All these men had, by the beginning of 1861, been disabused of the general Western belief in the poor combat abilities of the Chinese. If properly disciplined, equipped, paid, and led, the Chinese could be the equal of any regular force in the world: Ward, Burgevine, and Tardif de Moidrey had become convinced of this during their encounters with both rebels and imperialists. The simple fact that these requirements—discipline, equipment, pay, and leadership—were never completely met on either the rebel or the imperialist side was no reason to believe that a professional Chinese army could not be created. The real problem was circumventing the traditional Chinese military hierarchy. Certainly, embattled Kiangsu province was the proper theater in which to make such an attempt: It was far from Peking and had witnessed no major victories—or even engagements—by imperial commanders. The question next became what exact form such a new Chinese army should take.
It is unknown whether Ward, Burgevine, or Tardif de Moidrey gave birth to the core idea of an independent force in which Western officers—both detached regulars and irregular soldiers of fortune—would train Chinese soldiers to fight in the Occidental style against the Taipings. In all likelihood the notion was a joint one, for at the same time that Tardif de Moidrey began to speak of forming his own Chinese artillery unit—officered by Frenchmen, equipped with Western guns, and able to support large imperialist formations of infantry—Ward and Burgevine were abandoning the idea of further association with large groups of unreliable mercenaries and speculating on the advantages of using Chinese soldiers under Western officers not only for artillery support but in all branches of service. Whatever its genesis, the idea of joint Western-Chinese operations was to prove—along with the rise of Tseng Kuo-fan in the west—one of the true turning points in the Chinese civil war, for in it lay the single hope of finally creating an eastern arm for Tseng’s mighty nutcracker and thus crushing a rebel movement that, in early 1861, was still very much alive.
But the meetings between Ward, Burgevine, and Tardif de Moidrey represented only the barest beginnings of this building process. There were still enormous obstacles to overcome before the theories worked out that winter could be put into practice. The Western governments remained determined to put an end to any and all foreign involvement in the Taiping rebellion, and while local Chinese officials such as Wu Hsü had been willing to experiment with foreign mercenaries, the central government in Peking (along with Tseng Kuo-fan in the west) still saw the use of Westerners as a humiliation. Ward and his comrades would have to endure more months of hardship and refusal before their ideas would be given a chance.
The northern campaign confirmed the British in their policy of neither supporting the Manchus nor recognizing the Taipings but alternately treating with and browbeating both to get what they wanted out of China. Her Majesty’s government and officials on the scene were also determined to maintain their position as the preeminent trading power in the Chinese empire. Thus when Russia offered in late 1860 to aid the Manchus by sending a naval expedition against Nanking, British attention was once again focused on the Yangtze valley. Hsüeh Huan, in his capacity as imperial commissioner for the treaty ports, advocated acceptance of the Russian offer: The imperial forces in the area could use the help, said Hsüeh, and the rivalry that would be created between the Russians and the British would be a useful revival of the traditional Chinese policy of “using the barbarian to control the barbarian.” But Tseng Kuo-fan and the Peking authorities never seriously countenanced the idea, correctly supposing that it was merely a blind for Russian expansionism. The offer was rejected, and the rejection was applauded by the British, but the London government simultaneously decided that it was time to take a fresh look at the Taiping movement.
They also decided that such a look would require a British naval expedition to Nanking, for the secondhand information concerning the T’ien Wang and his followers that was being batted around Shanghai in the later months of 1860 was contradictory at best. On the one hand, Consul Meadows and his supporters in the diplomatic community had continued their muted advocacy of the rebel cause. The North China Herald, meanwhile, had tried to walk an independent line, although the Taiping attack on Shanghai and subsequent restriction of trade on the Yangtze had marked the beginning of a cooling toward the rebellion on the part of editor Charles Compton. Frederick Bruce, shortly to embark for Peking, voiced hostility toward both sides in the civil war. And Western missionaries continued to plead for indulgence of the rebels, whose imperfect Christianity, they said, would in time be perfected.
Adding his voice to this last group was the enigmatic Issachar Jacox Roberts, the Tennessee Baptist preacher who had early on given Hung Hsiu-ch’üan Bible lessons in Canton. In the fall of 1860 Roberts satisfied a long-standing wish of the Taiping Heavenly King by journeying to Nanking and accepting an official position that amounted to vice-minister for foreign affairs. Along with the post he received a “title, court dress, crown and gold ring,” as well as the Tien Wang’s promise to build some eighteen churches in the Heavenly Capital. With the aid of several other missionaries, Roberts then set about writing condensations of various parts of the Bible for translation into Chinese, in order that the Taipings might become better and more quickly acquainted with the Scripture. But into this endeavor Roberts apparently injected typical Baptist intolerance. According to Augustus Lindley, the young Englishman who was training Taiping soldiers and running guns to the rebels, Roberts’s “unwise dogmatical obstinacy frequently provoked unpleasant discussion.” But links to the Western communities in the treaty ports were important to the rebel leaders, and Roberts’s enthusiastic exhortations to his fellow Christians that they come and participate in the glorious movement were seen as counterbalancing his “intolerant and bigoted” attitude.
Thus the many foreign voices that offered opinions on the nature of the Taiping movement hardly helped the British or any other Western government form a clear picture of circumstances within rebel-occupied China. In February 1861, therefore, Admiral Sir James Hope of the Royal Navy was dispatched up the Yangtze with ten warships and orders to contact the rebel leadership. If this link could be established, Hope was to negotiate with the Taipings for advantageous guarantees of free trade on the Yangtze and establish new consulates in several rebel-held cities.
Hope did not at first seem a likely choice for such a diplomatically delicate mission. Known to his men as Fighting Jimmie, he was the scion of a Scottish navy family (his father had commanded a ship at Trafalgar) and had served in North and South America, India, and the Baltic before coming to China. Placed in command of British naval forces during the northern campaign of 1859, Hope had been severely wounded and was subsequently knighted for his refusal to abandon the losing effort in spite of his perilous physical condition. He recuperated in Ningpo, then returned to the north to command the naval forces for the 1860 campaign. Hope was fifty-two by this time, but neither age nor injury had in any way slowed him down, as he demonstrated during the successful assault on the Taku forts. A round-faced man with light, cool eyes and a supercilious expression, Hope possessed a bellicose attitude that exemplified the long tradition of “fire-eating” British admirals, who roamed the globe protecting British commerce and, just as often, responding to insults to the honor of British arms and of the British flag. Like so many of his spiritual predecessors in the Royal Navy, Hope spoiled constantly for fights and often seemed to care very little whom they were with.
In October 1860 Hope arrived to assume command of Britain’s forces in Shanghai, a move that placed him on a course of eventual collision with Frederick Townsend Ward, whose operations were soon to rouse British ire once again. Yet the characters of the two men did not indicate conflict: On the contrary, a mutual admiration for bravery and a shared impatience with political duplicity made it seem almost inevitable that, despite the diplomatic realities of the moment, the two men would one day become friends. And in fact, by the time of Ward’s death Hope considered the younger Amer
ican “a very able and gallant servant” of the Chinese government, while Ward named Hope one of the executors of his estate. Any prediction of such a result in 1860, however, would have met with utter incredulity.
On February 12, 1861, Hope sailed up the Yangtze. During his expedition he successfully established the three new consulates—including one at Hankow—and secured a Taiping pledge not to interfere with British trade or come within two days’ march (some thirty miles) of Shanghai for one year. In return, Hope pledged that the British would maintain strict neutrality in the Chinese civil war. But the admiral was not sanguine about either the rebellion or its leaders, who he said could be seen “in no other light than that of an organized band of robbers.” And at least one possible source of future friction was left unresolved during meetings between British naval officers and the Chung Wang: The rebel commander, reported the North China Herald, “said Opium would be interdicted in our trade on the Yangtze. The Admiral is said to have declined to entertain the subject but declared that for any insult offered to the British flag they would be held responsible.”
In March the Taipings opened the Yangtze once again to unrestricted trade, which flourished immediately. This being the case, neither Admiral Hope nor Frederick Bruce, their doubts about the Taipings notwithstanding, was in any mood to receive reports of renewed activity by Ward and Burgevine. Nor was the new British consul in Shanghai, Walter Medhurst. Thomas Meadows’s unending criticism of pro-Manchu policies had finally been rewarded with a new posting in the north (although he remained in Shanghai for the moment). Medhurst—the son of an eminent British sinologist and himself an accomplished Chinese scholar—was selected as a replacement who could be counted on to follow the party line much more closely by creating an atmosphere in Shanghai that would keep rebels, imperialists, and foreign adventurers alike cowed.
But the ideas for Chinese-Western military cooperation that Ward, Burgevine, and Tardif de Moidrey had worked out over the winter were infectious stuff, so much so that in early 1861 Ward was able to convince Wu Hsü once again to back his attempts to build an irregular army. Yang Fang had shown genuine loyalty to Ward, and his involvement in the plans of this period is not surprising, but Wu’s participation (or lack thereof) in Ward’s schemes had consistently been based not only on his respect and affection for the young American but on a pragmatic reading of the domestic and international climate in and around Shanghai. Doubtless, then, the partial but disturbing British rapprochement with Nanking, together with the collapse of the imperial armies in the north during the previous autumn, indicated to Wu that Shanghai’s defense, as in the spring of 1860, was the concern of local officials and local merchants alone. Yet he must have known that renewed association with Ward would bring a fresh round of conflict with the Western governments. In the face of these considerations, Ward’s charm and seemingly limitless enthusiasm again became decisive factors. Fully recovered now, and inspired by radically novel ideas, the New England soldier of fortune won back his spot on the seasoned taotai’s payroll. Before long he was joined by his new colleague from France, Tardif de Moidrey, who began laying the groundwork for his Franco-Chinese artillery unit at Wu’s and Hsüeh Huan’s expense.
Ward’s plan to use Chinese volunteers at this time appears to have been influenced not only by his conversations with Burgevine and Tardif de Moidrey but by the new attitude taking shape among the peasants of Kiangsu province. At several points during the fall and winter of 1860-61, the North China Herald had reported the appearance of armed bands of villagers who not only defended their homes against the Taipings but raided rebel supply lines and even took Taiping soldiers prisoner, shipping them to Shanghai for punishment. The formation of these peasant guerrilla bands had not, however, been purely the result of Taiping plundering: The equally rapacious conduct of local imperial troops had played a part as well. Having experienced the unrestrained behavior of Green Standard units, many peasants were unwilling to serve under commanders such as Li Heng-sung and took their defense into their own hands.
According to a diary kept by a perceptive Chinese observer at the time, many of these same Kiangsu peasants had, during the summer of 1860, sought refuge from the Taipings in Sung-chiang and were thus acquainted with Ward and the Foreign Arms Corps. The memory was apparently a lasting one, for the Kiangsu guerrillas would shortly be among the first men to volunteer for service in Ward’s new force. Again, the power of perceptive popular leaders during the Chinese civil war was evident: Even a barbarian Westerner, if he practiced decent treatment, was preferable to marauding Taipings and plundering imperialists.
But while Chinese peasants might make capable or at least enthusiastic soldiers, Ward knew that his latest project also required superior Western officers. With this in mind, he again set about the process of weeding through the foreign mercenaries who had served in the Foreign Arms Corps and interviewing new candidates in Shanghai. The first order of business was to disassociate the new unit from the one that had made such a questionable reputation for itself following the defeat at Ch’ing-p’u. Pursuant to this goal, Ward began to refer to the Foreign Arms Corps as the Chinese Foreign Legion (although it remained known in most circles by its original name). The next pressing requirement was to hire men of at least moderate intelligence and put them in positions of responsibility. Among this new group were C. J. Ashley (who, after serving with Ward’s force for several years as quartermaster and commissary general, would later enjoy a long career with the Shanghai Volunteer Corps and become one of the port’s eminent foreign citizens) and an old acquaintance of Ward’s, Edward Forester.
When Ward had first formed the Foreign Arms Corps he had written to Forester, who was then serving as an interpreter for several large business firms in Japan. Early in 1861 Forester was finally able to get to China and join Ward, who—on the basis not only of their earlier acquaintance in South America but of Forester’s strong abilities as a linguist—immediately gave the newcomer equal rank with Burgevine. The Carolinian’s weaknesses had always become apparent when the force was in garrison, and it was here that Forester was to play a part: maintaining proper procedures, acting as go-between with Yang Fang and the local Sung-chiang officials when Ward was unable to attend to such matters personally, and bringing to the affairs of the force a somewhat more professional attitude than the strong-willed but tempestuous Burgevine could boast. Forester’s efficiency was subsequently demonstrated on many occasions and seemed a vindication of Ward’s confidence.
It is all the more disappointing, therefore, that Forester should have proved ultimately disloyal to Ward. Following Ward’s death Forester made several attempts to revise the history of his commander’s operations to his own benefit, attempts that contrasted sourly with his own faithful service during Ward’s lifetime. Although Forester swore under oath in 1875, for example, that he had joined Ward’s force in 1861, he subsequently wrote a series of articles for Cosmopolitan magazine in which he described the actions of Ward’s force from early in 1860, including a detailed account of the battle of Sung-chiang. Of course, the circumstances of that legendary event were readily available to any foreigner in Shanghai who cared to seek them out. But in Forester’s version he himself not only was present at the battle but played an important part. And in Forester’s accounts of the force’s subsequent engagements, Ward was often portrayed as an absentee commander wrapped up in the distractions of Shanghai, and Burgevine as little more than a functionary. Thus it was Burgevine—hard-drinking, impetuous, violent—who in the end proved the more reliable of Ward’s two lieutenants, while the calculating Forester emerged as a somewhat superior officer but a decidedly inferior comrade.
While Ward was alive, however, Forester’s talents were put to good use, and in the early spring of 1861 the reorganization of the force along the lines of Chinese-Western cooperation moved smoothly—so smoothly, in fact, that the British authorities soon determined it necessary to take active measures against it. By early April the Chinese
Foreign Legion was drilling at Sung-chiang, Ward having raised between five hundred and a thousand Chinese recruits as well as some two hundred Western officers. Once again, many of these Westerners were English deserters—particularly drillmasters from the Royal Navy and Marines and artillery instructors from the army—who were weary of the low pay, cramped quarters, and bad food that marked their national service. The participation of such men in anti-Taiping activities might well jeopardize the already fragile truce Admiral Hope had established with the rebels; recognizing that this danger would almost certainly prompt visits to Sung-chiang by the British authorities, Ward protected his activities with strict security in the town and his camp. Written passes bearing his signature were the sole means of entrance into either of these areas by any military personnel, and Ward kept his British deserters constantly ready to abandon Sung-chiang and move farther in country in the event of the expected British raid.
It finally came in the third week of April.
* * *
As commander of the British navy’s China Station, Admiral Hope had important affairs to attend to in all five of the treaty ports as well as Hong Kong. These caused his frequent absence from Shanghai, but he took a keen interest in the port’s affairs at all times, paying particular attention to the rate of desertion aboard British ships. By mid-April this rate was rising alarmingly, and Hope gave orders to Commander Henry W. Hire—captain of HMS Urgent and the senior naval officer in Shanghai during the admiral’s absences—to confront the Chinese authorities on this subject. If Hire could get no satisfaction from those gentlemen, Hope said, he was himself to arrest the British deserters and the men who were enticing them to serve in both the imperial and the rebel causes. “I trust to your zeal and ability,” Hope told Hire, “to carry out the object I have in view of stopping the desertion at Shanghai.” Hire would not disappoint his commander.