The Battle of Canton () was fought by British and French forces against Qing China on 28–31 December 1857 during the Second Opium War. The British High Commissioner, Lord Elgin, was keen to take the city of Canton (Guangzhou) as a demonstration of power and to capture Chinese official Ye Mingchen who had resisted British attempts to implement the 1842 Treaty of Nanking. Elgin ordered an Anglo-French force to take the town and an assault began on 28 December. Allied forces took control of the city walls on 29 December but delayed entry into the city itself until 5 January. They subsequently captured Ye and some reports state they burnt down much of the town. The ease with which the allies won the battle was one of the reasons for the signing of the Treaty of Tientsin in 1858. Prelude The British had been permitted access to Canton (Guangzhou) at the end of the First Opium War under the terms of the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, but were being illegally barred from entry by its viceroy Ye Mingchen. In 1856, there had been a series of attacks on the Thirteen Factories and its residences, culminating with their complete destruction by fire. This and the seizure of a foreign ship led the British to assemble a force to demand reparations. Although the British Royal Navy had destroyed the Chinese junks during the summer, an attack on Canton was delayed by the Indian Mutiny. On 12 December 1857 the British High Commissioner to China, Lord Elgin, wrote to Ye demanding that he implement in full the trade and access agreements made in the 1842 Treaty of Nanking that ended the First Opium War and that he pay reparations for British losses in the war so far. Elgin promised that if Ye agreed within ten days then British and French forces would cease offensive actions, though they would retain possession of key forts until a new peace treaty was signed. Ye Mingchen was told he had 48 hours to comply. Ye's reply was that Britain had effectively abandoned its rights with regards to Canton through eight years of inactivity, that the cause of the war (the loss of the merchant ship Arrow) had been of the British making and that he could not sign a new peace treaty because the 1842 treaty had been decreed by the emperor to last for 10,000 years.