The Devil Soldier (41 page)

When Ward received word of the Chung Wang’s movements, he quickly returned to Sung-chiang, consolidated its defenses, and tried unsuccessfully to open a line of supply to
Forester in Ch’ing-p’u. Both Ward and Forester then settled in for what looked to be a pair of very determined sieges. The Taipings, Forester recalled, built a stockade around Ch’ing-p’u, “about a mile from the walls, and began a series of attacks. Time and again they made desperate attempts to scale the walls with ladders. We were kept busy night and day.… I tried to counteract this by making frequent sorties under cover of night or a heavy fog. These dashes were bloody affairs and always resulted in heavy loss to the enemy. But they could spare ten where I could spare one, and the material reduction of my force began to be disastrous.”

General Staveley, for his part, had been thrown into something as much like panic as any haughty British officer would ever be likely to exhibit in such a situation. On May 23 Staveley wrote to Frederick Bruce
to say that he would be unable to come to the aid of Ch’ing-p’u because he was leaving directly for Chia-ting, to relieve the pressure on that city. But by the twenty-sixth he had seen enough of the Chung Wang’s forces and been sufficiently impressed by the cowardice of the imperial units in the region to withdraw the British garrison from Chia-ting. “As it is impossible to foresee what may be the result of the hostile attitude of the rebels,”
Staveley told Bruce, “and as the Imperialist troops are utterly worthless, I have considered it advisable to have all the troops that can be spared at Shanghai.” Admiral Hope disagreed vehemently, but the move was approved. Besides spelling doom for Chia-ting (which fell soon after the British evacuated it), Hope knew that Staveley’s policy meant probable disaster for Ward and Forester. But Staveley was far from factoring Ward’s army—which he almost never mentioned in his dispatches—into his thinking.

Indeed, should the Chung Wang’s latest offensive have ultimately destroyed the Ever Victorious Army, it might well have fit into Staveley’s plans, for ever since his arrival in Shanghai, the general had been jealously attempting to take over the training of Chinese recruits from Ward. On May 28, at Staveley’s urging, Li Hung-chang—now governor of Kiangsu—signed an agreement pledging to transfer two thousand imperial troops to Staveley for training. Supported by the British consul in Shanghai, W. H. Medhurst, as well as by Admiral Hope and Minister Bruce, Staveley immediately began pressing for an increase in that number. The difference between Ward’s disciplining Chinese troops and a British officer doing so was clear to all Chinese officials: Whatever the throne’s doubts about the commander of the Ever Victorious Army, he had never worked for the expansion of foreign influence. Wu Hsü, Li Hung-chang, and Prince Kung consistently tried to hamper Staveley’s project, but they were also careful not to cause an actual breach with the British, for Li still did not feel that his Anhwei troops were ready to assume the principal burden for defending Shanghai and recapturing surrounding towns. If Ward and Forester should be annihilated, British support in the region would be more important than ever. And without meaningful British cooperation, the fate of the Ever Victorious Army was doubtful indeed.

Much depended, therefore, on how Ward handled this latest crisis, a crisis which represented, along with everything else, his first direct confrontation with the famed Chung Wang.

Although they had faced detachments of each other’s armies many times (most notably during the second battle of Ch’ing-p’u in August 1860), the Chung Wang and Ward had not yet personally pitted their talents against each other on the same battlefield. The siege of Sung-chiang in the spring of 1862 was, therefore, deeply symbolic: The former peasant laborer Li Hsiu-ch’eng and the ex-ship’s mate Frederick Town-send Ward, having established themselves as the most talented commanders on their respective sides in the Chinese civil war, squared off at the heads of two powerful armies, each of which represented an alternate path that might, had either man been successful in the long run, have led China away from the institutionalized obsolescence of the Manchus. As the Chung Wang, Li Hsiu-ch’eng now led a brightly dressed, vast host of courageous zealots that he had forged into the best of the Taiping armies; as the legendary Hua, Ward had built a smaller unit, drably clothed in Western uniforms but brilliantly trained and capable of holding its own against much larger enemy forces. Neither man could have known that their attempts to bring China into a new era—the one through a socioreligious movement, the other through military innovation—would, in the end, demand the sacrifice of their lives and finally come to naught. But this ultimate result does not reduce the significance of the twin efforts, or of that remarkable moment in early June when the two leaders planted their standards opposite each other and prepared to do battle across the fortifications of Sung-chiang.

Yet for all its apparent drama, the Chung Wang’s attempt to take Sung-chiang was foolish and in many ways reminiscent of Ward’s fixation on Ch’ing-p’u two years earlier. By wasting men and supplies in his effort to recapture the cities and towns of the thirty-mile radius, the Chung Wang played strategically into the hands of his enemies. For by late May 1862 Tseng Kuo-fan was bearing down hard on Nanking, and he would shortly be in a position to invest it. Whatever happened in Kiangsu would be meaningless if Nanking were lost; by merely engaging
the Chung Wang until Tseng could complete his encirclement of the Taiping capital, Ward served his function in the larger strategic plan, in much the way that a boxer’s left hand might maneuver an opponent’s head and body into position for a finishing right. In this sense, Ward had already proved his superiority to his antagonist, although whether he would live through the siege of Sung-chiang to enjoy the achievement remained to be seen.

The Chung Wang’s investment of Sung-chiang quickly became close, although the rebel leader did not succeed in breaking the water line of communication to Shanghai. Admiral
Hope—still angry over General Staveley’s decision to withdraw from the thirty-mile radius—took every opportunity to ship arms, supplies, and small detachments of British sailors and marines up the Huang-pu, and on May 31 he shot off an angry letter to the secretary of the Admiralty, declaring that Staveley’s strategy was having an “evil moral effect” on the entire Shanghai region. The Taipings, said Hope, were creeping back into towns abandoned by the imperialist forces and the Western allies, both west and east of the Huang-pu. Furthermore,

rebel forces, in large numbers, are now encamped about the hills in the vicinity of Ch’ing-p’u and Sung-chiang, and they are occupied with the siege of both these places. In the former there is a garrison of … Colonel Ward’s Chinese troops, and, had the place been properly armed and provisioned for six months, and the breaches [created by the Allied guns on May 10] repaired, I should have had no fear for the result. Unfortunately this was not done, and there appears every prospect of its eventual capture by the rebels.

Hope did say that he supported the idea of Staveley training Chinese troops, but he also called for greater assistance to Ward and his army, including the granting of authority to Major Morton in Ningpo to raise 2,500 men for that city’s defense.

In Sung-chiang, meanwhile, one of Hope’s officers, Captain John Montgomerie of the
Centaur
, was doing his best to help Ward hold off the Chung Wang. Sung-chiang’s plight was worsened by Ward’s inability
to break through to Ch’ing-p’u and either relieve it or withdraw the garrison and consolidate the Ever Victorious Army at Sung-chiang. Captain Montgomerie accompanied Ward on an abortive attempt to reach Colonel Forester in Ch’ing-p’u, and, on returning to Sung-chiang, Montgomerie elected to keep his small detachment of men with Ward in the city, where they played an important—though often exaggerated—role in Sung-chiang’s defense. On May 30 the rebels launched a concerted attack on the city and managed to seize a large supply of arms and powder as well as one of the
Centaur
’s gigs. To prevent any greater losses, Ward on June 1 burned the city’s suburbs, which had been so painstakingly rebuilt over the previous two years. On the following day, Ward and Montgomerie took several hundred men on a daring raid outside the walls to recover as much of the lost equipment as they could lay their hands on. The fight was a sharp one, but by nine o’clock that night Ward had recovered at least some of the arms and with Montgomerie had succeeded in getting all their boats inside Sung-chiang’s westernmost water gate.

For the next three days the Taipings made repeated and concerted efforts to storm the city, all of which were repelled. Montgomerie noted that each of these attempts was preceded by the erection of an artillery battery outside the walls by the rebels but that on each occasion the battery “was successfully destroyed by guns from the city.” By June 5 the Taipings were becoming unnerved, and on that morning, according to Montgomerie, the “Chung Wang sent a letter to Colonel Ward, demanding that the city might be delivered up to him.” A copy of this letter was preserved by Augustus Lindley, and, although he attributed it to one of the Chung Wang’s generals rather than to the rebel commander himself, the tone (and Montgomerie’s eyewitness testimony) confirm it as the work of the Chung Wang: “Had you not invaded my territories, I should not have troubled you; the people would have remained undisturbed. Would not this have been better for both sides?” Castigating Ward’s Chinese soldiers as men who “eat the bread of the Ch’ing [Manchu] dynasty, serving a stranger,” the Chung Wang saved his final message for the leaders of the devil soldiers: “As for you, O foreign troops, you had best return to your native country, as quickly
as may be; for, being a distinct race, why should you contend with me, or why should I be compelled to overcome you?… If you are resolved and will fight with me, I fear, indeed, your trade will suffer.”

Captain Montgomerie noted that to these bombastic statements, “of course no answer was made.”

At Ch’ing-p’u, Colonel Forester was showing similarly admirable pluck, despite his own bleak predicament. In the last days of May the rebel general besieging the city, having felt the full force of the defenders’ determination to hold Ch’ing-p’u, dispatched a message to Forester under a flag of truce. Taking the usual proud tone, the rebel general’s demand for surrender pointed out the futility of resistance and chastised Forester’s men:

Now, the most detestable are the strange devils and foreign demons, and he [the rebel general] has heard that among you there are men disguised as foreign demons, throwing away their lives for nought; nevertheless he has left the south road open, and the garrison are allowed to leave the city, and save their lives, in the guise of villagers; not one of them will be killed; or should they wish to stop, and send in their submission, it is allowed them to do so.

These were lenient terms, although it was questionable whether their author could be trusted. And Forester was facing problems within Ch’ing-p’u that might have tempted him to accept the offer: According to Dr. Macgowan, Forester “was obliged to relax certain wholesome rules. Opium (for smoking) had to be served out to prevent mutiny.” Forester’s own account stated that this sentiment for mutiny broke out not among the Chinese troops but—predictably—among his European officers. Indeed, it was some “thoroughly loyal and faithful” Chinese sergeants major who warned their commander of the plot. Forester quickly locked up the guilty parties, but his situation scarcely improved: “Fighting, fatigue and famine had worn us out, and now, with all my European officers in prison, I had nothing but Chinese to depend upon.” This last item is (once again in Forester’s case) uncorroborated, but that Forester still found the courage to answer the rebel general’s surrender
demand with gusto on June 1 was proved when a copy of his reply later made its way to Admiral Hope. In it Forester declared,

You say if I do not give you the city to-day or to-morrow you will attack it and kill us, and I write to tell you that it is impossible for me to do so. My master, Ward, having given me charge of this city, with plenty of troops, guns, stores, munitions of war, etc., I am bound to hold it, whatever numbers come against it, and prevent your taking it; and I have given all my officers orders to do their best to do so, as I dare not give it up on my own responsibility. I regret you do not approve of us foreigners stopping here, but if you want us you must come and take the city.

Ward’s and Forester’s desperate straits made
Li Hung-chang’s ongoing refusal to commit his army fully in the field finally unsupportable. General Staveley continued to decline to do more than defend Shanghai, and so long as Li Hung-chang was unwilling to commit the body of his Anhwei forces, Staveley’s position was all the more justified. “The Western soldiers,” Li wrote to Tseng Kuo-fan on May 29, “… always seem to suspect that I, Hung-chang, am not willing to cooperate with them. They say that they will soon withdraw the Western troops back to their home countries; that many foreigners have been wounded and killed in action here. If China is unwilling to cooperate, they will have to evacuate their troops. I, Hung-chang, shall say some tactful words to comfort them; if I can meet their wishes, I shall do so.” But Li continued to refuse the idea of joint operations between his troops and the foreign regulars in China’s interior. He told Tseng on June 3, “Recently I have repeatedly memorialized the Court on the inappropriateness of joint campaigning. Hope and I, Hung-chang, have met as many as four times—all because he called first—and I have to treat with him as the occasion arises. Even were the situation to become desperate, I would never ask for his help or be willing to serve foreigners.”

By the first week of June, however, the situation west of Shanghai was indeed desperate, and Li was genuinely moved by Ward’s brave
stand. “Ward,” he told Tseng, “who valiantly defends Sung-chiang and Ch’ing-p’u, is indeed the most vigorous of all. Although until now he has not yet shaved his hair or called at my humble residence, I have no time to quarrel with foreigners over such a little ceremonial matter.” Li’s dual desires—to prove his men the equal of foreign soldiers in defending China and to offer some kind of assistance to Ward—finally prodded him into action during that first week of June. Ordering his commanders to engage the rebels on both sides of the Huang-pu, Li achieved a string of victories that surprised the Allied commanders and succeeded in drawing at least some of the Chung Wang’s attention away from Sung-chiang and Ch’ing-p’u.