Battle of Taku Forts (1859)

The Second Battle of Taku Forts was a failed Anglo-French attempt to seize the Taku Forts along the Hai River in Tianjin, China, in June 1859 during the Second Opium War. A chartered American steamship arrived on scene and assisted the French and British in their attempted suppression of the forts.

• 
  The Pei-ho's river basin, known as the Hai River today.
• 
  Map of the attack on 25 June
• 
  A gun battery of the Taku Forts

Second Battle of Taku Forts
Part of the Second Opium War
The Taku Forts
Date 24-26 June 1859 Location Taku Forts, Hai River, China Result Chinese victory
Belligerents
British Empire  French Empire  United States	Qing China
Commanders and leaders
James Hope (WIA) Josiah Tattnall	Sengge Rinchen
Strength
Britain: 1,160 (on land)[1] 11 gunboats 4 steam ships[1]	4,000[2] 60 guns[2] 6 forts[2]
Casualties and losses
Britain: 3 gunboats sunk 3 gunboats grounded[1] 81 killed[3] 345 wounded[3] France: 12 killed 23 wounded America: 1 killed 1 wounded 1 launch damaged	32 killed or wounded[2]

References

• Bartlett, Beatrice S. Monarchs and Ministers: The Grand Council in Mid-Ch'ing China, 1723–1820. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991.
• Ebrey, Patricia. Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
• Elliott, Mark C. "The Limits of Tartary: Manchuria in Imperial and National Geographies." Journal of Asian Studies 59 (2000): 603-46.
• Faure, David. Emperor and Ancestor: State and Lineage in South China. 2007.
• Platt, Stephen (2012). Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War.

Notes

1. Janin, Hunt (1999). The India-China Opium Trade in the Nineteenth Century. McFarland. p. 126–127. ISBN 0-7864-0715-8.
2. "The Second Battle of the Taku Forts". unitedcn.com (in Chinese). Archived from the original on 2010-09-15.
3. Raugh, Harold E. (2004). The Victorians at War, 1815-1914: An Encyclopedia of British Military History. ABC-CLIO. p. 100. ISBN 1-57607-925-2.