The Last Empress: The She-Dragon of China (19 page)

That Li did not succeed in his plan was due in no small part to a wiry young American adventurer, with long dark hair that hung ‘like an Indian’ to his shoulders. Born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1831, Frederick Townsend Ward took to the sea early in life, and by the age of sixteen was already a mate on a merchant ship, a considerable achievement which prefigured his great ability to command men and gain their respect. Before arriving in China, Ward had seen active service in Mexico and Central America and had fought with the French during the Crimean War. When he first came to China he had apparently conceived a great sympathy for the Tai Ping cause, but later he took ship as mate on a Manchu gunboat. Ward was a small man, but made up in personality what he lacked in inches. He had piercing brown eyes and was one of those rare people who combined an intensity of motivation with an extremely genial nature. It was a mixture that for some reason worked magic on the band of drunks and gutter-dregs who made up the first mercenary army he recruited in 1861.

The Chinese Shanghai merchants, fearful of the Tai Ping advance and despairing of any real defence being mounted by the Western nations, entrusted Ward with the task of repelling the rebels. With Chinese backing, Ward put together a small band of desperadoes, whom he led in an attack on Sungkiang. Unfortunately, by the time his little army arrived at their objective, the putative ‘wild geese’ had consumed so much liquor that the Tai Ping defenders had no trouble repelling their intoxicated foe and chasing them back to Shanghai. It says much for the force of Ward’s personality that he was able to weather this military fiasco and to quickly persuade more men to join his mercenary force. His next sortie was more successful and the young American soon gained a reputation for both luck and personal bravery. He always led from the front, and insisted on carrying nothing more lethal than a rattan cane into the fight.
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This ‘gimmick’ was carried on by Ward’s British successor, the far more famous ‘Chinese’ Charles Gordon, who was to achieve immortality in 1885 on his death while fighting against the Mahdi’s forces at Khartoum. It was one of the stronger ironies of Chinese history that, at the very moment Ward was defending Imperial interests in Shanghai, his successor Gordon was taking part in the destruction of the Emperor’s most prized possession, burning and looting the Summer Palace with the rest of the allied expeditionary force to Beijing.

The Chinese found Ward easy to deal with and he was the most well-liked of the Westerners. So pleased was Yehonala with the results of Ward’s force (now numbering over four thousand men
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dressed in green uniforms with turbans of the same colour) she issued a decree renaming the force the ‘Ever-Victorious Army’.

Tseng Guo-feng, the untidy martinet ‘with a black straggling beard and moustache’ (who was Yehonala’s appointee as commander-in-chief against the rebels), had been the most successful Imperial officer to take the field. But Tseng was getting on in years, and he appointed two younger men, neither of them Manchu, as his immediate subordinates: Tso Tsung-t’ang, from his native Hunan, and the tall and imposing Li Hung-chang, who would later become Yehonala’s right-hand man in several crises.
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Li was conscious of China’s weakness in military affairs and he was extremely impressed by skills of the foreign troops he saw: ‘Their formations are orderly, their cannon accurate in hitting targets and most powerful against buildings; the brigands [Tai Ping rebels] are quite frightened by them. However...the foreign soldiers often insult us and arbitrarily order movements of our troops.’ To the proud Chinese, with their culture of barbarian inferiority, such behaviour was quite unacceptable. Ward, however, seems to have worked his charm on the Manchu officials as well as his own troops. An old China-hand, he knew how important face was to the Chinese: he suggested rather than demanded, and was happy to share the glory with those above him (or at least he affected to be, which for a mandarin amounted to the same thing). Ward became
‘ban Chunguo ren’
(half-Chinese) wooing and marrying a Chinese woman, the daughter of one of the most prominent Shanghai merchants, Yang ‘Takee’ Fang. Most important of all, he did what the Chinese required of him: in a series of brilliant small campaigns the Tai Ping were gradually pushed back from Shanghai. Li Hung-chang was impressed and inclined to wink at the American ‘colonel’s’ lack of Chinese etiquette: ‘Ward, who valiantly defends Sung and Ching, is indeed the most vigorous of all. Although he has not yet shaved his hair or called at my humble residence, I have no time to quarrel over such a little ceremonial matter.’ After Ward’s spectacular capture of the important city of Ch’ing-p’u on 10th August, the mercenary leader’s stock rose even higher in Li Hung-chang’s eyes: ‘Ward commands enough authority to control the foreigners in Shanghai and he is quite friendly with me... Ward is indeed brave in action. I have devoted all my attention to making friends with him, in order to get the friendship of various nations through that one individual.’

Alas, all Li Hung-chang’s efforts proved vain. On 19th September, Ward led the Ever-Victorious Army on the small town of Tz’u-ch’i, south of Shanghai and close to the port of Ningpo. He rested his men at the Pan-ch’iao temple just outside Tz’u-ch’i and, at dawn the next day, contrary to his normal practice, he inexplicably remained in the rear and allowed his officers to lead the men in storming the walls. While he was ‘directing his troops from the rear and watching the brigands through his telescope, they suddenly fired from the walls and shot him through the breast and back. He instantly fell down unconscious; he was attended to and carried back to the vessel by his aides.’
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Ward lingered on in agony until the next day, dying on 21st September 1862, just thirty-one years old. The hero who had rushed so often into the heat of action armed only with a swagger stick and an invincible sense of his own invulnerability had been struck down, far from the battle, by a one-in-a-million shot.

Ward’s second-in-command, Henry Burgevine, now took control of the Ever-Victorious Army. A native of the American deep south, Burgevine was an eccentric, prone to violent rages and with none of Ward’s warmth and understanding of Chinese ways. When
tao-tai
Yang Fang delayed the disbursement of the Ever-Victorious Army’s pay, Burgevine marched into his house with several dozen musketeers, beat him mercilessly ‘until he vomited a great deal of blood’ and then broke open the treasury, making off with over forty thousand silver dollars (still less than one month’s costs for the mercenary force). But this action against a Chinese official was too much for Li Hung-chang’s mandarin sensibilities. Throughout their relations with the West, the Chinese elite steadfastly held to the principle that a mandarin’s person was inviolate. Burgevine’s attack was therefore intolerable, and besides, Li was concerned that under such leadership the whole of the Ever-Victorious Army might go over to the rebels.
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He sought the help of the British General Stavely, who agreed to a reduction in the EVA’s numbers from four thousand five hundred to three thousand men, and to allow a British officer to command the troops. The officer chosen was Charles George Gordon.

At thirty-one, Gordon was the same age as Ward, but in all other respects the two men could not have been more different. Where Ward had been active and impulsive, given to acts of bravado, Gordon was thoughtful, quiet, almost introverted. Ward had not cared about the morals of his men as long as they fought well; Gordon, brought up in the strict Christianity of Victorian England, could brook no loose living. On taking command he made it plain that discipline would return to the Ever-Victorious Army, and wine, women and loot were forbidden. In response, almost half of his force deserted. Nothing daunted, and following a tradition that was accepted practice in both Britain and China, Gordon enlisted his defeated foes, taking on around two thousand Tai Ping prisoners and incorporating them into the Ever-Victorious Army.

Like Ward, Gordon was nominally under the command of Li Hung-chang. At first, Li was doubtful of Gordon’s reputation for honesty and bravery, but the Englishman’s behaviour and success in battle soon persuaded him otherwise. ‘Since taking over the command, Gordon seems more reasonable [than the others]. His readiness to fight the enemy is also greater.’
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Later, in a memorial dated 12th April, Li admitted, ‘When the British General Stavely formerly stated...that Gordon was brave, clear-minded and foremost among the British officers in Shanghai, your official dared not believe it. Yet since he took up command of the Ever-Victorious Army, their exceedingly bad habits gradually have come under control. His will and zeal are really praiseworthy.’ A further memorial dated 2nd June repeats the refrain: ‘As the foreign officer and others did not use their heavy guns...when they succeeded in capturing the ringleaders and exterminating the dens, their feats exceeded your official’s [i.e., Li Hung-chang’s] expectations.’ But these victories came at a terrible human cost. On the same day Li wrote poignantly of the terrible conditions in the countryside over which the war was being fought:

...the province of Jiangsu used to have a densely populated countryside, a village every half li (one-sixth of a mile), a town every three li (one mile), smoking chimneys...and chickens and dogs to be heard everywhere. Now we see nothing but weeds, briars and hazels obstructing the roads. There may be no inhabitants for twenty or thirty li. At times, among the broken walls and ruined buildings, one or two orphan children or widows survive out of a hundred inhabitants. Their faces have no colour and they groan while waiting for death. When asked about their livelihood, they answer ‘as it is impossible to beg or walk afar, grass and roots have to be plucked to make cakes to stay our hunger’. As I, your official, am holding the post of governor, my heart grows sick when I see these terrible conditions with my own eyes.

Li was sincerely affected by what he saw and he pushed his forces mercilessly, hoping that, with Gordon’s help, the twelve-year rebellion might be crushed and normality restored quickly Over the next few months his dreams seemed to be realised.

Gordon’s skill at arms, plus the bravery of the Chinese soldiery, provided more victories for the Imperial armies than Yehonala and her court at Beijing had seen in many a year. And Li Hung-chang, the mandarin so confident of Chinese superiority, began to see in the young Englishman behaviour that unsettled his preconceptions concerning the Western barbarians. He was ‘brave, industrious and especially well-versed in strategy and the use of firearms. It is requested that an edict may be issued in acknowledgement of his work so that he may carry himself with pride after returning to his country.
^’10

Just one incident marred this burgeoning understanding between East and West. As the Imperial armies increasingly gained ground–taking several major cities and eventually surrounding Nanking and laying siege to the Heavenly King himself–some of the less committed of the Tai Ping leaders began to reassess their options. At Suzhou, the lovely canal city known as the Venice of the East, several of the lesser Tai Ping ‘Wangs’ entered into secret negotiations with the Imperial commander, colonel Cheng Kuo-k’uei, on how best they might surrender. They were informed that no submission would be possible unless they first captured or killed Tan Shao-kuang, known as the Mu Wang, a rebel chief of formidable reputation who was also in the city with a ‘suicide squad’ of over one thousand men, all prepared to defend it to the death. With Tan removed, the rebels were promised a hearty welcome, and that they would be given high positions in the Manchu army. The Tai Ping turncoats jumped at the chance of escaping a rebel’s death and a secret plan was agreed with the Imperial commanders.
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Also in Suzhou at that time was the most successful of all the Tai Ping generals, Li Chung-wang, the Loyal Prince Li. The Imperial forces would no doubt have wished his capture too but, whether through his spies or through instinct, the Loyal Prince suddenly deserted Suzhou with ten thousand followers and fought his way west towards the besieged Tai Ping capital of Nanking.

On 4th December, as the Imperial forces prepared to attack Suzhou, the Mu Wang gave orders to defend the walls. As he turned to direct his own men, the trap was sprung: Tai Ping general Wang Yu-wei stabbed Tan Shao-kuang from behind with his dagger, and immediately a great mob of men fell upon Tan’s thousand-strong ‘suicide squad’ and hacked them to pieces. Then they hauled down their flags, opened the gates, and surrendered the city.

Some of the former
Chang Mao
, the long-haired bandits of the Tai Ping, shaved their heads in token of submission. But many did not. The six main Tai Ping leaders, afraid of treachery and conscious of the fact that, at that moment, they still commanded some one hundred thousand men, attempted to negotiate their safety from a position of strength. They demanded from Li Hung-chang documents guaranteeing their positions as brigadier-generals and colonels in the Imperial army. Seeing their belligerent attitude, Li worried that in Suzhou the Tai Ping tail might soon wag the Manchu dog. And so, ‘to avoid the predicament of having a big tail or incurring other mishaps’, Li abruptly reneged on his promises to the rebels, and summarily ordered the Tai Ping chiefs executed. They were beheaded immediately.

Gordon was shocked to the very core of his moralistic heart. These men had surrendered according to the Articles of War and had been promised safe conduct. And now they had been treacherously slain. Armed with two pistols and breathing fire, he went in search of Li, intending his death. Fortunately, Li made himself unavailable to the irate Englishman, knowing that ‘Gordon has a violent temper’.
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His murderous intentions thwarted, Gordon threatened to go over with the Ever-Victorious Army to the Tai Ping, but eventually as Li had foreseen, the Englishman’s anger cooled, and he allowed himself to be reconciled, though he was never to completely forgive the treacherous treatment (as he saw it) meted out to the Tai Ping commanders. Li took a far more practical approach to the killings, an attitude that revealed the gulf that still remained between European and Chinese perceptions. He had already explained his reasons for ordering the executions–the rebels still had a formidable number of men under arms and their allegiance to the Manchus was unproven–‘a man who sells one Lord will sell another’. Promises made to such men were of little account. Li believed that the action taken had been justifiable in the circumstances, and he felt that this should be the end of the matter. But with typical mandarin
sang froid
, he was also willing to submit to the exigencies of the moment and offer himself up as a scapegoat. Should the British government rally to Gordon’s cause ‘...and dispute about this with any heat,’ he wrote to Yehonala, ‘then it would be only fair to deal with Your official severely, according to the situation, in order to appease their mind’.