...pitted Britain and France against the Qing Dynasty of China. Its motive derived from the fact that both Britain and China were unhappy with the Treaty of Nanking (1842).
Background
The 1850s saw the rapid growth of imperialism. Some of the shared goals of the western powers were the expansion of their overseas markets and the establishment of new ports of call. In an effort to expand its privileges in China, Britain demanded that the Qing authorities renegotiate the Treaty of Nanjing of 1842, citing their most favored nation status. The British demands included opening all of China to British merchants, legalising the opium trade, exempting foreign imports from internal transit duties, suppression of piracy, regulation of the coolie trade, permitting a British ambassador to reside in Beijing and giving precedence to the English-language version of all treaties. The Qing Dynasty Court, reasserting China’s power, rejected the demands from Britain and France.
The Arrow Incident
Chinese authorities were unwilling to adhere to the terms of the 1842 Treaty of Nanking and had victimized Chinese merchants who traded with the British at the treaty ports. To protect those Chinese merchants who were friendly to them in Hong Kong, the British granted their ships British registration in the hope that the Chinese authorities would not interfere with vessels carrying the British flag.
On 8 October 1856, Qing officials boarded the Arrow, a Chinese-owned ship suspected of piracy and smuggling. The Arrow had formerly been registered as a British ship, and still flew the British flag. Twelve Chinese crew members were arrested by the Chinese authorities on suspicion of piracy. The British consul in Canton demanded the immediate release of the crew claiming that because the ship had recently been British-registered, it was protected under the Treaty of Nanjing, and demanded an apology for the insult to the British flag. British trade officials argued that since the Arrow was a foreign vessel, it did not fall under Chinese legal jurisdiction. In fact, the British registration of the Arrow had expired, in which case she did not have the right to fly the ensign, and her crew's arrest by the Qing authorities was lawful in any case. The crew was released, but an apology was not given. In reprisal, the British governor in Hong Kong, without consulting London, ordered warships to bombard Canton. Still, British Prime Minister Palmerston, claiming to be upholding British prestige and avenging the insult to the flag, supported his actions. Faced with fighting the Taiping Rebellion, the Qing government was in no position to resist the West militarily.
British attacks
Although the British were delayed by the Indian Sepoy Rebellion of 1857, they followed up the Arrow Incident of 1856 with an attack on Canton from the Pearl River.
In response to Whig objections to renewed war with China, Lord Palmerston dissolved Parliament and called for new elections. The Chinese issue figured prominently in the British general election of March 1857, which Palmerston won with an increased majority. He now felt able to press British claims more vigorously. Following the election and an increased majority for Palmerston, the voices within the Whig faction who were in support of China were hushed, and the new parliament decided to seek redress from China based on the report about the Arrow Incident submitted by Harry Parkes, British Consul to Canton. The French Empire, the United States, and the Russian Empire received requests from Britain to form an alliance.
Intervention by France
Seething after the execution of a French missionary, Father Auguste Chapdelaine, by Chinese local authorities in Guangxi province in 1856, France eagerly joined the British action against China. The British army led by Lord Elgin, and the French army led by Gros, attacked and occupied Canton in late 1857. The British-French Alliance maintained control of Canton for nearly four years. Guangdong Governor-general Yeh Mingchen was exiled to Calcutta, India, where he starved himself to death. The coalition then cruised north to briefly capture the Taku Forts near Tianjin in May 1858.
Interlude - Treaties of Tientsin
In June 1858, the first part of the war ended with the four Treaties of Tientsin. The major points of the treaty were: Britain, France, Russia, and the U.S. would have the right to establish diplomatic legations in Peking; ten more Chinese ports would be opened for foreign trade, including Niuzhuang, Tamsui, Hankou, and Nanjing; all foreign vessels including commercial ships would have the right to navigate freely on the Yangtze River; foreigners would have the right to travel in the internal regions of China, which had been formerly banned; and China was to pay an indemnity to Britain and France of 8 million taels of silver each.
Treaty of Aigun
On 28 May 1858, the separate Treaty of Aigun was signed with Russia to revise the Chinese and Russian border as determined by the Nerchinsk Treaty in 1689. Russia gained the left bank of the Amur River, pushing the border back from the Argun River. The treaty gave Russia control over a non-freezing area on the Pacific coast, where Russia founded the city of Vladivostok in 1860. Russia received over 600,000 square kilometers of land from China.
Anglo-French invasion
In June 1858, shortly after the Qing Court agreed to the disadvantageous treaties, more hawkish ministers prevailed upon the Xianfeng Emperor to resist encroachment by the West. On 2 June 1858, the Xianfeng Emperor ordered the Mongolian general Sengge Rinchen to guard the Taku Forts near Tianjin. Sengge Rinchen reinforced the Taku Forts with added artillery. He also brought 4,000 Mongolian cavalry from Chahar and Suiyuan.
Because Xianfeng refused to ratify the Treaties of Tianjin and Chinese officials continued to refuse to enact the treaty provision to establish foreign legations in Peking, in June 1859, a British naval force with 2,200 troops and 21 ships, under the command of Admiral Sir James Hope, sailed north from Shanghai to Tianjin with newly appointed Anglo-French envoys for the embassies in Beijing. They sailed to the mouth of the Hai River guarded by the Taku Forts near Tianjin and demanded to continue inland to Beijing. Sengge Rinchen replied that the Anglo-French envoys may land up the coast at Beitang and proceed to Beijing but refused to allow armed troops to accompany them to the Chinese capital. The Anglo-French forces insisted on landing at Taku instead of Beitang and escorting the envoys to Beijing. On the night of 24 June 1859, a small squad of British forces blew up the iron obstacles that the Chinese had placed in the Baihe River. The next day, the British forces sought to force their way up the river, and shelled Taku Fort. They encountered fierce resistance from Sengge Rinchen's positions. After one day’s and one night's fighting, more than 400 British were killed, four gunboats were lost and two others severely damaged. The convoy withdrew under the cover of fire from a US naval squadron commanded by Commodore Josiah Tattnall, though Tattnall's intervention violated US neutrality in China. For a time, anti-foreign resistance reached a crescendo within the Qing Court. In the summer of 1860, a larger Anglo-French force (11,000 British under General James Hope Grant, 6,700 French under General Cousin-Montauban) with 173 ships sailed from Hong Kong and captured the port cities of Yantai and Dalian to seal off the Bohai Gulf. On 3 August they carried out a landing near at Beitang, some 1.9 miles from the Taku Forts, which they captured on 21 August. After taking Tienstin on 23 August, the Anglo-French forces marched inland toward Beijing. The Xianfeng Emperor then dispatched ministers for peace talks, but relations broke down completely when a British diplomatic envoy, Harry Parkes, was arrested during negotiations on 18 September. He and his small entourage were imprisoned and interrogated. Half were allegedly tortured to death by slow slicing with the application of tourniquets to severed limbs to prolong the torture. The bodies were unrecognisable. The Anglo-French invasion skirmished with Sengge Rinchen's Mongolian cavalry on 18 September near Zhangjiawan before proceeding toward the outskirts of Beijing for a decisive battle in Tongzhou District, Beijing. On 21 September, at the Battle of Palikao, Sengge Rinchen's 10,000 troops, including elite Mongolian cavalry, were completely annihilated after several doomed frontal charges against concentrated firepower of the Anglo-French forces, who entered Beijing on 6 October.
Burning of the Summer Palaces
With the Qing army devastated, Emperor Xianfeng fled the capital, leaving his brother, Prince Gong, in charge of negotiations. Anglo-French troops in Beijing began looting the Summer Palaces in retaliation for Chinese atrocities. After Parkes and the surviving diplomatic prisoners were freed, Lord Elgin ordered the Summer Palaces destroyed.
The destruction of the Forbidden City was discussed to exact revenge on the mistreatment of their prisoners. The Russian envoy Count Ignatiev and the French diplomat Baron Gros counseled burning of the Summer Palaces instead, since it would not jeopardise the treaty signing.
The June 1858 Treaty of Tianjin was finally ratified on 18 October 1860, bringing the Second Opium War to an end. The terms included: opening Tianjin as a trade port, ceding the No.1 District of Kowloon (south of present day Boundary Street) to Britain, freedom of religion for Christians, freedom of navigation on the Yangtze, right of foreigners to conduct missionary activities, permission for British ships to carry indentured Chinese to the Americas, payment of an indemnity to Britain and France of 8 million taels of silver apiece, and legalisation of the opium trade.
The Anglo-French victory was heralded in the British press as a triumph for Palmerston, which raised his popularity to new heights. British merchants were delighted at the prospects of the expansion of trade in the Far East. Other foreign powers were pleased with the outcome too, since they hoped to take advantage of the opening-up of China.
Two weeks later, Ignatiev forced the Qing government to sign a "Supplementary Treaty of Peking" which ceded the land east of the Ussuri River (forming part of Outer Manchuria) to the Russians. The defeat of the Imperial army by a relatively small Anglo-French military force (outnumbered at least 10 to 1 by the Qing army) coupled with the flight (and subsequent death) of the Emperor and the burning of the Summer Palace, was a shocking blow to the once powerful Qing Dynasty. After this war, a major military and industrial modernisation movement, known as the Self-Strengthening Movement, began in China in the 1860s and several institutional reforms were initiated.
Xianfeng’s Death, Tongzhi’s Accession
In September 1860, British and French troops attacked Beijing during the closing stages of the Second Opium War, and by the following month burned the Emperor's exquisite Old Summer Palace to the ground. The Xianfeng Emperor and his entourage, including Cixi, fled Beijing for the safety of Rehe in Manchuria. On hearing the news of the destruction of the Old Summer Palace, the Xianfeng Emperor (who was already showing signs of dementia) fell into a depression, turned heavily to alcohol and drugs, and became seriously ill.
On 22 August 1861 the 30-year old Xianfeng Emperor died at Rehe Palace in the city of Rehe (now Chengde, Hebei). His successor was his one surviving son, Zaichun (the Tongzhi Emperor), who was almost 6 years old. Before his death, he summoned eight of his most prestigious ministers, headed by Sushun, Zaiyuan, and Duanhua, and named them the "Eight Regent Ministers" to direct and support the future Emperor. His heir, the son of Noble Consort Yi (future Empress Dowager Cixi), was only five years old. On his deathbed, the Xianfeng Emperor summoned his Empress and Noble Consort Yi, and gave each of them a stamp. He hoped that when his son ascended the throne, his Empress and Noble Consort Yi would cooperate in helping the young emperor to grow and mature. It was also meant as a check on the power of the eight regents. Upon the death of the Xianfeng Emperor, his Empress Consort, aged 25, was elevated to the title Empress Dowager Ci'an; and Noble Consort Yi, aged 27, since she was the mother of the now-reigning emperor, was elevated to the title Empress Dowager Cixi. By tradition, after the death of an Emperor, the body was to be accompanied to the Capital by the regents. Concubine Yi and the Empress traveled to Beijing ahead of time and planned a coup (the Xinyou Coup) that ousted Sushun from the regency. The Concubine Yi would subsequently rule China for the next 47 years, as the Empress Dowager Cixi.
Legacy
Xianfeng's reign saw the continued decline of the Qing dynasty. Xianfeng, like his father, the Daoguang Emperor, understood very little about Europeans and their mindset. While Westerners saw different nations as equals deserving mutual respect as an international norm, Xianfeng viewed non-Chinese Europeans as inferior and regarded the Europeans' repeated requests to be treated as equals as an offence. Xianfeng quickly rebuffed the Europeans suggestion of exchanging consuls. During the Second Opium War, repeated requests by Europeans to meet Xianfeng were also denied. At the time of Xianfeng's death, he had not even once met any foreign dignitaries.