THE SIEGE OF TIENTSIN, CHINA 1900
Midshipman Francis Samuel Drake Esdaile, H.M.S. Barfleur
St. Thomas of Canterbury, Cothelstone, Somerset
Ambition, power, and avarice, now have hurled
Death, fate, and ruin, on a bleeding world.
See! on yon heath what countless victims lie,
Hark! what loud shrieks ascend through yonder sky;
Tell then the cause, 'tis sure the avenger's rage
Has swept these myriads from life's crowded stage:
Hark to that groan, an anguished hero dies,
He shudders in death's latest agonies
When Shelley wrote these opening lines to War it is doubtful that he would ever have imagined that the anguished hero he was describing would a hundred years later be his own great-grandson dying in a Chinese siege. Strange how lives turn.
The Man
The church of St. Thomas of Canterbury lies hidden from the road as you climb up the hill out of Cothelstone village. Round a 16th Century gatehouse, the mid-19th Century Manor House, and past a row of former estate workers’ cottages, you go through the gate to approach the red sandstone church. Further along to the left is another gate, leading out across the fields, the entrance for the family living in Cothelstone House (demolished in the 1960s), and the entrance that they must have used when they mounted the plaque in the side-chapel that commemorates their two sons who died between 1898 and 1900 – Edward Jeffries Shelley Esdaile, and Francis Samuel Drake Esdaile. The “Shelley” gives it away; the boys’ grandmother was the poet’s daughter, Ianthe, born to his first wife, Harriet.
The family had already been in the house for over a hundred years. It was bought in 1791 by Edward Jeffries, whose daughter Elizabeth had married William Esdaile, a scion of a London banking family. It had then passed down through two Edward Jeffries Esdailes before being inherited by the boys' father, Charles Edward Jeffries Esdaile (by now it may have become clear that the family believed in keeping alive the names of the families they married into - and yes, Drake was the surname of Francis' Esdaile great-grandmother).
Edward died at home, but Frank, at the tender age of seventeen, fell fighting in one of Britain’s more bizarre wars, as the Western powers took on the last throws of a crumbling imperial force, in the conflict now known as The Boxer Rebellion.
The Background
In many ways, if not all, it must be said that The Boxer Rebellion is a misnomer. No boxers were involved, and it was not a rebellion. Rather it was another, close to final, stage, in Imperial China’s attempt to assert itself against the acquisitive power and influence of the West – in which we must include Japan.
The causes of the conflict can be traced back years, but every story has to begin somewhere, so October 1860 is as good as any, when Lord Elgin captured Peking and, as retribution for the Chinese torturing of prisoners, ordered the destruction of the Emperor’s Summer Palace, which was followed by the Convention of Peking.
The content of the Convention of Peking included:
1. China's signing of the Treaty of Tianjin
2. Opening Tianjin as a trade port
3. Cede No.1 District of Kowloon (south of present day Boundary Street) to Britain
4. Freedom of religion established in China
5. British ships allowed to carry indentured Chinese to the Americas
6. Indemnity to Britain and France increasing to 8 million taels of silver apiece
7. Legalisation of the opium trade
The humiliation felt by the Chinese Imperial Court was immense. They had been forced into concessions by the Western powers, with consequent loss of face and control in their own country, and over the next forty years that loss of control was to become more and more obvious. An increasing number of treaty ports were opened up (eventually there were to be over eighty), missionary activity mushroomed in the country, with subsequent church building, and Western business interests began to take what the Qing Government would have to see as liberties – for example, the first railway in China, connecting Shanghai to Baoshan, was built by Jardine & Matheson without Chinese government permission.
That railway was bought by the local viceroy and pulled up the following year, but another was built in 1881 from Tangshan to Xugezhuang (to be fair the local viceroy was, on this occasion, in favour). Meanwhile, opposition to the proseltysing of the missionaries was evident – missions and churches were attacked on a number of occasions, with missionaries, nuns and, especially, native Christian converts killed. It seems that the British (though they were not the only Westerners involved by any means) had not learnt the lessons from the Indian Mutiny, when opposition to Christianisation had been a key factor in that rebellion.
War with Japan
A state of simmering unrest was therefore the norm when, in 1894, China found itself at war with Japan. Again, this was about pride and influence. China had traditionally been the controlling power in Korea, but in July 1894 Japan invaded Korea, seized Seoul and the Korean emperor, and established Japanese control. China sent troops in, and war was declared on August 1st. On 16th September the Chinese army withdrew from Korea following the capitulation of Pyongyang, and the following day the Chinese fleet was defeated off the mouth of the Yalu River. Over the next two months the Japanese occupied Chinese cities, and by February 1895 they had advanced into Southern Manchuria and Northern China, blocking Peking’s access to the sea. In April peace was signed, and again China was humiliated; Korean independence was acknowledged, territory (most importantly, Taiwan) was ceded to Japan, the Yangtse River was opened to foreign trade, and more treaty ports were established. Interesting that the seeds of the current impasse in the area can be seen in this relatively short and obscure late 19th Century conflict.
The conflict begins
So the mood in China at the end of the century was not good. The Qing Government and the Chinese people as a whole had been humiliated, but this was not accepted with good grace. Attacks against Christians continued, albeit without clear government connivance – Christians were killed in attacks on missions in Whasang, Chengdu and Fatshan. Meanwhile, the western powers continued to operate as though China were theirs to control – they built a railway from Tientsin to Peking, erected a cathedral in the latter city, and started to dredge the Pei Ho River. In the country resentment increased, and a popular fascistic organization began to grow in prominence. Its name translated as The Society of Righteous Harmony, and its symbol was a clenched fist – thus they became known in popular Western parlance as The Boxers. They focused on attacks on missionaries, and by December 1899 the British Legate in Peking felt obliged to protest to the Chinese government about the problem, and demanded that some action be taken against The Boxers. The Boxer response, or perhaps it was just the natural escalation, was to capture and then kill a Mr. Brookes, a Church of England missionary. The Chinese government was evidently either unable or/and unwilling to control the Boxers, and by March the movement was openly recruiting and drilling in both Peking and Tientsin.
By May things had got worse. A Boxer force had established itself in Peking. On the 17th the French reported that ninety miles away over sixty Christians had been killed at Pao-Ting-Fu. On the 21st the Western legations in Peking demanded that the Chinese Government control the Boxers, but six days later workshops at Fengtai, six miles from the capital were attacked and destroyed, while Belgian railwaymen were attacked at Chang-Hsien-Tien. The leader of the British Delegation in Peking received a telegram from Lord Salisbury, the Prime Minister in London, giving him permission to call in a marine guard if required, so concerns were clearly serious. As a result ships (HMS Barfleur, HMS Orlando and HMS Algerine) were sent to the Taku River (Tientsin is on this river). As well as the British ships there were four Russian naval vessels, one American, one Italian and one French. On the last day of the month eighty British troops, sailors and marines left the ships and proceeded upriver to Tientsin, from where a train had left for Peking carrying a multinational force of American, British, French, German, Italian and Japanese.
Conflict worsens
And then in June things started to hot up, as the trouble flared in Tientsin as well as Peking, with offices belonging to foreign firms being burnt on the 1st. On the 2nd more troops, German and Italian, were sent to Peking, but Tientsin began to be in need of reinforcements itself: a force sent to rescue some Belgians escaping from Pao-Ting-Fu itself had to be rescued; a station, at Anting, was destroyed. On the 7th some of the railway line, at Yangtsun, was ripped up, while a force of marines, ordered to Peking, were refused permission to board the train by the local viceroy. At Tientsin seventy-five Austrians arrived as reinforcements, and a Maxim machine-gun was mounted on the mud-walls of the Foreign Settlement.
Events now moved quickly. In Peking, on June 8th, the Boxers attacked student interpreters working for the foreign legations, the secretary of the Belgian Legation was attacked, and the foreign ministers’ summer residences were burned down, as was the grandstand of the westerners’ racecourse. The following day the head of the Japanese legation was murdered, all foreign property in the south of Peking was burnt (their owners, with Chinese Christian converts, fleeing to the foreign legation compounds), and all telegraphic communication with Peking was cut. By the 10th an expeditionary force of sixteen hundred men under Admiral Seymour had gathered at Tientsin station ready to relieve the legations in Peking, although another three stations on the line had been destroyed.
Seymour expected his entry into Peking to be opposed, and he was not to be disappointed. On both the 13th and 14th June his force was attacked by Boxer troops, and a column which set out from Tientsin with provisions for him was forced to turn back, an attempt that was to be repeated the following day, with the same result. Meanwhile in Peking missions and the Custom House quarters were destroyed, while in Tientsin American and British missions were destroyed, and the French Roman Catholic Cathedral attacked, although, to add to the confusion, that attack was repulsed by a Chinese Government gunboat. It was only saved for a day, however; on the 15th it went up in flames.
Siege of Tientsin
By the 15th things became clearer, as the Chinese Government at last showed its hand, and the Westerners in Tientsin prepared for defence by placing guns in position to command the main roads into the Settlement, and pulling down houses which obscured the line of fire. Chinese Government forces began to mass outside Tientsin and Taku, and commenced the mining of the river mouth at Taku. The Allied Forces prepared to secure control of lines of communication between Taku and Tientsin, however, by patrolling the railway between the two with an armed and armoured train, and by patrolling the river with two small boats, one British, one German.
On the early morning of the 16th the first attack on Tientsin began, focusing on the Settlement and the station, the latter occupied and defended by a force of Russians. Out on the railway line Admiral Seymour found the railway tracks destroyed, and was forced to retreat, with his under-provisioned force, back to Yangtsun, to attempt a river passage. In Taku the allies demanded that the Chinese surrender the forts which guarded the river mouth, and from out in the wider world nine hundred and fifty troops were dispatched from Hong Kong to join the conflict.
On the 17th the Chinese began shelling the Settlement, thus confirming that Government forces, as well as Boxers, were involved. The defenders were not passive however, as an Anglo-German force attacked and captured the Chinese Military College which overlooked the Settlement, seizing guns and ammunition, and snipers were sent out to kill identified leaders of the Chinese forces. In Taku, after a day of fighting which began at 2.30 a.m. the allied forces captured all the forts, and the armoured train was dispatched to aid a group of Japanese soldiers defending the station and rollingstock at Tongku. And in Peking, where matters had been relatively quiet, albeit simmering, an attack began on the French Cathedral in the north of the city, where three thousand Christian converts had fled to be defended by forty Austrian, French and Italian troops, and by their own efforts. In the American Legation two captured Boxers were taken to be interviewed, and one of them was beaten up by the German Minister, one Baron Ketteler, who may have gone on to regret doing that.
On the 19th the legations were ordered by the Government to leave Peking. Not surprisingly they were reluctant to do so, even more so when Baron Ketteler, on his way to meet with the Government, was murdered, as was a Professor James of the Imperial University. Allied troops took control of the walls surrounding the main Legation area. The siege had begun.
While this was going on Admiral Seymour was attempting to get his force back to Tientsin, and struggling. On the 23rd he was holed up in a small arsenal at Hsiku, ten miles from Tientsin, low on provisions, and unable to break out.
In Tientsin the allies were taking casualties from attacks and shelling, and, to be fair, counter-attacks aimed at silencing the constant artillery. They were running short of ammunition, however, and hoping that a small group of five who rode out for Taku to request relief on the night of the 19th had got through. They had, and on the 23rd, despite resistance, the relief force arrived, and relieved the siege. On the 25th a force of two and a half thousand men marched out and rescued Seymour and his men. The allied forces now attempted to disperse the thousands of Chinese Government and Boxer troops still around the city, prior to organizing the relief of Peking.
And on the 28th, with a heavy bombardment, including incendiaries, the Chinese attacked again. Peking could not yet be helped. And Midshipman Esdaile had arrived in Tientsin.
The Action
The situation was strange, in that The Settlement was besieged, but the river was open, so that in early July the women and children could be evacuated to Taku, while The Settlement was still being attacked, and the Chinese breached dykes to flood the area around it. On July 6th the British identified an artillery piece which was causing major damage to them, and so at 3 p.m. sent out a force to silence it. However, the gun was on the other side of the river, and the force met heavy fire as they tried to cross a causeway. A naval five-pounder was brought out to oppose the firing, but the gun crew were hit, including Frank Esdaile. The next day, as the Chinese attacks intensified, he died of his wounds.
Denouement
The end game was now approaching, as American and French reinforcements arrived in Taku and French and Russians arrived at Tientsin. On the 11th, after a three hour battle at the station, which went the allies’ way, the fresh American troops arrived at Tientsin. On the 13th the allies finally mounted an attack of their own on the Chinese forces massed in the native city. The Americans and Japanese, in particular, took large casualties, but by the 14th they had driven the enemy out, and the road to Peking was at last open. Too late for Frank Esdaile, although one of his fellow midshipmen on HMS Barfleur, Basil Guy, received the Victoria Cross for his bravery in the action on the 13th.
During the attack on Tientsin, he went to the assistance of the wounded Able Seaman McCarthy, 50 yards from cover. Whilst he bound McCarthy’s wounds the entire enemy fire from the city walls was concentrated on the pair. He ran to fetch stretcher bearers but McCarthy was hit again and killed before he could be brought to safety.
It’s good to be brave, but, when one considers the contrasting fates of Guy and Esdaile, it is arguably even more important to be lucky, and in some ways the Esdailes have been. Although the House itself was demolished in 1968, a branch of the family still live in the Manor House, which lies in front of the church which features the plaque recording Francis' fate.
Death, fate, and ruin, on a bleeding world.
See! on yon heath what countless victims lie,
Hark! what loud shrieks ascend through yonder sky;
Tell then the cause, 'tis sure the avenger's rage
Has swept these myriads from life's crowded stage:
Hark to that groan, an anguished hero dies,
He shudders in death's latest agonies
When Shelley wrote these opening lines to War it is doubtful that he would ever have imagined that the anguished hero he was describing would a hundred years later be his own great-grandson dying in a Chinese siege. Strange how lives turn.
The Man
The church of St. Thomas of Canterbury lies hidden from the road as you climb up the hill out of Cothelstone village. Round a 16th Century gatehouse, the mid-19th Century Manor House, and past a row of former estate workers’ cottages, you go through the gate to approach the red sandstone church. Further along to the left is another gate, leading out across the fields, the entrance for the family living in Cothelstone House (demolished in the 1960s), and the entrance that they must have used when they mounted the plaque in the side-chapel that commemorates their two sons who died between 1898 and 1900 – Edward Jeffries Shelley Esdaile, and Francis Samuel Drake Esdaile. The “Shelley” gives it away; the boys’ grandmother was the poet’s daughter, Ianthe, born to his first wife, Harriet.
The family had already been in the house for over a hundred years. It was bought in 1791 by Edward Jeffries, whose daughter Elizabeth had married William Esdaile, a scion of a London banking family. It had then passed down through two Edward Jeffries Esdailes before being inherited by the boys' father, Charles Edward Jeffries Esdaile (by now it may have become clear that the family believed in keeping alive the names of the families they married into - and yes, Drake was the surname of Francis' Esdaile great-grandmother).
Edward died at home, but Frank, at the tender age of seventeen, fell fighting in one of Britain’s more bizarre wars, as the Western powers took on the last throws of a crumbling imperial force, in the conflict now known as The Boxer Rebellion.
The Background
In many ways, if not all, it must be said that The Boxer Rebellion is a misnomer. No boxers were involved, and it was not a rebellion. Rather it was another, close to final, stage, in Imperial China’s attempt to assert itself against the acquisitive power and influence of the West – in which we must include Japan.
The causes of the conflict can be traced back years, but every story has to begin somewhere, so October 1860 is as good as any, when Lord Elgin captured Peking and, as retribution for the Chinese torturing of prisoners, ordered the destruction of the Emperor’s Summer Palace, which was followed by the Convention of Peking.
The content of the Convention of Peking included:
1. China's signing of the Treaty of Tianjin
2. Opening Tianjin as a trade port
3. Cede No.1 District of Kowloon (south of present day Boundary Street) to Britain
4. Freedom of religion established in China
5. British ships allowed to carry indentured Chinese to the Americas
6. Indemnity to Britain and France increasing to 8 million taels of silver apiece
7. Legalisation of the opium trade
The humiliation felt by the Chinese Imperial Court was immense. They had been forced into concessions by the Western powers, with consequent loss of face and control in their own country, and over the next forty years that loss of control was to become more and more obvious. An increasing number of treaty ports were opened up (eventually there were to be over eighty), missionary activity mushroomed in the country, with subsequent church building, and Western business interests began to take what the Qing Government would have to see as liberties – for example, the first railway in China, connecting Shanghai to Baoshan, was built by Jardine & Matheson without Chinese government permission.
That railway was bought by the local viceroy and pulled up the following year, but another was built in 1881 from Tangshan to Xugezhuang (to be fair the local viceroy was, on this occasion, in favour). Meanwhile, opposition to the proseltysing of the missionaries was evident – missions and churches were attacked on a number of occasions, with missionaries, nuns and, especially, native Christian converts killed. It seems that the British (though they were not the only Westerners involved by any means) had not learnt the lessons from the Indian Mutiny, when opposition to Christianisation had been a key factor in that rebellion.
War with Japan
A state of simmering unrest was therefore the norm when, in 1894, China found itself at war with Japan. Again, this was about pride and influence. China had traditionally been the controlling power in Korea, but in July 1894 Japan invaded Korea, seized Seoul and the Korean emperor, and established Japanese control. China sent troops in, and war was declared on August 1st. On 16th September the Chinese army withdrew from Korea following the capitulation of Pyongyang, and the following day the Chinese fleet was defeated off the mouth of the Yalu River. Over the next two months the Japanese occupied Chinese cities, and by February 1895 they had advanced into Southern Manchuria and Northern China, blocking Peking’s access to the sea. In April peace was signed, and again China was humiliated; Korean independence was acknowledged, territory (most importantly, Taiwan) was ceded to Japan, the Yangtse River was opened to foreign trade, and more treaty ports were established. Interesting that the seeds of the current impasse in the area can be seen in this relatively short and obscure late 19th Century conflict.
The conflict begins
So the mood in China at the end of the century was not good. The Qing Government and the Chinese people as a whole had been humiliated, but this was not accepted with good grace. Attacks against Christians continued, albeit without clear government connivance – Christians were killed in attacks on missions in Whasang, Chengdu and Fatshan. Meanwhile, the western powers continued to operate as though China were theirs to control – they built a railway from Tientsin to Peking, erected a cathedral in the latter city, and started to dredge the Pei Ho River. In the country resentment increased, and a popular fascistic organization began to grow in prominence. Its name translated as The Society of Righteous Harmony, and its symbol was a clenched fist – thus they became known in popular Western parlance as The Boxers. They focused on attacks on missionaries, and by December 1899 the British Legate in Peking felt obliged to protest to the Chinese government about the problem, and demanded that some action be taken against The Boxers. The Boxer response, or perhaps it was just the natural escalation, was to capture and then kill a Mr. Brookes, a Church of England missionary. The Chinese government was evidently either unable or/and unwilling to control the Boxers, and by March the movement was openly recruiting and drilling in both Peking and Tientsin.
By May things had got worse. A Boxer force had established itself in Peking. On the 17th the French reported that ninety miles away over sixty Christians had been killed at Pao-Ting-Fu. On the 21st the Western legations in Peking demanded that the Chinese Government control the Boxers, but six days later workshops at Fengtai, six miles from the capital were attacked and destroyed, while Belgian railwaymen were attacked at Chang-Hsien-Tien. The leader of the British Delegation in Peking received a telegram from Lord Salisbury, the Prime Minister in London, giving him permission to call in a marine guard if required, so concerns were clearly serious. As a result ships (HMS Barfleur, HMS Orlando and HMS Algerine) were sent to the Taku River (Tientsin is on this river). As well as the British ships there were four Russian naval vessels, one American, one Italian and one French. On the last day of the month eighty British troops, sailors and marines left the ships and proceeded upriver to Tientsin, from where a train had left for Peking carrying a multinational force of American, British, French, German, Italian and Japanese.
Conflict worsens
And then in June things started to hot up, as the trouble flared in Tientsin as well as Peking, with offices belonging to foreign firms being burnt on the 1st. On the 2nd more troops, German and Italian, were sent to Peking, but Tientsin began to be in need of reinforcements itself: a force sent to rescue some Belgians escaping from Pao-Ting-Fu itself had to be rescued; a station, at Anting, was destroyed. On the 7th some of the railway line, at Yangtsun, was ripped up, while a force of marines, ordered to Peking, were refused permission to board the train by the local viceroy. At Tientsin seventy-five Austrians arrived as reinforcements, and a Maxim machine-gun was mounted on the mud-walls of the Foreign Settlement.
Events now moved quickly. In Peking, on June 8th, the Boxers attacked student interpreters working for the foreign legations, the secretary of the Belgian Legation was attacked, and the foreign ministers’ summer residences were burned down, as was the grandstand of the westerners’ racecourse. The following day the head of the Japanese legation was murdered, all foreign property in the south of Peking was burnt (their owners, with Chinese Christian converts, fleeing to the foreign legation compounds), and all telegraphic communication with Peking was cut. By the 10th an expeditionary force of sixteen hundred men under Admiral Seymour had gathered at Tientsin station ready to relieve the legations in Peking, although another three stations on the line had been destroyed.
Seymour expected his entry into Peking to be opposed, and he was not to be disappointed. On both the 13th and 14th June his force was attacked by Boxer troops, and a column which set out from Tientsin with provisions for him was forced to turn back, an attempt that was to be repeated the following day, with the same result. Meanwhile in Peking missions and the Custom House quarters were destroyed, while in Tientsin American and British missions were destroyed, and the French Roman Catholic Cathedral attacked, although, to add to the confusion, that attack was repulsed by a Chinese Government gunboat. It was only saved for a day, however; on the 15th it went up in flames.
Siege of Tientsin
By the 15th things became clearer, as the Chinese Government at last showed its hand, and the Westerners in Tientsin prepared for defence by placing guns in position to command the main roads into the Settlement, and pulling down houses which obscured the line of fire. Chinese Government forces began to mass outside Tientsin and Taku, and commenced the mining of the river mouth at Taku. The Allied Forces prepared to secure control of lines of communication between Taku and Tientsin, however, by patrolling the railway between the two with an armed and armoured train, and by patrolling the river with two small boats, one British, one German.
On the early morning of the 16th the first attack on Tientsin began, focusing on the Settlement and the station, the latter occupied and defended by a force of Russians. Out on the railway line Admiral Seymour found the railway tracks destroyed, and was forced to retreat, with his under-provisioned force, back to Yangtsun, to attempt a river passage. In Taku the allies demanded that the Chinese surrender the forts which guarded the river mouth, and from out in the wider world nine hundred and fifty troops were dispatched from Hong Kong to join the conflict.
On the 17th the Chinese began shelling the Settlement, thus confirming that Government forces, as well as Boxers, were involved. The defenders were not passive however, as an Anglo-German force attacked and captured the Chinese Military College which overlooked the Settlement, seizing guns and ammunition, and snipers were sent out to kill identified leaders of the Chinese forces. In Taku, after a day of fighting which began at 2.30 a.m. the allied forces captured all the forts, and the armoured train was dispatched to aid a group of Japanese soldiers defending the station and rollingstock at Tongku. And in Peking, where matters had been relatively quiet, albeit simmering, an attack began on the French Cathedral in the north of the city, where three thousand Christian converts had fled to be defended by forty Austrian, French and Italian troops, and by their own efforts. In the American Legation two captured Boxers were taken to be interviewed, and one of them was beaten up by the German Minister, one Baron Ketteler, who may have gone on to regret doing that.
On the 19th the legations were ordered by the Government to leave Peking. Not surprisingly they were reluctant to do so, even more so when Baron Ketteler, on his way to meet with the Government, was murdered, as was a Professor James of the Imperial University. Allied troops took control of the walls surrounding the main Legation area. The siege had begun.
While this was going on Admiral Seymour was attempting to get his force back to Tientsin, and struggling. On the 23rd he was holed up in a small arsenal at Hsiku, ten miles from Tientsin, low on provisions, and unable to break out.
In Tientsin the allies were taking casualties from attacks and shelling, and, to be fair, counter-attacks aimed at silencing the constant artillery. They were running short of ammunition, however, and hoping that a small group of five who rode out for Taku to request relief on the night of the 19th had got through. They had, and on the 23rd, despite resistance, the relief force arrived, and relieved the siege. On the 25th a force of two and a half thousand men marched out and rescued Seymour and his men. The allied forces now attempted to disperse the thousands of Chinese Government and Boxer troops still around the city, prior to organizing the relief of Peking.
And on the 28th, with a heavy bombardment, including incendiaries, the Chinese attacked again. Peking could not yet be helped. And Midshipman Esdaile had arrived in Tientsin.
The Action
The situation was strange, in that The Settlement was besieged, but the river was open, so that in early July the women and children could be evacuated to Taku, while The Settlement was still being attacked, and the Chinese breached dykes to flood the area around it. On July 6th the British identified an artillery piece which was causing major damage to them, and so at 3 p.m. sent out a force to silence it. However, the gun was on the other side of the river, and the force met heavy fire as they tried to cross a causeway. A naval five-pounder was brought out to oppose the firing, but the gun crew were hit, including Frank Esdaile. The next day, as the Chinese attacks intensified, he died of his wounds.
Denouement
The end game was now approaching, as American and French reinforcements arrived in Taku and French and Russians arrived at Tientsin. On the 11th, after a three hour battle at the station, which went the allies’ way, the fresh American troops arrived at Tientsin. On the 13th the allies finally mounted an attack of their own on the Chinese forces massed in the native city. The Americans and Japanese, in particular, took large casualties, but by the 14th they had driven the enemy out, and the road to Peking was at last open. Too late for Frank Esdaile, although one of his fellow midshipmen on HMS Barfleur, Basil Guy, received the Victoria Cross for his bravery in the action on the 13th.
During the attack on Tientsin, he went to the assistance of the wounded Able Seaman McCarthy, 50 yards from cover. Whilst he bound McCarthy’s wounds the entire enemy fire from the city walls was concentrated on the pair. He ran to fetch stretcher bearers but McCarthy was hit again and killed before he could be brought to safety.
It’s good to be brave, but, when one considers the contrasting fates of Guy and Esdaile, it is arguably even more important to be lucky, and in some ways the Esdailes have been. Although the House itself was demolished in 1968, a branch of the family still live in the Manor House, which lies in front of the church which features the plaque recording Francis' fate.
IN DEAR MEMORY OF EDWARD JEFFRIES SHELLEY ESDAILE WHO DIED MAY 16TH 1898 AGED 21 YEARS AND FRANCIS SAMUEL DRAKE ESDAILE MIDSHIPMAN H.M.S. BARFLEUR WHO DIED JULY 7TH 1900, OF WOUNDS RECEIVED IN ACTION AT TIENTSIN AGED 17
Sources
Photos
Cothelstone Manor and Church - by Ken Grainger, geography.org.uk, from Wikimedia Commons
Boxer Soldiers - from Tōgō Shrine and Tōgō Association, Japan
Genealogy
www.ancestry.co.uk
http://www.cothelstonemanor.co.uk/product-launch/film-location
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cothelstone_Manorhttp://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/14668
Military
http://www.kaiserscross.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Barfleur_(1892)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Sino-Japanese_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Rebellion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-Nation_Alliance
Paper-based (but viewed online)
'The Fighting in N. China (up to the Fall of Tientsin City)' by G. Gipps, Midshipman HMS Orlando (London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co; 1901)
'Diary of the Siege of the Peking Legations, june to August, 1900' - William Meyrick Hewlett (The Harrovian, 1900)
© Jonathan Dewhirst 2013
Photos
Cothelstone Manor and Church - by Ken Grainger, geography.org.uk, from Wikimedia Commons
Boxer Soldiers - from Tōgō Shrine and Tōgō Association, Japan
Genealogy
www.ancestry.co.uk
http://www.cothelstonemanor.co.uk/product-launch/film-location
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cothelstone_Manorhttp://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/14668
Military
http://www.kaiserscross.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Barfleur_(1892)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Sino-Japanese_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Rebellion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-Nation_Alliance
Paper-based (but viewed online)
'The Fighting in N. China (up to the Fall of Tientsin City)' by G. Gipps, Midshipman HMS Orlando (London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co; 1901)
'Diary of the Siege of the Peking Legations, june to August, 1900' - William Meyrick Hewlett (The Harrovian, 1900)
© Jonathan Dewhirst 2013
