against the written opinion of the French General, it is a feather in
Grant's cap. The Chinese are just the same as they were when I knew
them formerly. They fired the cannons with quite as