The war was carried on by the Chinese according to their usual mode of dealing with foreign nations.[16] They had no chance of success in open combat, so they had recourse to the ordinary stratagems adopted by uncivilized races. An “anti-barbarian committee” was formed among them, under the auspices of the mandarins. They offered premiums from 100 up to 100,000 ounces of silver for assassinations of “the barbarians,” according to the gradation of rank, and similar graduated rewards for the capture of vessels, for acts of incendiarism, for denouncing those who sent provisions to Hong Kong. Intercourse was prohibited under pain of death; and provision was promised to be made for the families of those who might perish in any desperate enterprise against the “foreign devils.” But so well was the government of Hong Kong served, that only one of many attempts to injure the colony had any success. In this, however, 360 persons of all nations were poisoned; but, happily, from the excess of arsenic employed, which led to an immediate perception of the danger, very few lost their lives. No less than 25,000 of the inhabitants fled to the mainland in consequence of the menaces of the mandarins; yet, though there were not 400 effective men in the garrison, such was the efficiency of the naval department, so active the police, and so well-disposed the mass of the Chinese population, that scarcely any damage was inflicted on the colony. Canton was taken on the 29th of December. The resistance was ridiculous.[17] The walls were scaled by a handful of men, and Yeh, who had concealed himself, was captured. Why British authority, which would have been welcomed by the respectable part of the population, was not established under military law, and the whole administration of the public revenues taken into our hands, it is very difficult to explain. But at the meeting in which the English and French ambassadors informed the high Chinese authorities that the city had been captured and was held by the allied forces, both the governor of Kwang-tung and the Tartar general were allowed to be seated on the same elevation with the foreign ambassadors, and above the positions occupied by the naval and military commanders-in-chief who were left in charge of the city. Subordinate to these, an hermaphrodite government was created, called “the Allied Commissioners,” who were to be consulted on all occasions by the mandarins charged to carry on the administration of public affairs.