the number of apostolic workers in China, and never ceased to produce most capable workers. The first official relations were formed between France and China when the missionaries brought there by the Amphitrite, the first French vessel seen in Chinese waters (1699), presented gifts from Louis XIV to the Kangxi Emperor. The two monarchs shared the expense of erecting the first French church at Peking: the emperor donated land within the limits of the imperial city and the building materials, the French king paid for the labor, the decoration and the magnificent liturgical ornaments. Several other churches erected in the provinces through the munificence of Louis XIV increased the prestige of France throughout the empire. Under Louis XV the mission in China, like many other things, was somewhat overlooked, but the government did not wholly neglect it. It found a zealous protector in Louis XVI's minister Bertin, but it felt keenly the suppression of the Society of Jesus and the French Revolution with all its consequences, which dried up the source of the apostolate in Europe. It was a handful of French missionaries, such as Lazarists or members of the Society of Foreign Missions, assisted by some Chinese priests, who preserved the Faith throughout the persecutions of the early nineteenth century, during which several of them were martyred. When the English, after the First Opium War, imposed on China the Treaty of Nanking (1842), they did not at first ask for religious liberty, but the murder of the Lazarist John Gabriel Perboyre (11 September 1840) becoming known, they added an article stipulating that thenceforth a missionary taken in the interior of the country should not be tried by the Chinese authorities, but should be delivered to the nearest consul of his country. On 24 October 1844, French ambassador Théodore de Lagrené secured further concessions which inaugurated a new era. The Treaty of Whampoa, which was signed on that date at Whampoa, speaks only of liberty for the French to settle in certain territory in the open ports, but at the request of the ambassador, an imperial edict was sent to the mandarins and at least partially promulgated, praising the Christian religion and removing the prohibition for Chinese to practice it. However, the execution of the missionary Auguste Chapdelaine in 1856 and other facts showed the insufficiency of the guarantees accorded to Europeans; to obtain others, England and France had recourse