Although their advance was slowed by guerrilla activity, the Japanese defeated the Formosan forces (a mixture of regular Chinese units and local Hakka militias) whenever they attempted to make a stand.

As the war approached its end, the Japanese took steps to ensure that Taiwan would be ceded to Japan under the eventual peace treaty and that they were well placed militarily to occupy the island.

A rumour was widely circulated at this time that the Chinese authorities, realising that they were powerless to prevent Taiwan and the Penghu Islands falling into the hands of Japan, had offered to cede them temporarily to Britain, presumably on the understanding that they would be returned at a later date.

[7] There was little or no popular support in Taiwan for the proclamation of the Republic, and many Western observers considered its establishment as a cynical ploy by its authors to evade China's obligations under the Treaty of Shimonoseki.

The Republicans adopted a national flag with a yellow tiger on a blue background, ordered a large silver state seal to be made, and began to issue paper money and postage stamps in the name of the Republic.

The preparations for the expedition were made in such haste that there was no time to issue the guardsmen with summer uniforms, and they left for the hot and humid climate of Taiwan in the heavy winter clothes they had been wearing against the bitter cold of Manchuria.

On 26 May the transports, escorted by the warships Matsushima and Naniwa, reached the Japanese-owned Ryukyu Islands to the northeast of Taiwan and anchored off the port of Nakagusuku on the eastern coast of Okinawa.

In view of the reports that had reached Japan that the leaders of the self-styled Republic of Formosa were making preparations to resist a Japanese landing, Kabayama felt that there was no time to lose.

Following a preliminary bombardment of the city's coastal defences by the warships Matsushima, Oshima, Naniwa, Takachiho and Chiyoda, the Imperial Guards attacked the Keelung forts from the rear.

The Japanese had hoped to stage the handover ceremony ashore, in the capital Taipei, but Li soon discovered that he would be lucky to escape with his life if he set foot on Taiwanese soil.

On 5 June Tang Jingsong and several senior ministers boarded the steamship Arthur at Tamsui, intending to escape to mainland China, and it was rumoured that they had with them large sums of money owed in pay to the Chinese garrisons of the northern towns.

On the evening of 5 June the gunners of Tamsui's Hobe Fort, indignant that they had been left out of this distribution of spoils, threatened to fire on the steamship unless a suitable bribe was found.

During the afternoon of 6 June Arthur got up steam and attempted to leave Tamsui, as her captain believed that it was now safe to do so, but was fired on several times by a Chinese field battery.

On 8 June eighteen Japanese cavalry troopers advanced northwards from Taipei and occupied Tamsui without firing a shot, taking the surrender of several hundred Chinese soldiers.

The American war correspondent James W. Davidson commented: At 2 a.m. on 5 June the yellow Republican Tiger gathered in his long tail and laid down and died for lack of nourishment.

Popular resistance to the Japanese invasion gradually grew, slowing the pace of their advance south from Taipei, and on 26 June the presidency of the Formosan Republic was assumed by Liu Yongfu in Tainan.

James Davidson, who had seen their qualities for himself at Keelung, Taipei, Tamsui and Hsinchu, was scathing in his criticism of their performance: The Chinese troops equipped with good weapons or bad, without drill, and unskilled in foreign tactics, protected by magnificent forts with big modern guns, or behind mudwalls with jingals, conducted themselves always with scarcely a redeeming feature.

It is a usual manoeuvre for the Chinese to draw themselves up in mighty splendour on some open plot of ground in full view of the enemy, and should the latter advance towards them, to commence to fire off every available firearm, although they may be entirely out of range.

This continues until the enemy has advanced sufficiently near to make his bullets felt in the Chinese ranks, and then there is a scatter and a scramble for a safer position, where their forces rally again to repeat the same tactics as before.

But scarcely were the troops out of sight before guns were brought out through the same doorways and shots fired at the first unfortunate party whose numbers were sufficiently small to make it appear safe to the treacherous occupants.

Troops now return and find the mutilated bodies of their companions in the streets; while at the doors and windows of the houses near, are the same grinning fiends and the same little white flag, an emblem of peace, still floating over their guilty heads.

The true figure was probably around 3,000 men, but the insurgents were stiffened by a force of 600 Black Flags, who now fought the Japanese for the first time during the campaign, and also deployed cannon and machine guns on the city walls.

Meanwhile, the brigade's advance guard dislodged an insurgent force numbering around 4,000 men and armed with repeating rifles from the village of Mao-tau, to the south of the So-bung-go River, but suffered relatively high casualties in doing so.

Two days earlier, on 13 October, the Takow forts had been bombarded and silenced by the Japanese cruisers Yoshino, Naniwa, Akitsushima, Hiei, Yaeyama and Saien, and a naval landing force had been put ashore to occupy the town.

[47][48] All three Japanese columns were now within striking distance of Tainan, and on 20 October, realising that the war was lost, Liu Yongfu disguised himself as a coolie and fled to Amoy in mainland China aboard the British merchant ship SS Thales.

[50][48] Historian and politician Takekoshi Yosaburō gave the following account of the surrender of Tainan: After General Liu's flight, the remains of his party wandered about the city not knowing what to do, until the foreigners, afraid that they would begin plundering, managed to persuade them to lay down their arms.

The result was to drive from their homes thousands of industrious and peaceful peasants, who, long after the main resistance had been completely crushed, continued to wage a vendetta war, and to generate feelings of hatred which the succeeding years of conciliation and good government have not wholly eradicated.

Koo Hsien-jung, who had invited the Japanese into Taipei in the early days of June 1895, was granted exclusive business rights in Taiwan, making him the wealthiest Taiwanese of his time.

The insurgency initially flourished because the bulk of the invasion force was repatriated after the surrender of Tainan, so that for several months there were relatively few Japanese troops left on the ground in Taiwan.

The Japanese responded to the continuing resistance with a carefully calibrated 'stick and carrot' policy, granting clemency to insurgents who laid down their arms while hunting down and annihilating those that did not, and taking brutal reprisals against villages believed to be sheltering guerrillas.