Page:Chinese account of the Opium war (IA chineseaccountof00parkrich).pdf/61

 new Praya, etc., had been utterly annihilated; that the sea was literally covered with corpses; and so on. The Emperor thereupon returned solemn thanks to the god of the seas, and announced the event to the whole Empire. Over a hundred promotions were sanctioned for the gallant defence of Canton;—and meanwhile the whole fleet of foreign ships had gone to Fu Kien and taken Amoy! When Amoy was attacked the previous year, the Admiral had lost no time in obtaining sick-leave. TÊNG T‘ING CHÊNG and the taotai had confined themselves to defending the old forts and piling up ramparts of sand, the natural strength of which kept the enemy off. Admiral, on taking over charge, at once denounced his predecessor's cowardice in the most furious terms, and likewise and  for recommending peace at Canton: but he was in fact himself only a bragging and self-glorifying fool. He represented 's cautious, defensive policy in slighting terms, and requested the Emperor's sanction to an expenditure of two million taels, to be spent on fifty new ships of war, with which he proposed to sweep the English from the seas. He raised 9,000 new infantry and marines, and built three new forts on the islands off Amoy, all of which preparation proved waste labour when the news arrived of the peace