In another decree, the imperial clique made their true motivations more apparent: “Ward was a foreigner who submitted to China. He was a little arrogant, but he has served China and died while fighting the rebels; therefore he should be rewarded and treated exceptionally well, so that foreign countries will be impressed.”
An appropriate plot of ground was eventually selected in Sung-chiang, and Ward was finally laid to rest. The funeral was a solemn and elaborate affair, the heterogenous procession symbolizing all that the fallen soldier had been in life. Officers and men of the Ever Victorious Army, Chinese mandarins and military leaders, and British naval and army officers (Admiral Hope was in Japan at the time) all marched solemnly together behind a gun carriage, on which lay Ward’s coffin. Ward had been dressed in his mandarin’s robes, minus his blue-button cap and black Manchu boots. The gun carriage was drawn by Ward’s bodyguard, preceded, according to Charles Schmidt, “by the Staff band playing the dead march in [Handel’s] Saul.” Schmidt reported that a British chaplain read a burial service at the grave site: hardly in keeping with traditional Chinese ceremony. An equal source of consternation for those Chinese present must have been the fact that Ward’s dog was buried in a small grave next to him. Following the internment there were salvos by the rifle and artillery battalions, and the Ever Victorious Army immediately entered an official three-month period of mourning. A tumulus was built up over Ward’s grave and a smaller one over that of his mastiff. And with that the principal participants in the ongoing war against the Taipings returned to the business of suppression.
There is no record of precisely what happened to Chang-mei in the months following Ward’s funeral. Certainly, there was never any chance that either Wu Hsü or her father would have paid Chang-mei the money Ward wished and thus given her some hope of an independent existence. Although she had been living at Sung-chiang during the summer of 1862, there is no subsequent mention of her in connection with that city, suggesting that after her husband’s death Chang-mei returned to her father’s home in Shanghai. The biography of Shen Chu-jeng, the boy the Wards reportedly adopted, states only that after Ward’s burial “Mrs. Ward became very ill with extreme grief and died the following year in Shanghai. Shen was in charge of her funeral, and sent her coffin back to Ningpo.”
On October 2, 1862, Lieutenant Thomas Lyster of the Royal Engineers wrote to his father to say that the British regulars in Shanghai had not killed any Taipings recently, “although they have managed to kill General Ward. I saw him a short time ago, and was to have gone on an expedition with him. I liked the old fellow very much.” Some weeks later Lyster, visiting Sung-chiang, further informed his father that “[p]oor old Ward is buried here in Chinese fashion—his coffin over-ground. This place was his headquarters. He came out to China as mate of a ship, outlawed from America, and has died worth a million and a half. He was often wounded, and people had the idea he could not be shot.”
The discussion of who would succeed Ward as commander of the Ever Victorious Army quickly became a debate—and an acrimonious one. In his published recollections, Forester claimed that he immediately assumed overall command of the force, but in fact he was second in line behind Burgevine. Burgevine was still badly hampered by the wound he had received in the spring, but he wasted no time after Ward’s death in writing to George Seward, the young American consul in Shanghai, to say that “in consequence of the death of Major-General Ward, the command of the Imperial troops stationed at Sung-chiang has devolved upon me as Senior Officer acting under the authority of this province.” But certain British officers and officials—most notably General Staveley—did not immediately recognize Burgevine’s claim and attempted to finally bring the Ever Victorious Army under British control by having one of Her Majesty’s officers appointed to command it. The French similarly angled to gain control over the Ever Victorious Army by pointing out that, in light of the activities of Tardif de Moidrey, Prosper Giquel, and Le Brethon de Caligny, a French officer would be singularly suited to carry on Ward’s work.
The issue was not settled immediately, although military developments highlighted the need for a decisive solution. Forester returned to Ningpo, where in early October he assisted Captain Dew and the Franco-Chinese troops in clearing the thirty-mile radius around that port. Forester then resigned his commission and soon cut his deal with Yang Fang and Wu Hsü for Ward’s account book. In the meantime, the Chung Wang was stepping up his attack on Tseng Kuo-fan’s forces outside Nanking, forcing Tseng to reconsider his position on allowing the Ever Victorious Army to support his Hunan troops. Tseng finally did authorize such a mission for the army he so deeply distrusted, but the Ever Victorious Army could not go to Nanking until it had an unchallenged new leader.
General Staveley’s attempts to block Burgevine’s bid to succeed Ward were eventually stymied, not because Burgevine was clearly the best man for the job but because he had taken the fortuitous step of following Ward into Chinese citizenship: the imperial government’s first requirement, at the time, for an Ever Victorious Army commander. In addition, Burgevine’s cause was supported by Admiral Hope, who knew of Ward’s respect for Burgevine above all his other officers and who spoke up for Burgevine largely in remembrance of his dead comrade. Against a backdrop of false Chinese praise and jealous scheming by General Staveley, Hope’s genuine loyalty to Ward stood out all the more clearly during October. Not only did the admiral insist to Forester and others that the Ever Victorious Army continued to be called Ward’s Chinese Corps, and that its officers maintain practices that had enjoyed Ward’s special attention (such as the training of Chinese officers) but late in October he wrote to Frederick Bruce in Peking to request a series of tributes to the corps’s creator:
I shall feel obliged by your explaining to Prince Kung the practice which prevails with European Nations of placing on their colours the names of the battles in which they have been successful, and those of the Towns which they have taken, and by your acquainting him that I think it would be highly beneficial to the Esprit de Corps of Ward’s Chinese if the Emperor should decree that they should carry on their colours the names of Ch’ing-p’u and Tz’u-ch’i, the former having been captured by themselves alone, and the latter having been the scene of Col. Ward’s death, and stormed by them.
Hope then repeated his desire concerning the force’s title: “I should further deem it a personal favor that the Corps should retain in future the name of ‘Ward’s Chinese,’ which it now bears and which would be a graceful compliment to the officer by whom it was raised, and who fell at their head.”
These and other of Hope’s tributes to Ward were echoed by Anson Burlingame in Peking, who also supported the nomination of Burgevine to take over the Ever Victorious Army. Like Hope, Burlingame knew that Burgevine would have been Ward’s choice, and his advocacy was based on strong loyalty to his fallen friend. Late in October, Burlingame dispatched official word of Ward’s death to Secretary of State Seward and President Lincoln in Washington. Burlingame made the most of Ward’s national origins, calling his fellow New Englander
an American who had risen by his capacity and courage to the highest rank in the Chinese service.… General Ward was originally from Salem, Massachusetts, where he has relatives yet living, and had seen service in Mexico, the Crimea, and, he was sorry to say, with the notorious Walker. He fought at the head of a Chinese force called into existence and trained by himself, countless battles, and always with success. Indeed he taught the Chinese their strength, and laid the foundations of the only force with which their government can hope to defeat the rebellion.
Recalling Ward’s offer to contribute ten thousand taels toward the building of “the strongest[,] darkest & deepest Hotel in the country for the blackguards Jeff[erson Davis] & Cabinet,” Burlingame went on to urge: “Let this wish, though unexecuted, find worthy record in the archives of his native land, to show that neither self exile, nor foreign service, nor the incidents of a stormy life could extinguish from the
breast of this wandering child of the Republic the fires of a truly loyal heart.”
Of Burgevine, Burlingame said that the Carolinian had “taken part in all the conflicts with Ward, and common fame spoke well of him.” This opinion was shared by Frederick Bruce. And with such powerful supporters—and because he satisfied the Chinese requirement that he become a Chinese subject and submit to imperial military authority—Burgevine was finally named to command the Ever Victorious Army. But very quickly, Hope, Burlingame, and Bruce, not to mention the imperial government, were given ample reason to doubt their selection. At Sung-chiang, where Ward had used a skillful blend of guile and intimidation to nullify the power of the local mandarins, Burgevine quickly gained a reputation as a tactless bully: “The authorities,” wrote England’s Chaloner Alabaster some months later, “useless under Ward, were indignant under Burgevine.” Doubtless this situation was adversely affected—as indeed all of Burgevine’s actions were—by his ever-increasing reliance on alcohol to ease the pain of his pelvic wound. As Dr. Macgowan noted, Burgevine “had undertaken, while recovering from the wound, to fortify his constitution by the use of stimulants, which he was assured were tonic; so that, what with morning cocktails, and brandy-smashes through the day … it was clear that a crisis could not long be averted.”
Incontestable proof of the destructive effects of Burgevine’s drinking, as well as of the considerable differences between Ward and Burgevine, came during an Allied attack on Chia-ting on October 23. The only Taiping stronghold left in the Shanghai thirty-mile radius, Chia-ting was taken by a detachment of the Ever Victorious Army working with British naval forces under Admiral Hope and military units under General Staveley. Following the battle, several witnesses reported that rebel prisoners taken by the Ever Victorious Army were executed summarily, a policy Ward had carefully avoided. Furthermore, the manner of execution sparked revulsion in Chinese and Western observers alike. Apparently having heard of the same thing being done to Sepoy rebels in India, Burgevine either ordered or allowed the rebels to be strapped across the mouths of cannon and blown to pieces.
Both Hope and Staveley were understandably dismayed by such behavior, and, in the wake of the capture of Chia-ting, Admiral Hope persuaded Burgevine to agree to the appointment of Captain John Holland of the Royal Marines as chief of staff of the Ever Victorious Army, in an effort to “prevent the entire disorganisation of the Corps.” But Holland soon proved a less than imaginative officer; in fact, his appointment may only have worsened the situation, for, as one of Ward’s veteran officers put it, “Burgevine, instead of giving responsible appointments to competent men, was very often ruled by some of his staff officers; and men were appointed because they were favored by those around him. Burgevine was not the man that Ward was. The latter used to go by his own judgment; while Burgevine confided too much to his staff; which would have been right enough, if these men had been competent to hold their rank; but Burgevine ought to have known that they were not.”
Admiral Hope—tired, still feeling the effects of his wounded leg, and ready to relinquish his command in China—tried to remain hopeful: “Colonel Burgevine,” he told Frederick Bruce, “is perfectly sensible of the necessity of thoroughly organising and disciplining the Corps prior to attempting any distant operation, and will during the ensuing winter limit his operations to the protection of the Shanghai district.” Following the Allied recapture of Chia-ting, however, the Chung Wang returned east to make sure that the new threats to his forces in Kiangsu did not result in the fall of Soochow. An opportunity for a decisive imperialist move against Nanking was thus created, and by late fall Hope, the only hand that could moderate Burgevine’s behavior, had left for England. In November and December, Burgevine’s Chinese superiors pressed him to prepare his army for an attack on Nanking in conjunction with Tseng Kuo-fan’s forces. Burgevine agreed to the plan but stated that he would not move until he was completely ready and until Wu Hsü and Yang Fang supplied him with more supplies and money than they had to date.
Burgevine’s position in this last regard was understandable: He did not possess Ward’s magic gift for getting what he needed out of Wu and Yang, who since Burgevine’s assumption of command had withheld sorely needed funds. By January 1863 the situation was so bad that the Ever Victorious Army was on the brink of mutiny. After trying to placate his men by repeating a series of empty pledges from his backers, the desperate Burgevine marched into Yang Fang’s office, beat the old banker bloody, and took forty thousand silver dollars.
This was not only theft but a crime against the Confucian order: To Li Hung-chang, Burgevine was “in the sight of Chinese law, guilty in the highest degree, and even according to foreign law such a rebellious and treasonable subject cannot be tolerated in the service.” Needless to say, the Ever Victorious Army’s expedition to Nanking never materialized. After making repeated attempts to exonerate himself, Burgevine fled Sung-chiang with many of his officers and eventually defected to the Taipings.
Burgevine’s behavior gave Li Hung-chang the excuse he had long needed to strip Wu Hsü and Yang Fang—who, as Burgevine’s sponsors and superiors, were responsible for his actions—of most of their government posts. Wu subsequently left Shanghai, and Yang withdrew into the Western settlements, where he owned considerable property. As to command of the Ever Victorious Army, Li and his superiors had had enough, by this point, of foreign adventurers: They agreed to allow the British to appoint an officer to command the steadily deteriorating force.
They were encouraged to do so by the successes enjoyed during the winter of 1862-63 by the Franco-Chinese troops supporting the imperial armies in Chekiang province. In December 1862 Prosper Giquel and Lieutenant Le Brethon de Caligny had begun operations against the Taipings again. Giquel quickly received a bad wound and was forced to suspend his field participation, but in January Le Brethon de Caligny resolutely moved against the Taiping stronghold of Shao-hsing without the support of any Ever Victorious Army or Anglo-Chinese troops. Among Le Brethon’s artillery force were some old British nine-pounder guns, which Le Brethon himself positioned outside the walls of the city. In the midst of this bold action, tragedy struck: “[A]t the first discharge the gun burst,” wrote Andrew Wilson, “and a large portion of the breech struck Le Brethon, carrying away the whole upper part of his body and causing instantaneous death.”
The wounded Giquel still could not assume field command of the Franco-Chinese troops, which now devolved on Ward’s old comrade Adrien Tardif de Moidrey. Many of the Franco-Chinese soldiers were reluctant to renew the attack on Shao-hsing, whose defenders were determined. But Tardif was as unstoppable as ever. On February 19, 1863, he ordered his troops back to Shao-hsing’s walls. On this occasion, however, discipline had its price: At 10:00 A.M. Tardif de Moidrey was shot in the back of the head by one of his own soldiers. Wilson recalled that “[h]is iron constitution enabled him to live for eight hours, though his brains were scattered over the hair of his head.” Ironically, Tardif’s troops finally took the city when the rebels evacuated it on March 18. In subsequent months, commanded by Giquel, the Franco-Chinese Corps of Chekiang became the Ever Triumphant Army and played a key role in the recapture of Hangchow.
The Ever Victorious Army, meanwhile, was enjoying no such success. In response to the Chinese agreement to allow a British officer to command the force, General Staveley—who, with Hope gone, became the dominant voice in British military policy in Shanghai—put forward his young brother-in-law, Charles George Gordon, as a candidate. The Chinese requirement that any Ever Victorious Army commander become a Chinese subject was waived, but the imperial government still insisted that Gordon at least enter the Chinese military service. To do so, however, Gordon needed permission from Staveley’s superiors. As those orders were awaited, Captain John Holland was placed in temporary command of the Ever Victorious Army.
It quickly became apparent that Holland had no central understanding of what made the Ever Victorious Army work as a unit: “Ever
ything,” Dr. Macgowan wrote, “was reorganised, after the pattern of the Queen’s regulations, as Holland used to term it. Even Ward’s uniform, which that general had ordered to be worn when he raised the force—a kind of American style, was done away with, and instead, a new one invented à la Holland. It was a wonder he did not order a red coat, like the Royal Marines.”
Unfortunately, Holland paid less attention to tactics than to details: When he engaged the rebels at T’ai-ts’ang on February 14, he was soundly beaten. The English-language periodical Friend of China commented, “It took the troops four days to reach T’ai-ts’ang;—it took them—less muskets, blankets, provisions, munitions of war, ordnance—everything,—to the tune of over a hundred thousand dollars—eight hours only to get back! Such a skedaddle was never seen.”
Lieutenant Thomas Lyster of the Royal Engineers wrote to his father of the incident: “The rebels … beat Ward’s force, killing several hundred.… General Holland had no idea beyond brute force. He actually told me, when I was at Sung-chiang, and had an argument with him about the last French and Austrian campaign, that he did not believe in tactics! … He, throughout all the operations, did not take the least advantage of tactics. General Ward, who was not a professional soldier, would have acted better.”
The Ever Victorious Army’s sad disintegration during the early months of 1863 caused many Westerners in Shanghai to wonder if the army had ever truly been the wondrous force of disciplined Chinese that they had once supposed. The North China Herald, for example, wrote in January that “there is reason to believe that the corps has not been of that high character it was represented to be.” This attitude only deepened as time went by: Soon the Herald was worrying that the force would “degenerate into, what in Ward’s time it too much resembled, a rabble presenting the guise only of a military organization—which in reality it never possessed.” Typically, the Herald was encouraged by the appointment of Captain Holland, who, as a British officer, could presumably reverse the downward trend. But after T’ai-ts’ang the Herald was forced to admit that Holland “did not exhibit the requisite skill in generalship to command so large a force.”