The capture of the remaining forts was an easy matter. The smaller South Fort, only 400 yards from the North Fort, and commanded by its guns, was at once abandoned by the Chinese, and white flags were hoisted on the two larger forts; but on the great North Fort being summoned to surrender the garrison sent back a refusal. The guns of the captured fort were turned on it; other guns were brought up from the English batteries, and the attack was about to be begun by a bombardment, when General Collineau, of the French army, noticing that there was no one on the rampart nearest him, marched forward rapidly with 600 men, sent a lot of them in through a big embrasure, opened a gate, and took the fort without firing a shot. About 2,000 prisoners were taken here, and, to their great delight, they were simply disarmed and told to go home. They evidently expected to be massacred. In the fort were some of the guns taken from the ships lost in the fight of June 25th, 1859. In the afternoon the fort on the south bank was summoned to surrender, and, after some parleyings, Hang-Foo, the officer in command, agreed to hand it over next day. Early on the 22nd Sir Robert Napier took possession of the southern forts, in which he found no less than 600 guns, large and small. The same day Admiral Hope’s gunboats steamed up the river, and cleared away the barriers below which the fierce fight of the year before had raged so long, and thus the defeat on the Pei-ho was avenged and the way to Tien-tsin and Pekin was open. A few weeks later, the armies of England and France marched in triumph into the imperial city. [Illustration] [Illustration: PALERMO: THE COMING OF GARIBALDI BY STODDARD DEWEY] The night of the 26th of May, 1860, came down on the city of Palermo, on the plains around it and on the hills which close it in beyond, amid anxious uncertainty everywhere. Everyone was asking, “Where is Garibaldi?” The city itself was held in a state of siege by its king, Francis II. of Naples. The sympathies of the great mass of the inhabitants were known to be with the Thousand men of Garibaldi and the Sicilian insurgents who had joined him in his march from the western coast to the hills above Palermo. No one was allowed to leave the city, or to walk through the streets by day in company with others, or by night without a lighted torch or lantern. Soldiers were picketed at the corners of the unlighted streets; companies of soldiers guarded each of the city gates which had not been walled up; and two lines of military outposts surrounded the whole city without.