Page:Chinese account of the Opium war (IA chineseaccountof00parkrich).pdf/64

ILIPU, and the Generals in command did their best. to repair the walls and fortifications, and to get their troops together again. YÜK'IEN was as hot-headed as YEN PEH-T'AO, and totally ignorant of warfare: he was entirely in the hands of LIN TSÊH-SÜ—so long as LIN TSÊH-SÜ was there: but, owing to the Canton Salt Commissioner having, at an audience of the Emperor, vigorously supported K'ISHEN at the ex- pense of LIN, LIN was ordered, first to Kashgaria, and then to the Yellow River works, so that the affairs of Chê Kiang were left more without a guiding head than ever. At best Ting-hai was but a solitary island, not worth defending at the cost of weakening the mainland armies. To make matters worse, all the three Brigadiers were destitute of military science or strategy, and would have built one great wall enclosing as an hypothenuse the outer as well as the inner town, which was hemmed in on the other sides by the mountains, had the absurdity of such a system of defence not been dinned into YüK'IEN's ears by the people. The result was that nothing was done at all, lot alone anything sensible.. When the news of the poace and orders to disband came, five thousand of the best soldiers were at Ting-hai, four thousand more being stationed at different points around Chên-hai and Ningpo. About the beginning [the 4th] of September the foreign ships [the