In May 1910, a group of pirates named Liang Yihua, who had made Coloane Island their nest, abducted a dozen school children from Xinning County, Guangdong, and took them to the island for ransom. As the Sino-Portuguese demarcation talks had broken down and Coloane Island became a disputed area, Guangdong officials were afraid to do anything under the Qing court's instruction to “maintain the old status quo and not to cause any trouble”. The parents of the children turned to the Governor of Macau for help in July, who sent troops to Coloane to rescue the children, but the Portuguese soldiers were killed and injured when the pirates opened fire. A large number of troops and gunboats were then dispatched to support them, bombarding villages on the island for days and burning villages and forests, resulting in the death of many innocent villagers and fishermen, known as the “Coloane Bloodbath”. The Portuguese subsequently took the opportunity to expand their colonial occupation of Coloane Island, and to achieve administration of the island in symbolic, military and civil terms, resulting in Portuguese rule of the Macao Peninsula and the two outlying islands of Taipa and Coloane in the 20th century.