The Devil Soldier (16 page)

Yet the very fact that otherwise loquacious British diplomats and politicians grew silent and evasive on this one subject speaks eloquently of the importance of the opium trade to the British empire, which had, after all, already gone to war once to preserve the free flow of the drug. At the time of the Opium War, the Manchus had been branded enemies of Britain for attempting to interfere with the drug trade. That the troublesome Taipings should have been viewed in the same light when they committed the same “attack” on “British trade” is hardly surprising. By refusing, for the most part, even to acknowledge the realities of the opium issue, eminent British statesmen were able to occupy the moral “vantage ground,” as Lord
Palmerston called it after the Opium War. They defended that territory tenaciously. “The Chinese must learn and be convinced that if they attack our people and our factories they will be shot”—Palmerston’s policy was designed to protect opium traffickers without naming them, and, in this as in so many things, he set the pattern for British statesmen throughout the nineteenth century.

That British representatives in China took Palmerston’s words literally was demonstrated in July and August of 1860, when Frederick Bruce’s brother Lord Elgin returned to China and led a task force of more than two hundred British and French ships back to the forts at Taku to settle accounts for the defeat of the previous year and finally force compliance with the Treaty of Tientsin. Ten thousand British and six thousand French troops participated in the subsequent storming of the forts and march toward Peking, during which the anti-Western general Seng-ko-lin-ch’in (known as “Sam Collinson” to the British troops) was repeatedly defeated and his Tartar horsemen sent reeling westward. The Western allies apparently meant to have an exchange of Tientsin ratifications in China’s capital whatever the cost.

It would be wrong, however, to say that all Englishmen in China approved of Britain’s playing a part either in such armed interventions or in the opium traffic. Some found their nation’s behavior in these connections so morally repugnant that they actively supported the Taiping cause, and thus set themselves up as opponents of Ward and his Foreign Arms Corps. Of these, perhaps none was more remarkable than Augustus F.
Lindley. Arriving in China as a merchant naval officer in 1859, Lindley had been so appalled by the behavior of imperial officials and Western businessmen in the treaty ports, and so intrigued by reports of the Chinese Christian movement in Nanking, that he had journeyed up the Yangtze to assess the rebel movement for himself. Here he met and was greatly impressed by the Chung Wang, to whom Lindley—writing under his adopted Chinese name, Lin-le—later dedicated a two-volume account of the rebellion and his own part in it. Receiving a permit to carry on trade in Taiping territories, Lindley soon began running guns to the rebels, motivated by what he would subsequently call “feelings of sympathy for a worthy, oppressed, and cruelly wronged people; as well as by a desire to protest against the evil foreign policy which England, during the last few years, has pursued.” Lindley took the field with the Chung Wang’s armies, trained a group of Taipings in the use of firearms and artillery, and was even married in a Taiping ceremony.

There were other Englishmen who sought employment in the Taiping armies, although not all were motivated by as apparently lofty considerations as Lindley. For their part, the Taiping leaders, according to the Chung Wang, were circumspect about hiring Western mercenaries, considering them arrogant and unreliable. The “T’ien Wang,” wrote the rebel commander, “was unwilling to use foreign troops. A thousand [foreign] devils would lord it over ten thousand of our men, and who would stand for that? So we did not employ them.” This determination eroded along with Taiping military fortunes during the early 1860s, however, and more and more foreign profiteers were allowed into the rebel ranks.

Englishmen and other Westerners were not only fighting on the Taiping side in 1860 but, as in Lindley’s case, running guns, securing supplies, and even enlisting recruits in Shanghai. One American, identified
only by the surname Peacock, persuaded foreigners in the port to defy their various nations’ bans on active participation in the Chinese civil war and to travel up the Yangtze to enlist. Some of these volunteers achieved positions of importance: One Englishman called Savage, an ex-pilot and, by some accounts, ex-soldier, held a high enough rank under the Chung Wang during the Kiangsu campaign of 1860 to be given charge of entire city garrisons. Rewards of money and rank were readily available to men who proved as capable as Savage. And while Western analysts such as Andrew Wilson might write off the foreigners who participated in the war during this period as “a few Malays and Manila-men, and, perhaps, a crazy English sailor or two,” they did help the Taipings become better acquainted with modern weapons and tactics.

As for the attitude of the Westerners who fought on either side of the Chinese civil war toward each other, Augustus
Lindley’s words are again indicative. Lindley had only scorn for the Westerners who served the Manchus—with the exception of Ward. After the latter’s death, Lindley wrote that Ward,

whatever his failings might have been, was a brave and determined man. He served his Manchu employers only too well, and at the last, by closing a career full of peril and fidelity with the sacrifice of his life, he sealed all faults with his death, and left those who cherished his memory to regret that he had not fallen in a worthier cause.… This adventurer originated the force that finally was the principal instrument in driving the Taipings from the dominions they had established as “Tai-ping tien-kuo.” By such apparently insignificant means does the Great Ruler of the Universe overthrow the efforts and establish the destinies of man!

The first truly significant demonstration of these “apparently insignificant means” came in mid-July 1860, with the Foreign Arms Corps’s second assault on Sung-chiang, an assault that quickly took on legendary proportions in Shanghai and, finally, throughout the Chinese empire.

Following his conquest of Soochow on June 2, the Chung Wang had dispatched columns east toward Shanghai and succeeded in capturing
most of the cities and towns that ringed the port, including Sung-chiang. But in much the same way that his determination had mellowed and the pace of his armies slackened on the march to Soochow, so did the advance toward Shanghai grow ever less decisive. The Chung Wang apparently enjoyed being away from the scrutiny of his increasingly unbalanced leader, the T’ien Wang. He also took full advantage of the considerable amenities Soochow had to offer. Claiming that he needed time to enlist troops before descending on Shanghai and then moving back west and up the southern bank of the Yangtze, the Chung Wang in fact occupied himself with the construction of a magnificent residence, described by
one visitor as consisting of “several sets of rooms, all connected with each other by passages and halls, but otherwise separated by courtyards variously adorned. Some have ponds, trees, soft rocks, penetrated with subterranean passages, the whole forming a labyrinth of palatial dimensions.”

Meanwhile, in the war’s western theater, some twenty thousand imperial troops had finally succeeded in surrounding the crucial Taiping city of Anking. The siege was not yet pressed with conviction, however, nor would it be until Tseng Kuo-fan assumed overall direction of the imperial military effort in the region. But the achievement was a sinister omen for the rebel cause. According to Augustus Lindley, the Manchu braves at first

contented themselves with the ordinary phase of Chinese warfare—watching, flag-waving, and yelling at a safe distance from any probable vicious attempt of the dangerous chang-maos. Anking, however, was a place of great strength for Chinese warfare; it formed the
point d’appui
of all Taiping movements either to the northern or northwestern provinces, and previous to any attack on their capital, Nanking, or its fortified outposts, its reduction was an absolute necessity. The city being built right on the brink of the great river, was absolute mistress of that important highway, without which, and its invaluable water communication, any extensive movement of the Manchu armies in an easterly direction became impracticable. At last, therefore, the Manchu warriors girded up their loins, that is to say, tucked up the bottoms of their petticoat inexpressibles, fiercely wound their tails around their cleanly-shaven caputs, made a terrible display of huge flags, roaring gongs, horridly painted bamboo shields, and a most extravagant waste of gunpowder, and moving forward with terrific cloud-rending yells, established themselves safely out of cannon-range of the walls, and proceeded to complete the investment of the doomed city by building themselves in with a formidable series of earth-works and stockades, from which they could neither climb out nor enemies climb in.

In the face of this threat, the Taiping leadership became gravely concerned over the attitude and actions of the Chung Wang, whose preoccupation with Soochow and its surrounding territories seemed to have wiped from the young general’s mind any appreciation of the important role he had been assigned in the coordinated westward attack. The Taiping prime minister,
the Kan Wang, later wrote in anger that following the fall of Soochow the Chung Wang had “rested upon his oars, manifesting no anxiety whatever about the state of Anking,” and some authors have speculated that the Chung Wang, weary of Taiping court intrigues and massacres, meant to establish his own warlord kingdom in the provinces of Kiangsu and Chekiang. His tested loyalty to the rebel cause makes this improbable, but in view of the pressure being applied to Anking, his behavior in Kiangsu was open to question. Anking’s predicament also underscored the importance of Shanghai, which held the arms, river steamers, funds, and supplies that could restore rebel authority in the west. Taking stock of all this, and realizing that the port’s capture would silence all criticism of his actions, the Chung Wang roused himself from the pleasures of Soochow and, in July, once again turned his attention eastward.

Thus Ward’s decision to make a second attempt at recapturing Sung-chiang from the rebels was not based simply on pride or the need to restore his backers’ faith in him. There were real strategic issues at stake. Sung-chiang and the neighboring walled city of Ch’ing-p’u (about fifteen miles to the north) were the strongest fortresses on the approach to Shanghai from the west and southwest, and the front line
of defense against any attacker emerging from those directions. And while it is true that only the capture of Shanghai itself would appreciably benefit the rebel cause, the maintenance of Sung-chiang and Ch’ing-p’u—along with Chia-ting to the northwest, Kao-ch’iao to the north, the Pootung peninsula to the east, and Nan-ch’iao and Chin-shan-wei to the south—gave the Chinese and Western residents of Shanghai breathing space in which to conduct trade and receive supplies with relative freedom. Thus if the Taiping advance were to be checked, Sung-chiang and Ch’ing-p’u were the logical places for the challenge to take place. In addition, Sung-chiang held an important place in Confucian folklore and was the seat of the prefecture that included Shanghai; its recapture would provide a boost to morale and help restore the tarnished prestige of local imperial officials.

If Ward left any written record of how much these factors influenced his decision to strike again at Sung-chiang, it has not survived. But this as well as future moves made by the Foreign Arms Corps’s commander indicate that he took account of such considerations almost instinctively. The British journalist Andrew
Wilson found Ward not only “a man of courage and ability” but one whose “mind seems always to have been occupied with military matters as affording his proper and destined sphere in life.” The axiom that an important objective (such as Shanghai) is best protected not from within but from a strong secondary position (such as Sung-chiang) would have been not only one of the basic tenets that Ward learned during his course of study at the American Literary, Scientific and Military Academy but also one that was validated during the siege campaigns of the Crimean War. An imperialist bastion at Sung-chiang would be a thorn in the side of any Taiping advance against Shanghai, as well as an ideal base from which a “flying column,” or highly mobile group of raiders, could strike at other positions in the area. The decision to renew the attack was, therefore, eminently sound.

Ward would not, however, be rushed into a premature assault by Wu Hsü and Yang Fang. Perhaps doubting their decision to back the American, both men again became anxious in early July for tangible proof of his ability. But the impatience of Wu and Yang had already been almost fatal to the Foreign Arms Corps. Ward—whose career shows a
singular absence of repeated mistakes—prepared for the second assault thoroughly. He may have bought time by arguing with Yang, or he may have employed the tactic that Charles
Schmidt spoke of as common in Ward’s dealings with “the Mandarins”:

In fact,—whenever the Mandarins ordered him to do any thing, he always said Yes, in a negative manner; in so prepossessing a way, however, that he left no doubt on their minds as to his sincerity. But he invariably put off their demands for a more leisure time, and in the interval acted according to his own views of the thing demanded, the result of action invariably agreeing with his own ideas. Then he would tell them that he had omitted through hurry, the order given him. The Mandarins seeing what would have been the result of their orders had he followed them, omitted to task him for disobedience, not daring to open their mouths for fear of letting out their own ignorance.

The most important job to be completed before taking the field again was to augment the corps’s excellent small arms with artillery. Through his usual channels Ward purchased two twelve-pounder, muzzle-loading brass guns, as well as eight brass six-pounders. “Guns” referred to long-barreled cannon with flat trajectories and high muzzle velocities, which generally fired solid shot of the weight cited in the name and were most effective when battering down defenses or ripping through closely ordered units of men. Howitzers and mortars, in contrast, could achieve greater elevation and higher trajectories, as well as lob hollow shells filled with the devastating invention of Britain’s Henry Shrapnel behind walled defenses. In preparing for his assault on Sung-chiang, Ward had the destruction of the city’s gates foremost in his mind, and he concentrated on guns, although howitzers and mortars would later play important roles in his operations.