Passaleão incident
Passaleão incident | |||||||
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View of the Barrier Gate (Portas do Cerco) separating Macau and China (published 1842) | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Portugal | China | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Vicente Nicolau de Mesquita | Xu Guangjin | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
36 men 1 howitzer |
400 men 20 cannons | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
1 wounded | 15 killed |
The Passaleão incident (Chinese: 關閘事件), also known as the Battle of Passaleão (or Pak Shan Lan[a]) or Baishaling incident, was a conflict between Portugal and China over Macau in August 1849. The Chinese were defeated in the only military confrontation, but the Portuguese called off further punitive measures after a naval explosion killed about 200 sailors.
Changes in Portuguese policy
The Portuguese governor João Maria Ferreira do Amaral had adopted a confrontational stance towards the Chinese, as displayed in the earlier revolt of the faitiões (October 1846). In early 1849 he proposed to extend a road from the walls of the city to the Chinese border. This required the relocation of some Chinese graves. Further, he ordered Chinese residents within the walls to pay taxes to the Portuguese authorities and no longer to the imperial mandarins.[2]
Amaral also placed stricter controls on the
By all these moves the mandarins—and the Chinese state—stood to lose significant revenue. The Chinese inhabitants of Macau were inflamed. Placards offering a reward for the head of Amaral were posted in Guangzhou (Canton).[2] The governor, however, had achieved his goal of Macanese independence from China: for the legations of Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States accredited to China had chosen to stay in Macau while awaiting permission to enter China.[3]
Assassination of Amaral
Matters came to a head on 22 August, when Amaral and his aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Jerónimo Pereira Leite, left the town through the Portas do Cerco (Barrier Gate) to give alms to an elderly Chinese woman whom Amaral was supporting.[2] The two were only a few hundred yards within the gate when a Chinese coolie frightened Amaral's horse with a bamboo pole and signalled to his comrades in hiding. The one-armed governor held the reins with his teeth in order to draw his pistol. Before he could do so, he was set upon by seven Chinese, led by Shen Zhiliang and armed only with edged weapons, and dragged from his horse. Leite, also armed, was dismounted and fled on foot. Intending to collect the reward in Guangzhou, the assassins cut off Amaral's head and remaining hand as proof. The Portuguese authorities later retrieved the rest of his corpse and traced a trail of blood out of the gate.[3][4]
The assassination quickly became well known in Guangzhou, where the evidence was widely seen and the perpetrators openly bragged. When the Portuguese—supported by the Americans, British, French and Spanish—protested the assassins' escape to the Chinese government, the latter claimed complete ignorance of the event.[3]
Since Amaral had earlier dissolved the Senate of Macau (because it had opposed his imposition of taxes), there was a power vacuum after the assassination. Some senior officials requested assistance from Britain and the United States. The USS Plymouth and Dolphin took up defensive positions in the harbour, while HMS Amazon and Medea landed some Royal Marines to defend Portuguese civilians and British nationals.[3]
Battle of August 25
In the aftermath of the assassination, sensing Portuguese weakness, the Chinese moved troops closer to the city. On 25 August, the guns of the imperial fort of Latashi (拉塔石), known to the Portuguese as Passaleão,
To calm the Portuguese, Xu Guangjin, Viceroy of Liangguang, ordered the arrest of Shen Zhiliang, the lead conspirator. He was captured by officials in Shunde County, who also recovered Amaral's head and arm, on 12 September 1849. Although Xu believed that Amaral deserved his fate, he had Shen Zhiliang executed at Qianshan on 15 September.[4]
Aftermath
After their initial victory, the Portuguese received support from
Notes
- ^ "Pak Shan Lan", "Pak-sa-leang" or "Pac-sa-leong" are renderings of the Cantonese pronunciation of 白沙岭, Mandarin "Baishaling". According to Carlos Augusto Montalto, the Portuguese called the battlement Passaleão.[1] The current name for the hill on which the ruins of the fort are located is Paotaishan (Chinese: 炮台山). Actual Baishaling (白沙岭) is a mountain ridge several kilometres north of Paotaishan.
- ^ The Chinese term, commonly encountered, for one of these is hoppo.
- ^ The original had the incorrect date "1848", but this was later corrected.
References
Sources
- Fei, Chengkang (1996). Macao: 400 years. Publishing House of Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.
- Forjaz, Jorge (1996). Familias Macaenses. Macau: Instituto Português do Oriente. ISBN 972-9440-60-3.
- Garrett, Richard J. (2010). The Defences of Macau: Forts, Ships and Weapons over 450 Years. Hong Kong University Press.
- Montalto de Jesus, Carlos Augusto (1894). "Macao's Deeds of Arms" (PDF). The China Review. 21 (3). Hong Kong: China Mail Office: 158.
- Montalto de Jesus, Carlos Augusto (1902). Historic Macao. Hong Kong: Kelly & Walsh.
- Ride, Lindsay; Ride, May; Wordie, Jason (1999). The Voices of Macao Stones (PDF). Hong Kong University Press. Archived from the original(PDF) on 15 December 2014. Retrieved 26 September 2014.
- Teixeira, Manuel (1958). Vicente Nicolau de Mesquita (2nd ed.). Macau: Tipografia "Soi Sang".