1842
Battle of Chinkiang
The setting
Chinkiang (Zhenjiang), where the Grand Canal meets the Yangtze
A walled city at the single most important logistical junction in the empire — the crossing of the Grand Canal and the Yangtze.
Reveal the outcome
Recorded sideUnited Kingdom
Recorded resultvictory
British victory, and the last major action of the First Opium War.
How the atlas explains it
It worked strategically before it worked tactically: taking Chinkiang cut the Caoyun grain transport system at its junction. ⚠ WHAT THAT CAUSED IS CONTESTED AND THE ATLAS TAKES NO POSITION. The common account, including the reference works this entry first rested on, is that the fall of the city forced the Daoguang emperor to sue for peace. A specialist reading (Mao Haijian, The Qing Empire and the Opium War) is reported to place an imperial concession of Hong Kong and the ports on 16 July, BEFORE the canal was cut on the 17th and before the city fell on the 21st — which would make the artery strike a determinant of TERMS AND SPEED rather than of willingness. This atlas has not opened Mao and does not adjudicate. The garrison had already been told what surrender meant elsewhere: Hailing's bannermen killed their own families and then themselves rather than be taken.
What followed
The last major action of the First Opium War. ⚠ THE ATLAS NO LONGER ASSERTS THAT IT ENDED THE WAR BY LOGISTICS — see the contested sequence above; that claim was entered on 2026-08-29 and put into dispute the same day. ⚠ IT DOES CONNECT TWO LANES THE ATLAS KEPT SEPARATE. Hugh Gough commanded here, and became Commander-in-Chief India in August 1843; six of his battles in this atlas are the Anglo-Sikh wars. The man who bombarded for two and a half hours before committing infantry at Gujrat in 1849 took this city in 1842, and the link is derived from a shared commander id rather than asserted.