Thus there was, in the beginning of 1862, more than ample reason for Ward to keep a very watchful eye on British representatives and soldiers in the Shanghai region. This atmosphere of mutual distrust was heightened by news from the United States. That Great Britain had been flirting—whether capriciously or not—with recognition of the Confederate States of America was well-known, and late in January word was received in Shanghai that in November an American warship had seized two Confederate emissaries traveling on board a British mail packet, the Trent, and sent them as prisoners to Boston. The British government had immediately demanded a formal apology for what was an illegal act, and war fever had been whipped up on both sides of the Atlantic. The U.S. government eventually disavowed the action, and the British were placated, but not before the effects of what came to be called the Trent affair had been felt in every corner of the globe where American and British citizens lived and carried on business together.
In Shanghai British officers were heard to say openly that if war between the United States and Great Britain did come, Her Majesty’s naval forces intended to seize and even destroy American assets and property. The situation momentarily drew Ward’s attention away from the fighting west of Shanghai, and his subsequent actions revealed the loyalty that he still felt toward the nation he had disavowed a year earlier. At the time of the Trent affair, Ward remarked to A. A. Hayes: “I was an American before I was a Chinaman; and these Englishmen will find it out.” Ward then confided “to a few confidential friends” the details of a characteristically daring plan that was to be implemented in the event of war. The scheme involved not only his Chinese troops but a group of coastal pirates whose acquaintance Ward had made during his various tours on coastal and river steamers and whom he now occasionally paid for their services and support. Hayes later recalled that Ward
determined to mass, quietly and secretly as he could easily do, a large body of his disciplined troops at a town some twenty miles distant, from which a forced march could readily be made without any warning. Entirely under his control was a guild of what one might politely call privateers, or junks manned by desperadoes of a piratical class thoroughly armed. A large body of these privateers he proposed ordering into the river before the settlement, and distributing among the few naval and many merchant vessels flying the British flag. On board such junks is carried a fearful engine of destruction known by a name unmentionable to ears polite [stinkpots]. It is a species of hand grenade of earthenware, easily broken, and filled with a composition not only possessing the destructive qualities of Greek fire, but capable of suffocating those among whom it strikes. It is this which places any vessel, however heavily armed, in a dangerous position when at anything like close quarters with a Chinese pirate. On the day, grimly said General Ward, on which his British friends should begin the seizure of the property of Americans, the latter would have warning from him of what was to happen during the ensuing night. Of such happenings it was needful for him to enter into but a few details. They were summed up with the quiet remark that the next morning would see the British portion of Shanghai “a heap of smouldering and looted ruins.”
Though extreme, Ward’s plan was wholly feasible: The Ward Corps had already grown to a sufficient size to be able to engage the limited number of British troops in Shanghai. All that was needed was determination and recklessness, and, as Hayes concluded, “To any one who should read this statement, and pronounce it overstrained or fanciful, I would simply remark that the reader did not know General Ward.”
The crisis over the Trent affair quickly passed when news was received that the United States and Great Britain had agreed on terms that avoided conflict. But animosity between Englishmen and Americans in Shanghai—indeed in all the treaty ports—as a result of Britain’s attitude toward the American Civil War did not fade. Hayes noted that the United States had only one warship in China’s waters, “and no one of her officers will forget to his dying day the savage manner in which the rules forbidding her hospitality were enforced.” The British residents of Shanghai seemed to take delight in the Union’s dismal fortunes during the first years of the war: “Mail after mail brought venomously garbled accounts of Union disasters. It was hard at times for Americans to bear up against the temporary depression caused by such news, and by the atmosphere about them.”
In fact, the gap between Ward and the British community might well have remained unbridgeable but for one factor: Ward’s rapidly evolving personal relationship with Admiral Hope. The events of February 1862 seem to have been critical in hastening the development of what would become a fast friendship. Since his failed second mission to Nanking in December, Hope had been longing for a chance to personally vent his anger over what he considered rebel perfidy against the Taipings. But he had been restrained by his diplomatic superiors and by Peking’s uneasiness at the thought of using Western troops. It is therefore natural that he should have felt a certain vicarious satisfaction when the Ward Corps attacked the Chung Wang’s legions in precisely the way the admiral himself had hoped to do: as a flying column. More important, Hope correctly perceived that the Ward Corps could serve as a useful blind. By acting as support troops for the disciplined Chinese, British and French regulars might take the field without being accused of direct intervention against the Taipings.
Hope’s reasons for cultivating Ward’s friendship were, then, apparent. But for his part, Ward remained wary of the man whose officers had twice arrested and imprisoned him, and he made no secret of this resentment during conversations with Hope in February. Anxious to put an end to such feelings, Hope assured Ward that “[b]ygones are bygones, you are on the right road now & you shall have all the support I can give you.” Words, of course, counted little with Ward, but Hope soon backed his pledges up not only by making efforts to see that Ward gained access to a greater variety of British arms and supplies but by personally accompanying his former antagonist, at great risk, on one of Ward’s intelligence-gathering missions in the field.
On February 16 Hope and Ward disguised themselves as a pair of recreational hunters and journeyed north from Shanghai. Following the eastern bank of the Huang-pu River through the Pootung peninsula and venturing into rebel-held territory, they reached their destination: the town of Kao-ch’iao. Like Wu-sung, Kao-ch’iao was a gateway to the Huang-pu, immensely important to the security of Shanghai. But while Wu-sung had been denied to the rebels, largely through the daring of the Ward Corps, Kao-ch’iao had been taken with relative ease when the Chung Wang reappeared in eastern Kiangsu. The seizure of Kao-ch’iao heightened the likelihood that the Taipings would close off the Huang-pu and hasten the capitulation of Shanghai. In acknowledgment of the town’s importance, the rebel commanders had moved an unusually strong force of some ten thousand men into its entrenchments (Kao-ch’iao had no formal wall), then made preparations to support the movements of the other Taiping columns to the south.
Dislodging the Kao-ch’iao garrison was a formidable proposition, but, recognizing that it was vital to the survival of Shanghai, Hope and Ward prepared for the job. Maintaining their hunting charade, the two onetime adversaries carefully observed and analyzed the fortifications that the Taipings had constructed. As nonchalantly as they had come, the irrepressible Western soldiers then left Kao-ch’iao and returned to Shanghai. Armies were martialed in preparation for what would be a crucial test, not only of the Ward Corps but of Shanghai’s Western regulars and of the ability of Ward, Hope, and Protet to work together effectively in the field.
Admiral Hope would later explain his unprecedented—and unauthorized—decision to support the Ward Corps in its advance against Kao-ch’iao by telling the Lords of the British Admiralty that on “every occasion on which I have reported the state of Shanghai since my return here, it has been my duty to bring the devastation and atrocities committed by the rebels in its immediate vicinity very prominently under their Lordships’ notice.” Stating that the rebel occupation of Kao-ch’iao made it likely that
the free access to Shanghai by trading and supply ships would be “impeded, if not altogether stopped,” Hope asserted that he “considered the case to be one calling for my interference, in which opinion Admiral Protet entirely concurred.”
Hope further supported his position by describing the activities of the new Ward Corps, the first such mention made in British naval dispatches: “During the last 6 months, a Chinese force of about 1500 men, to be raised to 4000, has been embodied, armed and disciplined under the authority of the Viceroy of the province by Colonel Ward, an American, at Sung-chiang, a walled town about twenty-five miles southwest of Shanghai, and a district of country in its vicinity has been placed under his charge.” Ward had, said Hope, been ordered by Hsüeh Huan to take Kao-ch’iao. But because of his perilous position at Sung-chiang, Ward could only spare 600 men for the job. British and French “interference” (a unique and suitably vague term) was therefore doubly justified: on the one hand to ensure freedom of trade, on the other as support for the only genuinely effective imperial unit in the area.
On the afternoon of February 20, 336 British sailors and marines (Sir John Michel declined to dispatch any British army units), along with 50 or 60 French troops, accompanied a detachment of 500 men from the Ward Corps down the Huang-pu. Ahead of the expedition sailed the British warship Coromandel, commanded by Captain George Willes and carrying Chaloner Alabaster—the intrepid British consular aide and interpreter—as an observer. Alabaster later reported that on the evening of the twentieth the Coromandel “got to within a quarter of a mile of the village [Kao-ch’iao], to European ideas a large town, full of banners, and strongly stockaded, and retired without molestation, observing a considerable number of murdered villagers along the way.” According to Dr. Macgowan, “every house” in Kao-ch’iao was “pierced for musketry,” while coffins, “emptied of their contents and filled with earth, together with trunks of trees, rendered approach difficult.”
The expeditionary force was joined during the night by some hundred additional French troops, as well as another hundred of Ward’s men. With the Frenchmen came two howitzers as well as Admirals Hope and Protet, who immediately assumed command of their respective contingents. Ward, Hope, and Protet then laid out an order of battle that would become a blueprint for future operations. To avoid international complications, the Allied troops would be held in reserve, offering support through long-range rifle, artillery, and rocket fire (the British had brought six-pounder rockets along for the occasion). The Ward Corps, meanwhile, would act as storming troops and bear the brunt of the actual fighting. At dawn on the twenty-first, Ward led his units into position and wasted no time in assaulting the rebel fortifications.
Ward’s men, wrote Alabaster, began their attack “by driving the rebels out of some detached houses, and checking the advance of a strong party sent to [Kao-ch’iao’s] relief.” The French detachment had gotten their two howitzers into place and commenced fire along with the British rocket battery, directing their fire at “the place where the banners seemed thickest.” Ward’s disciplined Chinese troops kept up “an incessant fire along the line which was warmly returned.” Ward’s tactical goal was reminiscent of his first success at Sung-chiang: to seal his objective off, seize one gate or point of entry, and then turn the rebel fortifications into a trap, from which many of the defenders would be unable to escape. With the help of volley fire from British marines, Ward and his men managed to seize a long bridge or causeway that ran from the rebel stockade back into the town itself. This causeway, Edward Forester recalled,
was turned into a slaughter-pen. The enemy were packed in so closely, and we were at such short range, that our fire did terrible execution. So demoralized were the rebels, that no attempt was made to resist when we reached the gates.… The rout was complete. Not only was the enemy in wild retreat, but their panic had spread through the entire army. At the south gate they fell over each other in a frantic endeavor to escape. But once outside only the shores of the Yellow sea awaited them, and upon its sands Death waited with open arms. Our handful of men pressed them so fiercely that the rebels had no time to take to their boats. In despair they leaped into the water, to be drowned by wholesale.
This much of Forester’s account of the battle of Kao-ch’iao, while colorful, is corroborated by other eyewitnesses; Forester, however, went on to claim that Ward “feared” failure at the causeway and that he, Forester, rallied the men to victory. Furthermore, he made no mention of the part played in the battle by Burgevine, who actually led one of the first units into the city and received a rather serious head wound, which he merely stanched before proceeding with his attack. Forester’s craving for glory again did heavy damage to his credibility.
When the Allied detachments finally joined Ward’s men inside Kao-ch’iao, wrote Alabaster, they were “unable to come up with the rebels, although we saw them retreating in the distance.” In addition to the many prisoners taken, the attackers liberated a large number of chained coolies who had been impressed into the rebel service and who, along with local villagers, took no little delight in revenging themselves on the Taiping captives after the battle.
Fire was set to the town, although its origin was uncertain. Alabaster claimed that the rebels had lit buildings as they abandoned their positions, although others contended that Hope’s troops put the torch to a store of grain they discovered. The men of the Ward Corps were allowed to loot, as their contract with their commander had stipulated. But Ward interceded to limit the abuse of Taiping prisoners. The day after the battle, corps commissary C. J. Ashley discovered that imperial commanders in Shanghai intended the wholesale slaughter of a large group of captured Taipings. In Dr. Macgowan’s phrase, Ashley “hastened to inform Ward, who caused the butchery to cease.”
The battle for Kao-ch’iao had not been protracted, but it was, as Alabaster acknowledged, “very sharp, the rebels making a very good defense; but Ward’s men, till they got into the town, when dispersed to loot, behaved admirably, and the loss, exclusive of Chinese, was only one man killed, and three or four scratched.” The Ward Corps’s casualties were also slight, given their role in the assault: by some accounts seven men killed, by others ten, and between forty and fifty men wounded. “The Chinese troops,” Hope told the Admiralty, “took the village today in very good style, many of them behaving with much gallantry, supported by the French and English force which was not seriously engaged.” This last fact was particularly important, for much as Ward had demonstrated that his men could function in smooth conjunction with Allied troops, he had also shown that they could undertake major operations independent of them.
The attackers learned from their prisoners that the Chung Wang himself had been expected in Kao-ch’iao that very day, and that the rebel general had intended to launch an assault on Shanghai from the north. Ward’s and Hope’s move had been timely indeed. “I am in high hopes,” Hope wrote, “that the severe check the rebels have experienced will prevent their being seen, in the immediate vicinity of Shanghai, for some time to come.” Hope’s prediction took no stock of the fact that the Chung Wang was now in personal command of the rebel forces in the area. Never a man to back away from a “check” such as he sustained at Kao-ch’iao, the Chung Wang only became more determined to realize his goal of taking Shanghai. But it was now apparent that he would face far greater obstacles than had been placed in his path in 1860, for there were forces in the field in February 1862 that could and apparently would hamper any rebel approach to the city’s walls rather than wait inside Shanghai for a Taiping assault.
For at least one American, the battle of Kao-ch’iao was a surprising, and in all likelihood shocking, introduction to life in the Shanghai region and the activities of the Ward Corps. George Frederick Seward was a nephew of the American secretary of state and had recently, at the age of twenty-one, been appointed American consul in Shanghai. On February 21 he was aboard a coastal steamer that had sailed out of Hong Kong bound for his new post, and, when the shi
p passed into the mouth of the Huang-pu River, Seward was afforded an excellent view of the violent proceedings ashore. Kao-ch’iao also brought Ward to the attention of American minister Anson Burlingame: “Admiral Hope,” Burlingame later told Secretary of State Seward, “informs me that he was astonished at the courage of the Chinese, led by Col. Ward, at Kao-ch’iao. It is thought by many that they are superior to the Sepoys and that they, when properly instructed, will not only be capable of defending themselves but equal to aggressive war.”
Reaction to the Kao-ch’iao victory in Western Shanghai was perhaps best exemplified by the fact that, in describing the event, the North China Herald—which had once openly hoped for Ward’s death—used the word gallantly in describing the actions of the corps.
Kao-ch’iao netted Ward considerable attention from soldiers and advocates on the Taiping side of the Chinese civil war as well. Augustus Lindley, still loyally serving the rebel cause, later wrote bitterly that
Admiral Hope, in his attack upon the Taipings, associated himself with one Ward, an American filibuster, in the service of the Manchus. Previous to this, and to the Admiral’s unsuccessful attempt to juggle the Taiping authorities into another agreement not to approach Shanghai, the said Ward was persecuted and reviled very fiercely; but no sooner did the Admiral and his colleagues think it necessary to pull in the same boat, than the Yankee filibuster became their pattern and ally. The whilom rowdie companion of ci-devant General Walker, of Nicaraguan memory, mercenary leader of a band of Anglo-Saxon freebooters in Manchu pay, and sometime fugitive from English marines sent to weed his ruffians of their countrymen, suddenly became the friend and ally of the British and French Admirals, Generals and Consuls. The surprise of Ward can only have been equalled by his gratification upon finding his very questionable presence, and still more doubtful pursuits, patronized and imitated.