some of the earliest taken in China. While in Hong Kong, Beato met Charles Wirgman, an artist and correspondent for the Illustrated London News. The two accompanied the Anglo-French forces travelling north to Talien Bay, then to Pehtang and the Taku Forts at the mouth of the Peiho, and on to Peking and Qingyi Yuan, the suburban Summer Palace. For places on this route and later in Japan, Wirgman's (and others') illustrations for the Illustrated London News were often derived from Beato's photographs. Taku Forts Beato's photographs of the Second Opium War are the first to document a military campaign as it unfolded, doing so through a sequence of dated and related images. His photographs of the Taku Forts represent this approach on a reduced scale, forming a narrative recreation of the battle. The sequence of images shows the approach to the forts, the effects of bombardments on the exterior walls and fortifications, and finally the devastation within the forts, including the bodies of dead Chinese soldiers. The photographs were not taken in this order, as the photographs of dead Chinese had to be taken first—before the bodies were removed; only then was Beato free to take the other views of the exterior and interior of the forts. Dr. David F. Rennie, a member of the expedition, noted in his campaign memoir, "I walked round the ramparts on the west side. They were thickly strewn with the dead, in the northwest angle, thirteen were lying in one group around a gun. Signor Beato was here in great excitement, characterising the group as 'beautiful,' and begging that it might not be interfered with until perpetuated by his photographic apparatus, which was done a few minutes afterwards." Summer Palace Just outside Peking, Beato took photographs at Qingyi Yuan (now Yihe Yuan, the Summer Palace), a private estate of the Emperor of China comprising palace pavilions, temples, a large artificial lake, and gardens. Some of these photographs, taken between 6 and 18 October 1860, are unique images of buildings that were plundered and looted by the Anglo-French forces beginning on 6 October. On 18 and 19 October, the buildings were torched by the British First Division on the orders of Lord Elgin as a reprisal against the emperor for the torture and deaths of twenty members of an Allied diplomatic party. Bennett writes that "These [photographs] appear to be the earliest images of