The expedition left Woosung on July 6th, its objectives being the great cities of Chin-Kiang and Nanking. The strength of it was overwhelming, for the fleet consisted of fifteen ships of war, ten steamers and fifty transports and troop-ships, on which were embarked nine thousand soldiers and three thousand disciplined seamen ready for service on shore in case of need. The _Belleisle_ was off Chin-Kiang on the 19th, and on the morning of the 21st the troops disembarked in three brigades. The columns of Sir Hugh Gough and General Schoedde had some hard fighting with the Tartar garrison of the city commanded by the gallant Haeling. Lord Saltoun's brigade, with the Ninety-Eighth in advance, marched against a Chinese force occupying a low ridge some miles inland and to westward of the city. The opposition encountered was trivial, and was easily overcome by the light company of the Ninety-Eighth in skirmishing order supported by a few discharges from a mountain-battery. But the regiment, debilitated as it was by a long tropical voyage in an overcrowded ship, unsupplied with an equipment suitable for the climate and wearing its ordinary European clothing, was in no case to resist the fierce summer-heat of China. The sun had its will of the men, thirteen of whom died on the ground; and Colin Campbell, seasoned veteran as he was, was himself struck down, though he soon recovered. From this day forth for months, and even for years, disease maintained its fell grip on the victims of overcrowding, and Napier would have been puzzled to recognise in the shattered invalids of Hong-Kong the "beautiful regiment" which had sailed from Plymouth in fine physique and high heart. On the night following the disembarkation several cases of cholera occurred, and fever and dysentery became immediately prevalent. Within ten days from the landing at Chin-Kiang fifty-three men of the Ninety-Eighth had died, and the _Belleisle_ was rapidly becoming a floating hospital.
A garrison was left in Chin-Kiang, and on August 4th the _Cornwallis_ man-of-war anchored in front of that very gate of Nanking which twenty-six years earlier had been rudely shut in the face of a British ambassador. Opposite that same gate it was destined that severe terms should now be dictated by a victorious British force. The mass of the expedition reached Nanking on the 9th and preparations for the attack on that city were promptly begun. The Ninety-Eighth men fit for service were transferred from the _Belleisle_ to a steamer which conveyed them to a point where a diversion was intended. Colin Campbell was too ill to accompany his regiment, and when he joined it a few days later he was again prostrated by fever. But Nanking escaped its imminent fate. Negotiations resulted in a treaty of peace which was concluded on August 26th; the expedition retraced its steps, and in October the _Belleisle_ reached Hong-Kong with the wreck of the unfortunate regiment. Even after those long months fate still kept imprisoned on ship-board what remained of the hapless Ninety-Eighth. The regiment had to remain on the _Belleisle_ until barracks could be built for its reception. Writing to his sister in December, Colin Campbell had the following sad tale to tell:--"The regiment has lost by death up to this date two hundred and eighty-three men, and there are still two hundred and thirty-one sick, of whom some fifty or sixty will die; and generally, of those who may survive, there will be some seventy or eighty men to be discharged in consequence of their constitutions having been so completely broken down as to unfit them for the duties of soldiers. This is the history of the Ninety-Eighth regiment, which sailed from Plymouth in so effective a state in all respects on the 20th of December of last year--and all this destruction without having lost a man by the fire of the enemy!" His estimate of the losses, grave as it was, did not reach the grim actual total. From its landing at Chin-Kiang on July 21st, 1842, up to February, 1844, a period of nineteen months, the unfortunate regiment lost by death alone four hundred and thirty-two out of a strength of seven hundred and sixty-six non-commissioned officers and men; and there remained of it alive no more than three hundred and thirty-four, an awful contrast to the full numbers with which it had embarked at Plymouth twenty-six months earlier.