What the....
Dude, did you just basically quote the synopsis of that ridiculous new British "period" blockbuster "Wellington's Heroes"?!? I mean cmon man, i know that silly ass movie is shattering all sorts of box office records due to it amazing writing, acting, and production values, but to try to sneak that blurb into a real historical discussion takes some monster ass cojones. Speaking of which, i'm gonna go watch it again with my friends, despite the pure butchery of history accuracy its a goddamn entertaining popcorn flick.
Anyone who ever picked up a history book knows damn well what really happened in that "glorious" little war. Wellington and his motley crew of "swashbucklers" (IE survivors of his disastrous Western Hemisphere campaign) pulled off a literally balls to the wall ASB insane sneak attack on a Qing coastal fortress and then double downed on ASB luck that it happened to be THE "treasure fortress" that the Qing province was using as its central tax collection point. Then to add insult to injury, 3 more tax laden ships were seized as Wellington's bandits were on the way out with their massive ill gotten loot, not to mention an epic final fight on a confiscated smuggling ship full of opium (hence "Opium" War) that ended up in a massive fireball (so very faithfully translated on big screen).
Well, here you go: who cares about historical accuracy as long as it is entertaining? In its genre "WH" (AFAIK) was second (in the terms of revenue) only to the "Braveheart" which also was not quite accurate: as everyone knows the real William Gibson (or Mel Wallace, the historians are still not quite sure) had been burned alive for having a tumultuous romance with princess Isabella (seducing 10 years old girl was not quite kosher even at these times and when you are doing this to the bride of the heir of the throne ....) and not for some non-existing rebellion. Or if you ever watched "Alexander Nevsky" (because of its famous music), it is all one big nonsense from beginning to the end. So stop being pedantic.
However, with all its inaccuracies, the main line of the "WH" is correct: he and his army had been dumped on the heads of mostly unsuspected natives and, taking into an account that these natives "habla no Inglesa" (few years ago an insurance company in Lynn, MA had a wonderful sign "Habla Inglesa" in its front window) and it would be quite naive to expect from a self-respecting Brit to learn Spanish, the whole affair was, quite understandably, just a Series of the Unfortunate Events glorified by the British press just as the Charge of the Light Brigade or the story of the Thin Red Line (in a reality, there were considerably more people in that "red line" than on the attacking side and, contrary to the report and popular paintings, the whole affairs amounted to a couple of salvos fired at a great distance and hurting nobody: the "attackers" never got anywhere close to the British ranks, they just turned and rode away).
In China, as you correctly noticed, Wellseley and his troops simply got lucky: the Chinese (most of whom despised the Manchu rulers) just fled away leaving the tax gold (actually, they managed to steal most of it for themselves but the leftovers had been big enough for the British officers to get home famously rich). However, as the recent research proved beyond any reasonable doubt, the story with the exploding ship is a fake. Just as a legend of Winkelried at Sempach, it is stolen from a completely different real event associated with Henry Morgan: after one of his expedition it was found that a loot was much smaller than expected and in the most (un)fortunate moment Henry's flagship blew off seriously decreasing a number of the shareholders (and allowing the survivors to loot the floating corpses). In this case it was just a clever cover-up for the fact that the cargo was already stolen (there was an under the table deal between Sir Arthur and Chinese captain from which both sides benefited and both cargo and the crew left the ship without making too much noise): under the normal circumstances, at least the sailors had been entitled to the prize money from a captured ship and its cargo but "no cargo, no money" with a resulting fistfight (opium was gone but there were still few barrels of the local rotgut in the ship's hold so the boarding crew was roaring drunk at no time). Of course, a spectacular explosion looks much better on the screen and even in the history books but why would anybody burn the ship? Lesser prize money are better than nothing and why and how exactly a shipment of opium would explode?
The whole story about origin of the 1st load of opium arriving to Britain was never completely clarified. It is quite possible that the load indeed came from one of the warehouses in Canton (as a trophy to show the British public) but the fact remains that later the shipments had been coming directly from Benghal carried by the opium clippers (the most famous of which, "Cutty Sark", is being preserved in permanent dry dock at
Greenwich,
London).
But, to clarify the obvious misunderstanding, in my post I provided the British (semi-)official picture of the events (at least SOME Brits are quite sensitive to what they are considering as being their history and I did not want to ruffle any feathers). If you start digging into history too deep you are risking to end up with a quote from
The Makropulos Affair:
- But you are removing all glory from a history.
- There was nothing glorious in it.
With all that treasure, Wellesley was able to buy himself back into the good graces of the court, forgiving his disgraceful command in the Americas, as well as buying his Dukedom. The stunning amount of treasure stolen basically helping keep the Brits afloat for awhile helping recover from their disastrous clashes with Napoleon.
Of course. But this would not make for a good PR because any nation needs its heroes and who cares if there was some discreet redistribution of the wealth on a background?
The legend about "The stunning amount of treasure stolen" being used for keeping Britain afloat does not stand up to any criticism: who and where saw anything of the kind? Of course, formally, the stolen bullion had been spent on the "state's needs" (or whatever the official explanation) but it helps to remember that in this context "state" amounted to a reasonably small group of people most of whom at that time made significant improvements in their London and country residences and/or made some quite extravagant purchases (jewels-encrusted male and female footwear and "Turkish style" ostrich feathers with the diamonds became fashionable exactly at that time, which is probably a mere coincidence). OTOH, it can be argued that the lower classes (shoemakers, jewelers, tailors, etc.) also benefited as a part of trickle down economy and thus helped to distract the nation from not quite glorious clashes with the Corsican Ogre. But, in a reality, a steady supply of the relatively cheap narcotics had been more more effective.
However that crazy raid did have major consequences. The heir, eldest son of Jiaqing, and favorite grandson of the legend Qianlong, Min Ning was inspecting the fort and was killed during the storming.
Being too drunk to wake up and flee with the rest. Of course, in the Chinese history he ended up as a hero who went down while single-handedly covering the retreat of the defenders (see popular Chinese movie "Sleeping mule, jumping rabbit" - received Oscar in 2014 as the Best Foreign movie).
Imperial Qing then had a massive hate on for the British, who the French then cunningly took advantage of by selling second hand ships, weapons, and sending advisers of all sorts to aid them in their eventual reprisals and occupations of British Australia and bits of India. With the end of the fighting on the European continent all of these restless young officers had to go somewhere to seek adventure!
Very astute observation. Of course, from the British perspective, these French had been just loathsome creatures without any principles. French view on the same people was, unsurprisingly, somewhat different.
The Qing military got revitalized with the help of the French advisory commission and really provided the perfect proxy in Asia to blunt British and later on Russian interests in the Far East.
At that time Russian interests in China amounted to purchasing big quantities of tea for furs or gold. Only few decades later, Russia managed to convince China to start accepting part of these payments in vodka but this is a different story. However, even this trade caused a lot of uproar in Britain with the claims that Russia is infringing upon the British free trade and is trying to march on India through China (Foreign Office was still using small-sized maps without indications of the mountains, deserts and other trifles).
The French essentially brought China along for the industrialization ride and opened up the Chinese market where they finally started to accept goods other than hard currency in trade. Taxes were raised to fund all of these endeavors and the expected peasant revolts were swiftly crushed by the French trained revamped Banner armies.
Very good synopsis. See above about some of the "goods".
Its crazy how the French was always in the right place and right time for these things. The eventual successor after Jiaqing ended being a massive Franco-phile really was a massive stroke of luck in helping keep British influence down, leading to their eventual losses in the 2nd/3rd "Opium" Wars.
Sorry, but his Francophilia had little to do with luck: demonstration of the most recent models of the French female underwear was the critical argument in his "turn toward the Western barbarians" and few boxes of Chateau de Beaulon Napoleon Cognac (20 years old) and Veuve Clicquot vintage 1811 became something of an icing on the cake.
I kinda wonder what would've happened if Wellington didnt make his crazy ass raid, or if that heir prince didnt get whacked, leading to the Qing going on the warpath. Heh i bet China would be even richer and more powerful than it is now. I mean all that treasure not stolen, spent on more infrastructure (instead of weapons/ships), and a MASSIVE population advantage, i mean how can China ever fail?
This is a little bit idealistic: most of the treasury (or rather part of it that was not stolen by the regional officials) had been routinely spent on the further expansion and beautification of the imperial Summer Palace with its trees made of gold, the whole (small) mountains being moved for the hundreds of miles and so on. Without the enlightened French influence they'd keep doing this forever.
