Just after 8:00 a.m. on October 8, 1856, a cargo ship Yarrow moored near the Haizhu Fort in Guangzhou was preparing to set sail.
Suddenly, Liang Guoding, the general of the Guangzhou Marine Division, led 40 officers and men to board the ship to catch the bandits, and 12 people were captured from the 14 Chinese sailors on board. Because someone reported that it was a thief ship and recognized 12 of them as pirates.
Unexpectedly, this time it actually broke the honeycomb.
It turned out that the Chinese ship Yarrow, just for the convenience of smuggling, had been registered in Hong Kong, and the captain was an employed Englishman Kennedy.
The British consul in Guangzhou was a young man named Pasha Li. With little investigation, he insisted that the British flag on board had been ripped off by The Chinese Shui Yong and that Britain had been insulted. The Governor of Hong Kong, Bao Ling, supported Pasha Li and made demands to the Governor of Liangguang, Ip Ming Chen: 1. Public release of the offenders, 2. Written apologies, 3. Compensation for losses, etc.
This unreasonable request was rejected by Ye Mingchen.
On 21 October, Pasha issued an ultimatum to Ye Mingchen: if all the British demands were not met within 24 hours, the British Navy would take action against China. As a result, when the deadline arrived, Ye Mingchen still did not move.
As a result, British Admiral Sima Mi Geli immediately led a ship across Humen and attacked Guangzhou.
The Second Opium War broke out.
Ye Mingchen pretended to calmly sing a funny empty city plan.
The cannons outside the city rumbled, and he calmly watched the countryside test arrows in the school yard.
The defenders outside the city kept calling the police, but he believed his own words and replied with a smile:
"Nothing will happen, but the sun will go away."
He even ordered the officers and men of the Marine Division and the officers and men of the fort not to fire back, so that the imperial court and the common people could see who fired the first shot.
The enemy's artillery bombards in turn, but they are not allowed to return fire, so why not sit still and wait? The defenders did not dry up and withdrew as soon as they threw up their legs.
The British army took advantage of the situation to attack the city of Guangzhou.
The British waited in Canton for three months, and then had to withdraw to Hong Kong because of their weak strength.
The following year, in December 1857, Britain and France increased their troops and shelled the city of Guangzhou again. Ye Mingchen should have retreated into the interior and continued to resist. But he was foolish and loyal, and he stayed behind, and became a prisoner of the British order, and was taken to Calcutta, India.
In Calcutta, Ye Mingchen also studied the ancient loyal and righteous warriors, first as Su Wu, who shepherded sheep on the sea, and then followed the example of Boyi and Shuqi, and did not eat Zhou Su, and as a result, he died of hunger strike in India in 1859.
When the news came, some angry Guangzhou people wrote a song to ridicule him:
"No war, no peace, no defense,
Don't die, don't go down,
Unparalleled in ancient times,
Rare in the world. ”