The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  8. The Hon. F. W. A. Bruce was at 46 a diplomat of considerable experience, having served in South America, Egypt, Hong Kong (as colonial secretary), Newfoundland (as governor), and in China, first as secretary to his brother, and from 1858 as superintendent of trade and envoy extraordinary to the Chinese Empire.

  9. The Inn of Mutual Prosperity was fairly typical, to judge from the experience of that sturdy missionary, the Rev. Alexander Williamson, who stayed in similar establishments while ranging North China on behalf of the National Bible Society of Scotland. He and John Scarth (their works are cited in Note 3) are lively and informative sources for China at this time, and their observations of the social scene, customs, manners, recreations, costume, food, crime, punishment, etc., accord closely with Flashman’s. Mr Williamson has a keen eye for detail and a fine sweeping style; thus the Chinese are “ignorant, conceited and supercilious” and regard Europeans as a fierce, mentally deficient, semi-tamed breed “to be placated like dogs, or as wilful children.” He is scathing on Chinese morals: “Secret dens of hideous licentiousness exist in every city”, and on the great roads “all disguise is thrown off.” Scarth takes a particular delight in minutiae, and is good with the telling phrase: professional mourners he describes as “howling for hire”. They and many foreign writers confirm Flashman’s strong impression of the Chinese conviction of superiority over all other races, whom they regarded as having tributary status.

  10. Professional bandits, pirates, and members of the triad secret societies occasionally joined the Taipings, as did other rebels against the Manchu regime, only to fall away because of the revolutionaries’ strict social and religious discipline, and because regular crime paid better. Some of the bandits continued as auxiliaries, among them at least two female brigand leaders, one of whom was called Szu-Zhan.

  It was an offshoot of the triads, the Small Sword Society, which took Shanghai in 1853, a conquest which Flashman mistakenly attributes to the Taipings (see p. 50). In fact, the Small Swords claimed association with the rebels, but the Taipings repudiated them “because of their immoral habits and vicious propensities”, and so missed the opportunity of gaining a major port. (See H. B. Morse, The International Relations of the Chinese Empire, vol i, 1910.)

  11. Flashman’s account of the formidable Taiping army is in accord with other contemporary descriptions, so far as armaments, uniforms, organisation, battle tactics, black flags, etc., are concerned. (See especially Augustus Lindley, and the other sources listed in Appendix I). But one eminent military man disagreed with him about the rebels’ discipline: Wolseley, who visited Nanking a year later, thought the Taipings “an undrilled, undisciplined rabble” whose strength lay in the fact that the Imperial army was even worse. Even so, Wolseley had a deep admiration for the Chinese, whom he saw as “the coming rulers of the world.” His vision of Armageddon was China versus the United States – “fast becoming the greatest power of the world. Thank heaven, they speak English.” (Wolseley, The Story of a Soldier’s Life, 1903).

  12. One revolution is probably very much like another, and readers of Flashman’s narrative will no doubt detect resemblances between Taipingdom and Communist China a few decades ago. The Taipings were, of course, a socialist movement (at the risk of attracting thunderous denunciation, it may be said that certain aspects of Soviet life today awake more echoes of Tsarist Russia than a modern Russian might care to admit). This is not the place to labour the point; sufficient to say that the pronouncements of the Heavenly King seem to have been received with the same kind of reverence later accorded to the thoughts of Chairman Mao. (Dr Sun-yat-sen, the father of the Chinese Republic, may be seen as an interesting link between the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace and modern China; he was the nephew (one historian says the son) of a Taiping rebel, and in his early days described himself as “the new Hung Hsiu-chuan” who would expel the Manchus.)

  13. Flashman’s description of Loyal Prince Lee (Li-Hsiu-ch’eng), Chung Wang and Taiping commander-in-chief, requires some qualification. Whatever Flashman may have thought (and he seems to have been in some doubt), Lee was certainly not mad. A former charcoal burner who had joined the Taipings as a private soldier, the Chung Wang was the best of the rebel generals, and many authorities believe that had he had sole control of the movement, the revolution would have succeeded. An intelligent, enlightened, and (at least by Taiping standards) humane soldier, Lee had a sincere belief in the Taiping mission, and in the bond of Christianity which he supposed should exist between the Taipings and the foreign powers; in the latter he was to be bitterly disappointed. He was said to be egotistical and jealous (particularly of Hung Jen-kan, the Taiping Prime Minister), but the impression left by Lindley is of a courteous, capable, and thoroughly rational man. He also seems to have been a good administrator, unlike most of his fellow-generals. Flashman’s physical description is close to Lindley’s. (See Lindley and Appendix I.)

  14. Flashman’s description of Nanking and what he saw there is so detailed that it really requires foot-noting throughout. To save space, it should be said that everything which he saw and heard in the city can be verified from other sources, principally Thomas W. Blakiston’s Five Months on the Yangtze, 1862, which contains, among much other information, R. J. Forrest’s account of a progress through the city almost identical to Flashman’s. Forrest corroborates virtually everything, from the street scenes, the ante-rooms of the Heavenly King’s palace, and social conditions, to the furnishings and life-style in the homes of the Taiping leaders. Flashman’s personal adventures are, of course, another matter, but for the rest, from the Taiping soldier with his attendant urchins to the bottles of Coward’s mixed pickles in Jen-kan’s living-room, the author can be accepted as an accurate reporter. (See also Wolseley, Story of a Soldier’s Life, and other works cited in these notes.)

  15. The character and personality of Hung Hsiu-chuan, inspirer and leader of the Taiping Rebellion, remain a mystery which Chinese scholars are still working hard to solve, chiefly by examination of the writings attributed to him. Obviously he was one of these rare, unfathomable folk with the gift of communicating religious zeal and inspiring devotion in a way which is hardly understood even by those who know them intimately. Hung’s case is complicated by the fact that he was, by any normal standards, quite mad, and his condition seems to have deteriorated with time. Although almost a recluse at Nanking, he was seen by visitors on occasion; he is described as being about five feet five inches tall, well-built and inclining to stoutness, with a handsome, rather round face, sandy beard, black hair, and piercing dark eyes. He was said to be physically very strong, with a forceful personality. At the time of his meeting with Flashman he was 47 years old.

  The details of that meeting, while obviously uncorroborated, are by no means inconsistent with other evidence. Hung’s time seems to have been devoted entirely to mystical speculation, writing pronouncements and decrees, and his numerous harem. The vision he described to Flashman is the one which he proclaimed after waking from his original trance; the recitation of his concubine tallies closely with an exhortation which is to be found in Taiping literature. (See Appendix I.)

  16. Hung Jen-kan (1822–64), Kan Wang (Shield King), Prime Minister and Genēralissimo of the Taipings, is the most interesting and enigmatic of the revolutionary leaders. A cousin of the Heavenly King’s, he studied with him at a Baptist mission in Canton (where he, too, failed his civil service exams), and became one of his first disciples, but was thought too young to join the revolution at its outset. In 1854, after working at a Protestant mission in Hong Kong, he tried to reach Nanking, but failed, and spent another four years in the colony with the London Missionary Society. In 1859 he succeeded in reaching Nanking, and within a year had become second only to his cousin in the revolutionary hierarchy. Favouritism aside, this meteoric rise can be attributed only to Jen-kan’s native talent, and the advantage which worldly education had given him over the largely uneducated Taiping Wangs. With the deterioration of the Heaven
ly King, Jen-kan, with Lee, became the real head of the movement, and one can only speculate why they did not combine more effectively. Jen-kan was a strong man of vision and faith, and one of the few Taiping leaders with a real knowledge of affairs and the world outside China; he spoke English fluently, and like Lee wanted to improve Taiping relations with the European powers; he also wished to inculcate orthodox Protestant Christianity.

  Jen-kan was a stout, genial, outgoing personality, and from all accounts as pleasant as Flashman makes him sound. He seems to have been alone among the Taipings in genuinely detesting war (the quotation about a war of extermination is authentic), had a deep admiration of British education and institutions, and in his personal behaviour and tastes was perhaps closer to the West than the East; he certainly appears to have had a realistic grasp of foreign attitudes to China, particularly where trade was concerned. Flashman and Forrest agree on his manner and lifestyle; unlike the luxurious generals, he enjoyed a simple, rather untidy existence in his cluttered study, kept no harem, often ate European food, and ignored (as did many of the Wangs) the Taiping prejudice against alcohol. (See Blakiston, Forrest, and Appendix I.)

  17. That there was rivalry between Lee and Jen-kan is not only possible but likely, in view of the latter’s sudden ascendancy, but only Flashman suggests that it was carried as far as this. There must always be doubt about what was happening behind the scenes at this critical stage in Taiping fortunes, but while Flashman’s story is plausible, and not inconsistent with later events, and while some mystery attaches to Jen-kan’s role within the movement, it is only right to say that no other writer has suggested that the prime minister was actively plotting the general’s downfall.

  18. The expression “the almighty dollar”, which now refers to American currency, was applied to the Chinese dollar in the last century.

  19. Flashman does more justice than is usually shown to Frederick Townsend Ward (1831–1862). The American soldier of fortune was unlucky in being succeeded in command of the Ever-Victorious Army of mercenaries by one of the great heroes of the Victorian age, Major-General Charles George (“Chinese”) Gordon, who not only crushed the Taiping Rebellion but achieved immortality by his defence of Khartoum two decades later; it was the kind of fame that overshadowed all but his most eminent contemporaries, and Ward’s part in the China wars was quite eclipsed. It remains that Ward did found the Ever-Victorious Army, and after initial reverses, won several victories, in the course of which he forged the weapon which Gordon was to wield so brilliantly. No doubt Ward’s reputation suffered from his unpopularity with the foreign consulates in China, particularly the British, who resented his recruitment of the soldiers and sailors who were at one time the backbone of his force; it was also feared that his activities might endanger British neutrality. Ward’s biographer, Cahill, is reasonably indignant at the scant credit which the American has received in comparison to Gordon, but seems to spoil his case by overstatement; to say that Ward was “a military genius who helped change the history of China” may be defensible, but to call him Gordon’s superior as an organiser, strategist, and diplomat, and “unquestionably the greatest foreign soldier who fought in the Taiping Rebellion”, is perhaps to exaggerate.

  Flashman’s account of Ward seems fairly accurate as far as the facts of his career go. A native of Salem, Mass., he was a mate on merchant ships when he was only 16, and had military experience in Central America, Mexico, and the Crimea with the French forces (he spoke French, but not Chinese). He came to China, apparently with romantic notions of joining the Taipings; there is no record of his ever having run guns or opium, but in the spring of 1860 he was mate of a Yangtse steamship, and fought a successful action against pirates when his vessel grounded. He was later mate of an Imperial gunboat in Gough’s flotilla, before forming his own private army to defend Shanghai for the Manchus; in this he was financed by China merchants including Yang (“Takee”) Fang, whose daughter he married. Flashman’s account of Ward’s initial battles is entirely accurate; after his second defeat at Chingpu, and the loss of Sungkiang which followed, he went to France to recuperate, returning to China and fighting with growing success (but not without controversy) until his death: he was killed leading an attack on Tse-kee, on September 21, 1862. Then came Gordon, to inherit his army, and at least one of his gestures: it is a small thing, but while it is Gordon who is remembered as the general who led his men into battle carrying only a cane, the practice seems to have originated with Ward.

  He was a small man, active and wiry, with intense dark eyes and a mild, pleasant manner. Little is known of his personality except that he was cheerful and amiable, but he must have had a remarkable gift of leadership, if only to hold his little army together through its early reverses, especially the first assault on Sungkiang, when his entire force arrived in action in an advanced state of intoxication. It may well be that he was as genially eccentric as Flashman suggests; by his own account, he did once fall overboard while pursuing a butterfly, and it is a matter of record that he was carried to the second attack on Chingpu, with his five wounds heavily bandaged, in a sedan chair. (See Yankee Adventurer, by Holger Cahill, 1930; The Ever-Victorious Army, by Andrew Wilson, 1868; With Gordon in China, by Thomas Lyster, 1891; History of China, vol iii, by D. C. Boulger, 1884; Gordon in China, by S. Mossman, 1875.

  The man in the Norfolk jacket, described by Flashman, was probably Henry Burgevine (1836–65), Ward’s lieutenant, who briefly commanded the Ever-Victorious Army in the interval between Ward’s death and Gordon’s appointment. An explosive eccentric from the American South, Burgevine had served in the Crimea, and changed sides several times during the Taiping Rebellion. He lost the command of the E.V.A. after assaulting an official for withholding his troops’ pay, went over to the rebels, subsequently deserted and rejoined Gordon (with whom he seems to have been on good terms), tried to change sides again, but was arrested and subsequently met his death by drowning in mysterious circumstances.

  20. French travellers to Soochow, including priests and missionaries, had assured Lee of a warm welcome in Shanghai, and since he set great store by the Christian bond between Taipings and Europeans, he advanced on the city in high hopes of a peaceful occupation, only to be thunderstruck when he was opposed. A rumour later arose that Roman Catholic priests, who detested the Taiping religion, had encouraged his advance in the hope that he and his army would be destroyed.

  21. Admiral Hope’s failure to force a passage at the Taku Forts on June 25, 1859, is a forgotten imperial incident; it was also probably the first occasion on which British and American servicemen fought side by side, if unofficially. Hope’s gunboats came under heavy bombardment from the Chinese batteries, and one, the Plover, lost thirty-one out of her crew of forty, her commander was killed, the admiral was wounded, and the remaining nine seamen were fighting their guns against hopeless odds. It was too much for the elderly Commodore Josiah Tattnall, watching from the neutral deck of his U.S. Navy steamer Toeywhan; as a young midshipman he had fought against the British in the War of 1812; now, disregarding his country’s non-belligerent status, he took a boat in under fire and offered Hope his help. Hope accepted, and Tattnall’s launch brought out the British wounded; only later did he discover several of his men black with powder smoke. “What have you been doing, you rascals?” he asked, and received the reply: “Beg pardon, sir, but they were a bit short-handed with the bow gun.” The old commodore made no excuses, for himself or his men, in reporting the incident to Washington. “Blood,” he wrote, “is thicker than water.” (See A. Hilliard Armitage, The Storming of the Taku Forts, 1896.)

  Hope’s failure at Taku met with less sympathy from the London correspondent of the New York Daily News, Karl Marx. Reporting the subsequent debate in Parliament, he wrote: “The whole debate in both Houses on the China war evaporated in grotesque compliments showered … on the head of Admiral Hope for having so gloriously buried the British forces in the mud.” (see Edgar Holt, The Opium Wars in China, 19
64). Marx was a trenchant commentator on Chinese affairs; he it was who likened the dissolution of the Manchu Empire to that of a mummy in a hermetically-sealed coffin brought into contact with the open air.

  22. Last night among his fellow roughs,

  He jested, quaff’d and swore;

  A drunken private of the Buffs,

  Who never look’d before.

  Today, beneath his foeman’s frown,

  He stands in Elgin’s place,

  Ambassador from Britain’s crown

  And type of all her race.

  Flashman had witnessed one of the most dramatic moments of the China War, and its most famous heroism, when Moyes, “the drunken private of the Buffs”, who had been captured along with an Irish sergeant of the 44th and some coolies (one version says Sikhs), flatly refused to kow-tow to his Chinese captors, and was cut down in cold blood. Yet but for Sir Francis Doyle’s poem the incident might hardly have been heard of; today it is largely forgotten, and the facts behind it are difficult to trace. The story rests on the sergeant’s authority, and there seems no reason to doubt him, or Flashman – or for that matter, Doyle’s poem, which only errs (possibly deliberately) in presenting Moyes as a young Kentish country boy, when in fact he was a fairly disreputable Scot, old enough, it is said, to have been broken from the rank of colour sergeant for insubordination – which seems characteristic. Not much more is known of Moyes, whose presence in the Buffs (the East Kent Regiment) was presumably a matter of chance. A rumour that he died of drink in captivity seems to have no foundation; he was in the hands of the Chinese for barely one day, and the sergeant’s account, which Doyle obviously accepted, is consistent with the experience of later prisoners.