The Devil Soldier (27 page)

As a result of this palace coup, Tz’u-hsi and Niuhuru were made regents for the young emperor. They sat behind golden screens in the throne room and answered questions in the boy’s name, ruling on critical matters of state. But Niuhuru was weak-willed, and the dominant voice on such occasions quickly became Tz’u-hsi’s. The emperor’s name was changed to T’ung-chih, “Return to Unified Order,” and the name came to characterize a period of imperial restoration in China. It was the clever Tz’u-hsi—her youthful impetuousness and arrogance mellowed by experience—who made this possible, through her recognition, elevation, and control of such talented men as Prince Kung, Tseng Kuo-fan, and Li Hung-chang.

No less important to the survival of the Manchu dynasty was the fact that the emergence of Tz’u-hsi and especially Prince Kung as the de facto rulers of China had a powerful effect on the attitudes of the Western powers toward Peking. Kung had long been recognized by foreign emissaries as the most reasonable Chinese official with whom to do business. “It is thought,” Anson
Burlingame wrote to Secretary of State Seward following what he called the “revolution” in Peking, “foreign interests will be conserved by this action of Prince Kung and his party in as much as they are strongly in favor of maintaining and extending peaceful relations with foreigners.” British and French representatives echoed this sentiment, although many chose more cautious language. And with increasingly relaxed Chinese-Western relations came heightened Western impatience with the Taiping rebellion. Prince Kung apparently meant to live by the terms of the treaties China had signed, and an alternate choice to the Manchus as rulers of the empire steadily became irrelevant. This ever more critical attitude toward the Taipings was solidified by developments within the rebel movement.

On September 5 the city of Anking had finally surrendered to Tseng Kuo-fan. Augustus Lindley noted that “three regiments of the garrison, unable to endure the horrors of the famine raging within the doomed city, which had reduced them to cannibalism of the most frightful description, human flesh being eagerly sought at the price of eighty cash per catty (about fourpence per 1.333 lb. avoirdupois) and devoured with avidity, surrendered to the Imperialists upon condition of a free pardon, but were massacred to a man, and their headless bodies cast into the Yangtze.”

In the wake of this crucial victory, Tseng Kuo-fan was given supreme military authority over Kiangsi, Kiangsu, Anhwei, and Chekiang provinces—an unprecedented promotion, especially for a Han commander. His new responsibilities made Tseng profoundly uneasy; but disturbing as the results of Anking’s fall were to Tseng, they were far more so to the rebel commanders. Coinciding as it did with the largely futile Taiping western campaign, the loss of Anking left the rebels with only one option, which by now was a familiar one: to turn east and seize the riches of the coastal ports of Hangchow (which the Chung Wang had
abandoned after its initial conquest in 1860) and, more important, Ningpo and Shanghai.

The Taiping predicament was exacerbated by the continuing erosion of the T’ien Wang’s sanity and the attendant, predictable confusion at the uppermost levels of rebel authority. As in Peking, intrigue was rife in Nanking in the fall of 1861. Closely surrounded by advisers picked from his own family, the T’ien Wang was increasingly preoccupied with matters of theology and physical pleasure, and when he did look closely at rebel affairs it was only to become jealous of the rising power and popularity of the Chung Wang. Affairs within Nanking itself, meanwhile, were fast deteriorating, as the citizens felt the full effects of their leader’s instability and the other wangs’ greed. The missionary Issachar J. Roberts, now residing in Nanking, passed his hours that fall trying to engineer the sale of river steamers in the United States to Taiping agents. But by season’s end, Roberts had come to see that the rebellion was not the happy cause he had imagined he was setting out to join months earlier. In a nervous year-end report, “which I never expect to publish while living among this people,” Roberts wrote that

[t]he aspect of things here have two very different phases—the one bright and promising, the other dark and unpromising.… The bright side consists chiefly in negatives, such as, no idolatry, no prostitution, no gambling, nor any kind of public immorality, allowed in the city.… But when we come to the religious aspect of this revolution, together with other evils both political and civil, we have a very dark side, which has grieved my very heart exceedingly, and often inclines me to leave them; but then I pity the poor people, who have immortal souls, and are really the sufferers, and greatly to be pitied for time and eternity.

Speaking of the man who had once sat in his Bible class, Roberts pronounced: “As to the religious opinions of the T’ien Wang, which he propagates with great zeal, I believe them in the main abominable in the sight of God. In fact, I believe he is crazy, especially in religious matters, nor do I believe him soundly rational about anything.” The character of
the ruler was reflected in the state: “Their political system is about as poor as their theology. I do not believe they have any organised Government, nor do they know enough about Government to make one, in my opinion. The whole affair seems to consist in martial law, and that, too, runs very much in the line of killing men, from the highest to the lowest, by all in authority.”

Venting personal bitterness, Roberts stated that the T’ien Wang

wanted me to come here, but it was not to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ and convert men and women to God, but to take office, and preach his dogmas, and convert foreigners to himself. I would as lief convert them to Mormonism, or any other
ism
which I believe unscriptural, and, so far, from the devil. I believe that in their heart they feel a real opposition to the Gospel, but for policy’s sake they grant it toleration; yet I believe they intend to prevent its realization, at least, in the city of Nanking.

Roberts detailed the starvation that was increasingly prevalent, as well as the “traps” set by rebel leaders “to catch men and slay them,” and finally the propensity of the rebel leaders for “pulling down houses” and turning common families out into the cold in order to create space for new palaces. “And hence,” he concluded, “I am making up my mind to leave them unless the prospects brighten up considerably to what they are at present.… May the Lord direct my steps!”

Roberts’s report was subsequently made available to English-language newspapers on the China coast and to foreign diplomats, and it reinforced the general Western dissatisfaction with the Taipings. That dissatisfaction became outrage and active opposition when, in the beginning of December, the Chung Wang once again appeared at the head of a massive, eastward-moving army. His initial target this time was not eastern Kiangsu but Chekiang province. Perhaps remembering his reception at Shanghai a year earlier, the Chung Wang this time marched on Ningpo and Hangchow, and, while he met no active foreign resistance, his conquest of the two cities went a long way toward sealing the fate of the Taipings within the Western communities.

Condemnation did not come immediately; indeed, the capture of Ningpo in the beginning of December was used by the foreign powers and especially the British as something of a test case, to see how the rebels would behave when in control of a treaty port. The Taipings, said the
North China Herald
, “shewed pluck in capturing the city, while they evinced no desire to molest foreign residents, or revenge themselves, as usual, on the unoffending inhabitants. If such is the case, and … they are sincere in their peaceful designs, they shall have justice done to them at our hands. While we denounce those of the rebels who act as cold-blooded, blasphemous imposters, we shall give ‘the devil his due’ if any party of them act otherwise.” But in reality such statements were disingenuous, for there was little the Taipings could have done to prevent their eventual condemnation by the Westerners given the new circumstances in Peking. Just a week after making the preceding statement,
the
Herald
announced that

[t]hese insurgents are so far politic as to invite us to trade as usual, even on more liberal terms than heretofore, so that they be recognized as the ruling power in the district. But in honour, in justice, aye, even in expediency, can we do this[?] Such conduct on our parts individually—not to speak of the representatives of the Treaty Powers—would be a most serious infraction of the several treaties entered into with the constituted Government at Peking.… [A]t the present juncture we are more than at any other period of our connexion with China, bound to support the existing Government of the empire.

Thus by year’s end the Taipings were being charged with treachery for having violated the yearlong truce Admiral Hope had negotiated with them in March 1861, and before long Taiping methods of government were being decried by loud voices throughout the Western settlements. One missionary wrote from Ningpo to say that “[i]t is impossible to particularize one-tenth part of the cruelties that are daily and hourly witnessed by us in this place, where no doubt the Taipingites are on their best behavior.” And before long the
British consul in Ningpo, a man
known for harboring anti-Taiping sentiments even before the occupation of the port, was writing to inform Frederick Bruce that

not one single step in the direction of “good government” has been taken by the Taipings; not any attempt made to organize a political body or commercial institutions; not a vestige, not a trace of anything approaching to order, or regularity of action or consistency of purpose, can be found in any of their public acts; the words “government machinery” as applied to Taiping rule, have no possible meaning here; and in short,
Desolation
is the only end obtained, as it has always been wherever the sway of the marauders has had its full scope, and their power the liberty of unchecked excess.

Late in December Admiral Hope once more journeyed up the Yangtze to try to gain assurances from the Taipings that they would not attack any more of the treaty ports. Hope felt personally insulted by the new Taiping eastern offensive, and his mood was even more than usually belligerent. When asked, he refused to guarantee that the treaty ports would not be used as bases for Chinese imperial troops. And when told that he could hardly expect the Taipings to respect the ports’ neutrality under such circumstances, he threatened not only an active Western defense of the cities “but such further consequences as your folly will deserve.” Hope had no authorization for such statements from his superiors, who almost certainly would have disavowed them. But the lines were being drawn for a significantly expanded conflict in the Yangtze delta. And in January 1862 the Chung Wang completed this process by once more marching into Kiangsu and toward Shanghai.

While officers such as Admiral Hope might have been anxious, by the end of 1861, to fight the rebels with their own troops, statesmen such as Frederick Bruce were not yet convinced of the desirability of bringing the rebellion to a complete end. If nothing else, the war continued to spur the Manchu government on toward reform, and, whatever his preference for Prince Kung over other Chinese statesmen, Bruce was determined to drive China further down that path. For many months
to come,
Bruce would insist that “every consideration of sound policy indicates that Nanking is the
last
place we wish to see taken, as while in the hands of the Taipings it gives us a hold both on them and on this recalcitrant government.” Thus the British prime minister, Lord Palmerston, might thunder that “these Rebels are Revolters not only against the Emperor, but against all laws human and Divine,” but to condemn was one thing, to intervene actively with regular forces another. And it was by no means clear that Great Britain was prepared for the latter prospect during the opening days of 1862.

All this meant that Admiral Hope and officers like him had to find more inventive ways of meeting the Chung Wang’s challenge. There were only some six hundred British regulars in Shanghai in January 1862, along with four or five hundred French. Bolstered by the Shanghai Volunteer Corps, this did not represent an impressive force; the Chung Wang had at least a hundred thousand men moving in several powerful columns toward Shanghai from the south, the west, and the northwest. Bellicose language and a defiant attitude could not stop this horde, propelled as it was by heightened desperation.

Hope was soon joined in Shanghai by the commander of the British army in China, General Sir John Michel, who, like Hope, was an imaginative officer ready to explore unorthodox solutions to the Taiping problem. Small, thin, and immensely energetic, General Michel had built a reputation in India by waging an unconventional campaign against a group of rebels that saw him personally march through fifteen hundred miles of rugged, dangerous terrain. Michel had commanded a division during the Allied advance on Peking and had been present at the burning of the Summer Palace. On arriving in Shanghai, he quickly acceded to Hope’s view that British forces, if employed at all in the region, would have to be formed into “flying columns” that could be rushed to support imperial Chinese units in moments of crisis rather than dissipated in a circumferential defense of the Shanghai region.

In choosing such a strategy, Hope and Michel were supported by the commander of France’s forces in Shanghai, Vice Admiral August-Leopold Protet. Like Michel, Protet had seen extensive and adventurous colonial service and knew more than a little about waging an unconventional
campaign against a hostile native force. And, like Hope, Protet was a fire-eater who itched constantly for action. It had been Protet who had encouraged Tardif de Moidrey to organize his Franco-Chinese Corps. Indeed, Protet had made the project possible, by advising Tardif de Moidrey to feign illness when his unit had received orders to leave Shanghai. Anxious to have his own chance at the Taipings, Protet eagerly consented to be a part of Hope’s flying column strategy.