Lin's subsequent demands were so arbitrary that at length the English mercantile community retired altogether from Canton, and after a futile attempt to settle at Macao, where their presence, owing to Chinese influence with the Portuguese occupiers, was made unwelcome, they finally found a refuge at Hongkong, then occupied only by a few fishermen's huts. Further negotiations as to the renewal of trade having fallen through, Lin gave orders for all British ships to leave China within three days, which resulted in a fight between two men-of-war and twenty-nine war-junks, in which the latter were either sunk or driven off with great loss. In June, 1840, a British fleet of seventeen men-of-war and twenty-seven troopships arrived at Hongkong; Canton was blockaded; a port on the island of Chusan was subsequently occupied; and Lord Palmerston's letter to the Emperor was carried to Tientsin, and delivered there to the Viceroy of Chihli. Commissioner Lin was now cashiered for incompetency; but was afterwards instructed to act with the Viceroy of Chihli, who was sent down to supersede him. Further vexatious action, or rather inaction, on the part of these two at length drove Captain Elliot to an ultimatum; and as no attention was paid to this, the Bogue forts near the mouth of the Canton river were taken by the British fleet, after great slaughter of the Chinese. In January, 1841, a treaty of peace was arranged, under which the island of Hongkong was to be ceded to England, a sum of over a million pounds was to be paid for the opium destroyed, and satisfactory concessions were to be made in the matter of official intercourse between the two nations. The Emperor refused ratification, and ordered the extermination of the barbarians to be at once proceeded with. Again the Bogue forts were captured, and Canton would have been occupied but for another promised treaty, the terms of which were accepted by Sir Henry Pottinger, who now superseded Elliot. At this juncture the British fleet sailed northwards, capturing Amoy and Ningpo, and occupying the island of Chusan. The further capture of Chapu, where munitions of war in huge quantities were destroyed, was followed by similar successes at Shanghai and Chinkiang. At the last-mentioned, a desperate resistance was offered by the Manchu garrison, who fought heroically against certain defeat, and who, when all hope was gone, committed suicide in large numbers rather than fall into the hands of the enemy, from whom, in accordance with prevailing ideas and with what would have been their own practice, they expected no quarter. The Chinese troops, as distinguished from the Manchus, behaved differently; they took to their heels before a shot had been fired. This behaviour, which seems to be nothing more than arrant cowardice, is nevertheless open to a more favourable interpretation. The yoke of the Manchu dynasty was already beginning to press heavily, and these men felt