Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (6 page)

A year passed and, as had been stipulated, it was time for the agreements to be ratified in Beijing. Lord Elgin’s younger brother, Frederick Bruce, headed for the city in June 1859 accompanied by British troops and a small French force. (France at this time was busy fighting to colonise Indochina.) Emperor
Xianfeng created all sorts of hurdles in an attempt to thwart Bruce and his colleague. He required that the envoys’ ships had to dock at a small coastal town; they must then ‘travel to Beijing with an entourage of no more than 10 men, no arms . . . no sedan-chairs or processions . . . and leave Beijing the moment the ratification is done’. Sedan-chairs were the prestigious means of transport. The alternative for the envoys was to take the singularly uncomfortable mule-cart on potholed country roads, which was highly humiliating. Bruce refused to oblige the emperor and instead launched an assault on the Dagu Forts. To his great surprise he was repelled: the Chinese had been strengthening the forts for a year. The emperor’s confidence was enormously boosted, and he immediately gave orders to back out of the agreements.

But the allies returned a year later, in 1860, with a much larger force, headed by Lord Elgin as the British ambassador-extraordinary and Baron Gros as the French ambassador. The two men first reached Hong Kong, then Shanghai, before pushing north by sea. They had between them 20,000 land forces, including a Cantonese coolie transport corps. This allied force seized the Dagu Forts, with heavy casualties on both sides.
Lieutenant Colonel G. J. Wolseley commented: ‘England has never before opened a campaign with such a well-organised or a more efficient force.’ In contrast, most Chinese troops were ‘ill-clad, and wretchedly mounted and equipped, some having nothing but bows, others spears, and the rest, rusty-looking, old matchlocks’. Chinese war resolve was equally wanting to the European eye. ‘Had the Chinese adopted the plan of campaign which Wellington did in defence of Portugal in 1809, or of the Russians in 1812 in defence of Moscow, we could not have reached Pekin [Beijing] in 1860. They had only to lay waste the country, burn the standing crops, drive away all cattle and destroy the boats upon the Peiho, to have completely checkmated us . . .’ Wolseley also noted that when he landed, ‘people were most obliging, and seemingly gave every information in their power’. He observed that ‘they seemed to hate all the Tartar troops [the defending army was Mongolian], whom they described as “a horrible race, speaking an unknown tongue, feeding chiefly upon uncooked mutton”; and . . . “stinking more than you (the English) do” . . .’ The Lieutenant Colonel added good-humouredly: ‘highly complimentary to our national feelings, particularly as John Bull is prone to think himself the cleanest of mankind . . .’

It is true, indeed, that the war was the business of the throne and not that of the average man. The emperor was infinitely remote from the common people. Even the average official was not particularly concerned. This was not surprising, as the regime’s policy was to discourage political participation from even its educated class, the literati. So the allies marched to Beijing with little hindrance. They were now not merely seeking ratification of the agreements signed two years earlier, but had added new demands, including opening up Tianjin as an additional trading port and the payment of war indemnities. Emperor Xianfeng, beside himself with fury, resorted to undignified sarcasms and abuses when counselled to accept the allies’ demands so that they would leave. To induce his army to fight, he offered
a bounty: ‘50 taels of silver for each black barbarian head’ – meaning the Indians in the British force – and ‘100 taels for each white barbarian head . . .’

Lord Elgin wanted negotiation and sent his forward representative, Harry Parkes, to a town near Beijing under a flag of truce. Parkes and his escorts were seized and thrown into the prison of the Ministry of Punishments. The emperor personally ordered ‘harsh incarceration’. So the captives were bound and cuffed in the most painful possible manner, the
kao-niu
, which was likely to prove fatal. In Chinese warfare, to harm the enemy’s messengers was the ultimate way of sending the message: we will fight you to the death. The Mongolian army commander, knowing that he could not win in a showdown, urgently pleaded for the captives to be treated more gently and provided with comfortable accommodation and good food.
He was so anxious that he took it upon himself to write an emollient letter to Lord Elgin, expressing his wish for peace and conciliation. An irate Emperor Xianfeng reprimanded him. The emperor’s inner circle, a group of princes and high officials, urged him to be uncompromising. One of them, Jiao, said that ‘Parkes should be put to death in the extreme manner’, which meant death by a thousand cuts. Emperor Xianfeng liked the idea; he wrote: ‘You are absolutely right. Only we have to wait for a few days.’

The emperor’s optimism came from the men in his inner circle whom he had appointed to ‘handle the barbarians’. They told him: ‘The barbarian Parkes is the one man good at military manoeuvre, and all the barbarians take orders from him. Now that he is captured, the morale of the barbarian troops is bound to collapse, and if we seize the opportunity to carry out our extermination campaign, victory will be ours.’ Three days after this counsel of bizarre self-delusion, on 21 September 1860, the Chinese army was roundly beaten on the outskirts of Beijing. Emperor Xianfeng learned the news in the Old Summer Palace; all he could do was flee. That night, the court was packing amidst chaos and panic. The next morning, when his officials came for their audiences, they found that the emperor had disappeared. Most of the court had to leave later, separately, as the roads were jammed by fleeing crowds, the residents of Beijing, who had heard that the emperor himself had gone.

On 6 October, the French troops burst into the Old Summer Palace. On the 8th, Parkes and some other captives were released. More were returned over the next few days – most only as dead bodies. Of the thirty-nine men seized, twenty-one had been killed by the way they had been bound, as the emperor had ordered. Their comrades saw that their captors had ‘
tied their feet and hands together behind their backs as lightly [tightly] as possible, afterwards pouring water on the cords to increase the tension, and they were kept in this terrible position until the condition of their hands and wrists became too horrible for description’. Their deaths had come after days of lacerating agony. Parkes and the other survivors only lived because sensible officials in the Ministry of Punishments had quietly protected them.

Lord Elgin was much affected by what he saw and heard. He wrote to his wife,
‘My dearest, we have dreadful news respecting the fate of some of our captured friends. It is an atrocious crime – and not for vengeance but for future security ought to be seriously dealt with.’ Europeans were now coming to China. In order for them not to be treated in this way, he decided to serve a warning, something that would really hurt the emperor, and he settled on razing the Old Summer Palace.
General Grant wrote in his dispatch that, without such a punitive act, ‘the Chinese Government would see that our countrymen can be seized and murdered with impunity. It is necessary to undeceive them on this point.’ Lord Elgin had contemplated other options, but rejected them: ‘I should have preferred crushing the Chinese army which is still in this neighbourhood, but as we go to work we might have followed them round the walls of Peking [Beijing] till doomsday without catching them.’ He was keen to finish his job and leave, rather than get bogged down in China, where the weather was turning cold and Chinese reinforcement armies might be coming. A quick fire was the easiest option.

The Old Summer Palace was in fact a complex of palaces begun in the early eighteenth century and added to over the next 100 years. Covering an area of 350 hectares, it housed grand European edifices, designed by the Jesuits Giuseppe Castiglione and Michel Benoist, who had been employed by Qianlong the Magnificent, as well as hundreds of buildings in the Chinese, Tibetan and Mongolian styles. Architectural designs from all over China were represented. Landscaped gardens celebrated the diverse sceneries of the empire, among them rice paddies of the Yangtze Valley, noted for the peach flowers and bamboo groves and meandering brooks in their midst. Images from great poems were reproduced. In one, after a poem by the eighth-century poet Li Bai, a waterfall was created, falling into a pond of chiselled stones, making music as the force of the water varied. When the sun was in the right place a rainbow appeared in the waterfall, matching the sharp arch of a bridge that dropped from the top of the waterfall down to the pond. To gaze at the rainbow and listen to the water-music in a dainty pavilion perched on the bridge was a favourite pastime of the court. In this pleasure palace, grandeur was of no concern – beauty was everything. Priceless art and treasures that had been accumulated for more than 100 years filled every cranny.

Before Lord Elgin set fire to this colossal treasure-trove, the palace had been looted by the French, who arrived first. Their commander, General de
Montauban, wrote upon seeing the palace: ‘nothing in our Europe can give any idea of such luxury, and it is impossible for me to describe its splendours in these few lines, impressed as I am especially with the bewilderment caused by the sight of such marvels’. His troops fell on their prey with little inhibition. Lieutenant Colonel Wolseley was an eye-witness:
‘Indiscriminate plunder and wanton destruction of all articles too heavy for removal commenced at once . . . Officers and men seemed to have been seized with a temporary insanity; in body and soul they were absorbed in one pursuit, which was plunder, plunder.’ The British troops, arriving later, soon joined in, as ‘the General now made no objection to looting’, wrote Robert Swinhoe, staff interpreter to General Grant.
‘What a terrible scene of destruction presented itself!’ Grant wrote:

One room only in the palace was untouched. General de Montauban informed me he had reserved any valuables it might contain for equal division between the English and the French. The walls of it were covered with jade-stones . . . The French general told me that he had found two . . . staves of office, made of gold and green jade-stone, one of which he would give me as a present to Queen Victoria, the other he intended for the Emperor Napoleon.

Among the presents that Queen Victoria received was a little dog. An elderly imperial concubine, who did not flee with the court, had died of fright when the allies arrived. Her dogs, five Pekinese, were brought to Britain and became the origin of the Pekinese breed outside China. One came back with Captain Hart Dunne of the Wiltshire Regiment, who named it
‘Lootie’ and presented it to Queen Victoria. In his letter presenting the dog, the Captain wrote, ‘It is a most affectionate and intelligent little creature – it has always been accustomed to be treated as a pet and it was with the hope that it might be looked upon as such by Her Majesty and the royal family that I have brought it from China.’ The little dog caused a little frisson at Windsor. The housekeeper, Mrs Henderson, wrote to her superior, ‘It is very dainty about its food and won’t generally take bread and milk – but it
will
eat boiled rice with a
little chicken
and
gravy
mixed up in it and this is considered the best food for it.’ Her superior seemed somewhat annoyed and scribbled on the back of another, similar letter, ‘A Chinese dog that insists on chicken in its dietary!’ Mrs Henderson was instructed: ‘. . . after a little fasting and coaxing he [
sic
; Lootie was female] will probably come to like the food that is good for him . . .’ In Windsor, Queen Victoria had Lootie painted by the German artist Friedrich Keyl, and she specially requested through her personal secretary, Miss Skettett, that ‘When Mr Keyl sketches the dog he must put something to shew its size it [
sic
] is
remarkably
small . . .’ Lootie lived in the kennels at Windsor for another decade.

When Lord Elgin decided to burn the Old Summer Palace, the
French refused to take part, calling it an act of vandalism against a ‘
site de campagne sans défense
’. Nonetheless, the burning was carried out, methodically. General Grant described the scene in his letter to the Secretary of State for War in London:

On 18th October, Sir John Michel’s division, with the greater part of the cavalry brigade, were marched to the palace, and set the whole pile of buildings on fire. It was a magnificent sight. I could not but grieve at the destruction of so much ancient grandeur, and felt that it was an uncivilised proceeding; but I believed it to be necessary as a future warning to the Chinese against the murder of European envoys, and the violation of the laws of nations.

The fire, fuelled by more than 200 opulent and exquisite palaces, pavilions, temples, pagodas and landscaped gardens, raged for days, enveloping west Beijing in black and ashen smoke. Wolseley wrote, ‘When we first entered the gardens they reminded one of those magic grounds described in fairy tales; we marched from them upon the 19th October, leaving them a dreary waste of
ruined nothings.’

Lord Elgin achieved his goal to some extent. Future Chinese authorities would treat Westerners with special care, quite differently from the way they treated their own people. But any thought of comfort for Westerners must be overshadowed by the potent seeds of hate stirring in the ashes of the Old Summer Palace. Charles Gordon, who later acquired the sobriquet ‘Chinese Gordon’, was then a captain in the invading army and took part in the devastation.
He wrote home: ‘The people are civil but I think the grandees hate us, as they must after what we did to the Palace. You can scarcely imagine the beauty and magnificence of the places we burnt. It made one’s heart sore to burn them . . .’
Victor Hugo wrote a year later: ‘This wonder has disappeared . . . We Europeans are the civilized ones, and for us the Chinese are the barbarians. This is what civilization has done to the barbarian.’