Following the defeat a year earlier, a large Anglo-French army was sent to take the Taku Forts and thus Peking. They landed eight miles further north from Taku with 11,000 British and Indian colonial troops and 6,500 French soldiers and assaulted one of the north forts from the landward side accompanied by artillery and a naval bombardment. The fort was carried, and the other forts soon surrendered once they were brought under the guns of the first. The force then moved against Peking.

Taku forts, at the mouth of the Pei Ho river in the gulf of Pe Chi Li, China.