are unfathomable and possibly they are really assisting the English in an underhand way and acting as spies on us for them.' The Manchu Annalist further states that 'the French hung on from February to June (1842) awaiting our commands and at last, in June, proceeded to Wusung, but the English were already far up the Yangtsze.' But, whilst the Cantonese officials distrusted this first syndicate represented by Colonel de Jancigny, a wealthy private citizen of Canton, Poon Sze-shing, received permission from the Emperor to employ Colonel de Jancigny to order out from France a number of war vessels, guns, and torpedoes (then quite a novelty), for use against the English, and to re-organize, with de Jancigny's advice, the whole Cantonese navy.
These intrigues were, however, too late in the field. Whilst the Cantonese were wasting public and private funds in purchasing new and expensive munitions of war, the English expedition in Central China made a speedy end of the war. After the fall of Wusung (June 16, 1842) and Shanghai (June 19, 1842) the Chinese Commissioners offered terms of peace. Sir H. Pottinger, who had rejoined the expedition (June 22, 1842), informed them what the demands of England were, but declined entering upon any negotiations with the Commissioners until they had received the authority of the Emperor to concede those demands. Sir H. Pottinger also issued a public proclamation (July 5, 1842) in which he informed the Chinese people of the real points at issue between England and China. This proclamation brought forward four complaints and three demands. The complaints were, (1) that, whilst English merchants had for two centuries patiently suffered continuous ill-treatment at the hands of Cantonese officials, this systematic ill-usage exceeded all bounds when Commissioner Lin, in 1839, instead of seizing the actual offenders, Chinese and foreign, implicated in the opium traffic, forcibly confined an English officer and English merchants and threatened them with death, so as to extort from them what opium there might be in China at that time, in order to gain favour with the Emperor; (2) that
