The Devil Soldier (42 page)

On June 6 Hope ordered more British regulars to Sung-chiang on his own authority as naval commander in Shanghai. At the same time, most of Major Morton’s detachment of the Ever Victorious Army in Ningpo, having been informed of the desperate struggle of their leader, returned north and immediately began to battle their way toward Sung-chiang. At the village of Tou-fu-peng, not far from Sung-chiang, the Ever Victorious Army troops engaged a strong rebel force and fought them into the night. Under cover of darkness the detachment reached and set fire to the rebel stockade and entrenchments at Tou-fu-peng. The fire became a beacon, visible from the walls of Sung-chiang, and Ward, seeing it, martialed his troops—along with the British and imperialist units in the city—and attacked in the direction of the flames. Together, the two parts of the Ever Victorious Army were able to inflict a stinging defeat on the Chung Wang.

By June 9 Admiral Hope had grown weary enough of the defensive British posture in Shanghai to ascend the Huang-pu himself with about two hundred British regulars. Reaching Sung-chiang successfully, the admiral decided to join Ward in another attempt to break through to
Forester in Ch’ing-p’u. With Ward’s steamers
Hyson, Cricket
, and the newly acquired
Bo-peep
leading Hope’s
Kestrel
and the French gunboat
Étoile
, the combined force made for Ch’ing-p’u, pausing just long enough to sweep some four thousand rebels out of Kuang-fu-lin. On the tenth Ward succeeded in breaking through to the beleaguered Forester: “I well remember the day they reached me,” Forester later wrote, “for I
had about given up all hope of ever getting out alive.” Ward and Hope immediately decided that, as Ch’ing-p’u could not be held, its artillery and stores should be removed to the boats and the town itself burned. This action would subsequently be the source of much debate among Chinese officials, some of whom claimed that it demonstrated Ward’s disloyalty and penchant for pillaging. But in fact it was nothing more or less than an extreme step taken during an equally extreme emergency.

With Ch’ing-p’u in flames, the Western and imperialist forces began their withdrawal to Sung-chiang, when one of the more famous and mysterious events of the campaign occurred: For some reason, Forester returned to the town just as the rebels were entering it. Forester himself later claimed that he had climbed a guard tower to scout enemy movements and was surrounded while above by rebel troops. Augustus Lindley stated that the Ever Victorious Army’s second-in-command went back for forgotten loot. And the bewildered correspondent of the
North China Herald
could discover no reason at all. The rest of the force waited an hour for Forester to return, but he never did. “It is conjectured,” said
the
Herald
, “that he has fallen into the hands of the enemy or been shot by them.”

In fact, Forester had been captured, beginning long and grisly weeks of imprisonment during which he was shackled, forced to walk to Soochow, berated and spat on by passing rebels, tortured, and compelled to witness the executions of other prisioners while being told that his turn was coming soon. But in reality the Taipings knew better than to execute such a valuable prisoner: Li Hung-chang eventually agreed to pay a large ransom in arms and money for Forester’s release. Yet the imprisonment changed Forester. He emerged with his health badly impaired and his spirit almost broken, and in this bitter experience may well lie the explanation for some of his mysterious actions after Ward’s death.

Deprived, now, of both Burgevine (who was still recovering from his wound) and Forester, Ward returned to Sung-chiang to experience a somewhat bittersweet triumph: Finally frustrated by the determination of the devil soldiers in Sung-chiang, the Chung Wang had decided to withdraw to Soochow and concentrate on regrouping and resupplying
in preparation for another attempt on Shanghai in July or August.
The Chung Wang later explained this move by citing the deteriorating situation in Nanking:

We closely invested Sung-chiang, but just as we were about to succeed, General Tseng’s army [a force commanded by Tseng Kuo-fan’s reliable brother, Tseng Kuo-ch’üan], came down … with a sound like splitting bamboo, reached Nanking and threatened the capital. In one day three messengers, with edicts from the T’ien Wang urging me to hurry [back to Nanking], arrived at Sung-chiang. The edicts were very severe, who would dare to disobey? There was nothing I could do, so I withdrew the troops from Sung-chiang without attacking the town, because of the severe summons.

This self-serving and transparently false account of events was viewed skeptically even by Augustus Lindley. It was clear that the Chung Wang was taking advantage of the T’ien Wang’s summonses in order to extricate himself from even greater humiliation at Ward’s hands.

This conclusion is supported by the fact that the Chung Wang did not return to Nanking after retreating to Soochow but began exploring alternate strategies for reaching and taking control of Shanghai during the summer. He explained his actions to his ruler by saying that while Tseng Kuo-ch’üan’s forces had arrived at Nanking fresh and well-supplied, his own were weary and required rest and provisioning. The T’ien Wang did not buy the excuse and sent another edict to Soochow: “I have three times commanded you to come to the relief of the capital,” said the Heavenly King, “why have you not set out? What do you think you are doing? You have been given great responsibilities, can it be that you do not know my laws? If you do not obey my commands, [you will find] the punishment of the state difficult to endure!” But the Chung Wang continued to procrastinate, neither marching west nor making another move east.

The rebel general’s indecision created tremendous opportunities for anti-Taiping advances in the Shanghai region, opportunities that General Staveley could not or would not exploit. He continued to hew
to the line of defending only Shanghai. Ward, for his part, had not regrouped and reorganized his force enough to undertake a major offensive. But fortunately
Li Hung-chang, emboldened by his recent successes, was willing to expand his role in the fighting and ordered his commanders to effect a pincerlike attack on rebel forces in the area of Hung-ch’iao, just southwest of Shanghai. On June 18 the pincers closed, reportedly resulting in the deaths of a thousand rebels and the capture of two hundred more. That same day Li wrote to Tseng Kuo-fan, saying, “This pleases me exceedingly, since it at once changes the atmosphere of military affairs of recent years. To-day, according to intelligence from spies, the various brigands near Ssu-ching and Sung-chiang have all fled.” With his personal power consolidated, Li also felt more free to criticize the way officials such as Wu Hsü and Yang Fang were dealing with foreigners and the Ever Victorious Army: “The services of foreigners may still be required,” Li told Tseng on June 23, “but the accounting ought to be clear.” This criticism of Wu and Yang’s methods never bled over, however, into any indictment of Ward.

But if Li viewed Ward with an admirably clear and detached eye, Peking’s vision was increasingly clouded by suspicion and hostility. And by offering the prospect of a competent all-Chinese military force in Kiangsu, Li’s victories aggravated rather than eased this condition. The seed of doubt planted in the imperial clique by Hsüeh Huan’s early worries about Ward’s arrogance and ultimate ambitions had grown steadily in the ever-suspicious atmosphere of the Forbidden City. As early as May 24 an imperial edict had stated that “[t]o have the British and French attack the rebels will lead to many abuses, and even Ward has a mind unreceptive to control.” Li, by contrast, presented no such problems.

Great Britain’s growing support of the Ever Victorious Army (General Staveley’s personal misgivings notwithstanding) also accelerated the growth of suspicion in Peking. The more British representatives called for the expansion of the Ever Victorious Army, it seemed, the more determined the imperial clique became to limit that expansion. Responding to news of Prosper Giquel’s and Le Brethon de Caligny’s attempts to build a Franco-Chinese Corps in Ningpo, Admiral Hope
wrote to Admiral Protet’s successor in Shanghai to say “that the object is not to have a number of separate corps there, English, French and Chinese, but that all the men drilled there should be turned over to Colonel Ward’s force, which is a Chinese force authorised by the government at Peking, and to which the troops trained by Captain Dew are attached.” Again,
Hope advised Frederick Bruce to persuade the Chinese government to allow Ward to raise 2,500 men in Ningpo, but again Peking tried to avoid the issue.

The reasons for this avoidance were made clear during June. Ward knew full well that abuses had been committed by detachments of the Ever Victorious Army not under his direct control, particularly the men under Major Morton’s command in Ningpo. “I can manage my men,” Ward was later reported to have said at about this time, “but not my officers.” Dr. Macgowan echoed these sentiments, adding that the Chinese soldiers themselves—not just the Ever Victorious Army’s Western officers—were guilty of misconduct when away from Ward’s sternly watchful eye: “Ward’s legion, unfortunately, could not, in his absence, be trusted with provost duties. They could not resist preying upon the people they were expected to protect.” But Ward also knew that jealous Chinese provincial officials would exaggerate these incidents in their reports to the throne in an effort to discredit him. Prince Kung was told by local officials, for example, that Ward had gratuitously burned not only Ch’ing-p’u but Chia-ting as well—a report never corroborated. Tales of Ward’s misuse of funds for his army began to circulate among these same officials, even though it was the efficient fiscal administration of the Ever Victorious Army (as opposed to Ward’s personal finances, which were often in confusion) that remained one of the primary reasons for the unit’s success.

Rightly suspecting that Kung was being given a warped view of himself and his army, Ward wrote to the prince directly in June: a fairly serious breach of official protocol. In his memorandum, according to Kung, Ward “stressed his contribution” and requested “greater power so that he can move his army more freely.” Kung, in his reply, “delicately discouraged” Ward from similar communications in the future, and the incident only heightened the imperial clique’s suspicions. “Although
Ward is serving China,” Kung pronounced, “he is still a foreigner. His nature is basically unrestrained and his heart is even harder to fathom.… I now petition the throne to order Li Hung-chang and Tso Tsung-tang [another of Tseng Kuo-fan’s talented students, who had become the new governor of Chekiang province] to watch him carefully, and to make him gradually fall under our control so that he will not ruin himself with his arrogance.”

Li Hung-chang’s victories in June offered China’s rulers hope that they would soon need neither foreign regulars nor the Ever Victorious Army; thus Hope’s continued calls for the expansion of Ward’s force and Staveley’s repeated demands that he be given men to train at Shanghai went unanswered. Enraged by all this, Frederick Bruce sent a blunt message to Prince Kung on June 28, saying that he felt compelled to “lodge a very serious complaint against those who direct the operations of the Chinese soldiers at Shanghai.”

“Your Imperial Highness is aware,” Bruce went on,

that it had been agreed between them and the allied Commanders that the latter should re-capture the cities within a certain radius of Shanghai, and that the Chinese would furnish garrisons for the places so taken.… Instead of confining themselves to the part assigned, the Chinese abandoned a strong position held by them [Chia-ting], and marched forward some 7,000 or 8,000 men to attack a town called Tai-ts’ang single-handed. The result was what might be anticipated, as long as officers are so ignorant of war as to oppose men undisciplined and badly armed, to … a large body of rebels who are wise enough to furnish their bands with better arms than those manufactured in China.… Thus the fruit of the late successes has been almost entirely lost.… I have also to report that Governor Li has only placed 300 men at the disposal of General Staveley to be drilled.… If the Imperial Government does not make sufficient efforts to justify me in stating to my Government that the retention of foreign troops in China will not be required for a lengthened period in order to preserve the Chinese towns from destruction, your Imperial Highness may depend upon it that either they will be withdrawn or the revenue of the port will be taken and applied to the payment of the force required for its protection. No Government will for long go to the expense of holding places for a foreign Government which is unable or unwilling to hold them itself.

This was a serious indictment but one that Kung, in a long-winded reply, simply sidestepped. Saying that he would review Bruce’s various points, Kung added, “As to the instruction of troops in foreign drill, the true reason why there has not been greater eagerness shown on this point, is that the expenses of the army are enormous.” And that, as far as the prince was concerned, was that.

Bruce’s threatened withdrawal of foreign troops from Shanghai did not, of course, ever come about; the port was entirely too important to British interests. But the controversy surrounding the defense of Shanghai threatened to bring military cooperation to a standstill, which would offer the Chung Wang favorable conditions for a new assault. At the end of June the antirebel forces held only Sung-chiang and Nan-ch’iao, the latter still occupied by a small Allied garrison. Taiping units had been able to move back into every other important city and town in the radius, and so long as ministers bickered in Peking and General Staveley refused to leave Shanghai, there seemed little hope that, should the rebels choose to strike again, an effective response could be mounted.

The situation, however, was salvaged in dramatic fashion in mid-July, not by British officers or imperial decrees but by the combined talents of Ward and Li Hung-chang.

During the first week of July, as Ward regrouped at Sung-chiang and occasionally engaged in minor area actions, Li Hung-chang ordered his Anhwei troops to press the rebels more vigorously on the eastern, or Pootung, side of the Huang-pu River. On July 7 Li succeeded in recapturing Feng-hsien, an important town near the shores of Hang-chow Bay, and from there advanced toward the rebel stronghold of Chin-shan-wei to the southwest. Chin-shan-wei, even more than Nan-ch’iao, represented the southern key to the Pootung peninsula; if it could be wrested back from the rebels, both Shanghai and its inland trade would be that much safer.