Episode 1 of 3

Beginning of the Assault

Name: Beginning of the Assault
Start: 1857-12-28
Location: Canton

When: 28 December 1857
Where: Canton
Part of: Second Battle of Canton during the Second Anglo-Chinese War

Lord Elgin ordered an Anglo-French force to take Canton, initiating the assault on 28 December 1857.

The British High Commissioner, Lord Elgin, was keen to take the city as a demonstration of power and to capture Chinese official Ye Mingchen. Elgin ordered an Anglo-French force to take the town, and the assault began on 28 December.

Sources

Battle of Canton (1857) Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-21

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.