Chinese and after refusing to kow-tow (bow) to the Mandarin was executed.

On this day 12th August 1860 a Private John Moyse of the 3rd (East Kent, the Buffs) Regiment was captured by the Chinese at the Taku Forts during the 2nd Opium War (1856-1860).

Moyse is shown, hands tied behind back, confronting a Chinese mandarin on horseback  both are surrounded by armed Chinese and after refusing to kow-tow (bow) to the Mandarin was executed. 

His defiant action was later immortalised by Sir Francis Hastings Doyle in his poem 'A Private of the Buffs'. Moyse had been a sergeant, but was reduced to the ranks for insubordination prior to his death.

LAST night, among his fellow roughs, 

  He jested, quaff’d, and swore: 

A drunken private of the Buffs, 

  Who never look’d before. 

To-day, beneath the foeman’s frown,      

  He stands in Elgin’s place, 

Ambassador from Britain’s crown, 

  And type of all her race. 

 

Poor, reckless, rude, lowborn, untaught, 

  Bewilder’d, and alone,       

A heart, with English instinct fraught, 

  He yet can call his own. 

Ay, tear his body limb from limb, 

  Bring cord, or axe, or flame: 

He only knows, that not through him      

  Shall England come to shame. 

 

Far Kentish hop-fields round him seem’d, 

  Like dreams, to come and go; 

Bright leagues of cherry-blossom gleam’d, 

  One sheet of living snow;      

The smoke, above his father’s door, 

  In gray soft eddyings hung: 

Must he then watch it rise no more, 

  Doom’d by himself, so young? 

 

Yes, honor calls!—with strength like steel      

  He put the vision by. 

  An English lad must die. 

And thus, with eyes that would not shrink, 

  With knee to man unbent,       

Unfaltering on its dreadful brink, 

  To his red grave he went. 

 

Vain, mightiest fleets, of iron fram’d; 

  Vain, those all-shattering guns; 

Unless proud England keep, untam’d,         

  The strong heart of her sons. 

So, let his name through Europe ring— 

  A man of mean estate, 

Who died, as firm as Sparta’s king, 

  Because his soul was great.