Page 103 - Collecting and Displaying China's Summer Palace in the West

88 James Scott
before we would treat with them. They were also required to give up all the
prisoners . . . We made a lot of batteries and everything was ready for the assault
of the wall, which is battlemented at forty feet high, but of inferior masonry. At
11.30p.m., however, the gate was opened and we took possession, so our work
was of no avail. 3

The British and French occupied the palace and looting began soon thereafter. Looting
in this case was a mixture of organization and chaos. Another Royal Engineer officer,
4
Lieutenant Richard Harrison (23rd Company) wrote about this event. He described
that he took several objects from the Summer Palace and placed them into a sort of
loot pool:

There by the couch’s head a small table on which was a scroll, a seal, and some
tablets of green jade. Curiously enough the seal was of copper, and I took it in
memory of the occasion together with the scroll . . . I subsequently put these
things, with some others, into the prize sale and bought them out. 5

Looting was very much sanctioned by the military hierarchy; in fact it was a key
part to earning a living as a soldier. Incentives were provided for carrying out looting;
Gordon commented that he received a bonus for his actions: “We got upward of
£48 apiece prize money . . . I have done well.” 6

The army tradition was to share out the spoils, with officers and other ranks
taking their cut, and some of the cash used to compensate the families of dead
or wounded soldiers. 7

Although looting on a grand scale took place immediately after the gates were
opened, the decision to destroy the palace was not made until the treatment of the
prisoners held there had been discovered. Several of these had been tortured and
executed, among whom were British envoys and a journalist. Lord Elgin (British High
Commissioner to China) responded with the decision to burn the palace complex as
punishment for this act.
On October 18, 1860, the 1st Division under Sir John Mitchell (to which the 8th
Company RE was attached) was sent out to burn and destroy the Summer Palace.
Harrison’s attitude was that of semi-approval. In the light of the deaths of the British
prisoners, he agreed that punishment was necessary, but disapproved of the manner
of the destruction:

It was, no doubt, a good thing to do, because it punished the authorities . . . and did
not in any way injure the poorer classes . . . Its effect was somewhat marred by the
troops looting before the burning, and setting fire not only to the inhabited parts
of the palace, but to those that were not used to live in, and were simply buildings
of imperial and even world-wide interest, such as the library and certain temples. 8

Gordon also wrote about the event, betraying a reluctance to carry out the task:

You can scarcely imagine the beauty and magnificence of the places we burnt.
It made one’s heart sore to burn them; in fact, these places were so large, and