The letter was a thoughtful and detailed condemnation of the British, and a stark reminder to Pottinger and the rest of how far there was still to travel before Chusan was at peace with the idea of foreign rule.
14. So ends the Chinese war
The awe-inspiring General Yijing did not put his entire faith in fomenting unrest to unseat the British from Zhejiang. Fortunately for them, they often knew as much of his wider plans as did his own commanders. Through paid informants, word filtered back to Gützlaff that the army massing near Shaoxing would soon move. The attack, when it did come, only underlined the yawning gulf between a West that had emerged from the Enlightenment into the Industrial Revolution and a China whose every action seemed hidebound by tradition. For as town after town was looted and burned that winter, Yijing’s diviner had alerted him to the imminent passing of an uncommon event: three brief windows would soon open up when, by mirroring the machinations of the heavens, he might subdue the barbarians. [1]
By ancient Chinese usage, years were named not with increasing distance from Christ’s birth but according to their place in recurring cycles of ten heavenly stems and twelve earthly branches. Every twelfth year — and 1842 was one such — was governed by the earthly branch of yin. Months, days and even hours too were in turn assigned one of the earthly branches, and each year’s first lunar month too was governed by yin. Within that month, three days — by the Western calendar they would be February 14th, 26th, and March 10th — were governed by yin, as was the fifth watch of the night, in the hours before dawn. Such a cosmic conjunction of yin was of high importance to the superstitious Yijing through another association in Chinese thought: yin was the sign of that most martial of creatures, the animal gracing the breast of every military mandarin in China, the tiger. With the harmony of the heavens on his side, attacking when all four yin were aligned, General Yijing believed he could not fail. [2]
The attack finally came on the third tiger-day, after which Yijing would have had to wait another twelve years. Of course, the early hours of March 10th held no cosmic significance for the private soldiers garrisoned in Tinghae, Zhenhai and Ningbo. A prohibition on samshoo had curbed its sale — one bootlegger had been given twenty lashes and had his home torn down — and unusually harsh punishments for drunkenness on duty meant that the sentries were as watchful as could be hoped. The Zhenhai garrison easily beat back the troops sent to dislodge it, but Ningbo faced a far larger onslaught. As the guard at the south gate fell back, Yijing’s men had swarmed into the city. The British rallied, checked the advance, and beat them back. Meanwhile at the west gate a bigger force looked likely to overwhelm the garrison, but discipline and modern weapons won out. An artillery piece dragged into position by Gough’s men drove the Chinese back out and into the narrow streets of the suburb beyond, where they were scythed down in their hundreds by grapeshot. When daylight broke, it revealed alleyways waist-deep with bodies. It was just more of the same butchery, the British losing not a single man. [3]
As for Chusan, the man chosen to retake the island when the heavens were in harmony had more reason than most to hate the British. Zheng Dingchen was just a lowly official assigned to a salt transit station, but he was also the bereaved son of General Zheng, who had accepted the surrender of Chusan a year earlier only to die in the second invasion. A week after his hasty burial, what remained of General Zheng had been dug up and secretly ferried to Zhenhai so that he could be given a funeral befitting his Muslim ethnicity in his native Hunan. His son, still officially in mourning and thirsty for vengeance, was entrusted with almost a quarter of a million liang of silver (some ten tons — one wonders whether the memorials were exaggerated) with which to buy the loyalty of Zhejiang’s boatmen: no one could be expected to take up arms out of altruism or patriotic fervour. In late February of 1842, a fleet of junks and fire-rafts under Zheng’s command set sail from Zhapu on the far shore of Hangzhou Bay. Aboard were several hundred village braves and Tanka boat men, and a good many ‘sand people’ — those cheaply bought indigents who lived a squatter’s life on the foreshores of rivers and lakes. Soon these highly irregular troops were dispersed across the outlying islands in readiness to burn the British at anchor. Others, it was claimed, were sent into Tinghae as sleepers, ready to rise up when they saw the harbour ablaze. The main body of junks assembled on Daishan, the second largest of the archipelago, within sight of Chusan’s north coast. But it proved impossible to hide so many masts from Gützlaff’s spies, and word of Zheng’s preparations inevitably reached his ears. Coupled with intelligence on Yijing’s grand scheme, the threat was grave enough to see Gough and Parker steam back to Tinghae on February 23rd to lead any defence in person. No attack came on the 26th, the second of the tiger days, but the sense of relief did not stem the rumours that a force sat encamped on Daishan ready to strike in another twelve days’ time. [4]
The steamer Nemesis had been in Tinghae harbour for over a month, undergoing repairs after holing herself on a rock (the emperor would have been disgusted had he known that Chinese carpenters were overhauling her boats). On March 7th, just three days short of Zheng’s last window of opportunity, Captain Hall received orders to weigh for Daishan. Nemesis got up steam and anchored opposite the fishing village of Gaoting. An armed party landed and quizzed the locals, but could wring from them no news of Chinese troops. Gützlaff’s intelligence, though, was explicit, and at dusk a second party landed, hoping to spot campfires in the darkness. Instead, a number of braves found the British and threatened to cut off their retreat. Outnumbered, and taking it in turns to fire and so keep the Chinese at a safe distance, the small party edged back to the shore. It was resolved to make an impression. Dawn saw all four of the Nemesis’ boats row into a creek, packed with marines. Some two miles or more upstream a number of junks were spotted, their braves and crew — there were perhaps 600 in all — in a farmstead on one bank. Shouted hastily to arms, they managed to get off a few weary shots. As they did so, a British officer spotted smoke rising from one of the junks. Thinking it might be a booby-trap, he signalled to his men to land a little further downstream. This they did, and with a fatal lack of insight the untrained Chinese took the move to be a retreat and charged. No match for professional marines, who fired volley after volley into them, the Chinese scattered, leaving behind their dead — each was found to have in his pockets the $4 that had bought a modicum of valour — and a $2,000 war chest. The farmstead and junks were put to the torch and the British rowed back to the Nemesis. A week later, Parker landed with a column to scour the island and burn any buildings he came across. He had made it abundantly clear that he would not suffer Daishan to harbour enemies. Even though gentrymen in Tinghae and in the island’s hinterland went on passing messages to the mainland, making it clear that village braves were eager to rise up against the British if given firm instructions and a few days’ notice, the rout on Daishan proved to be a turning point: March of 1842 would be the last time the Chinese considered an invasion of British-administered Chusan. [5]
General Yijing, on hearing that Zheng Dingchen’s forces had been put to flight and Daishan’s villages burned, was furious. He ordered a court martial of this prodigal son of such a fine general, but in a memorial to Peking chose to dwell on the one positive aspect of his financial investment: Zheng was still hiding out in the islands with a substantial number of men. Through March and well into April, rumours abounded that these remnants were drifting from anchorage to anchorage, waiting only for favourable winds and tides to move against Tinghae. For Zheng, it was more a matter of keeping his head attached to his shoulders: if he failed to show anything for such a vast amount of silver he could expect it soon to be grimacing sightlessly from inside a bamboo cage. The next time Yijing heard from the Chusan theatre was in late April, and the news was utterly unexpected. Scarcely able to contain himself, he wrote to Peking:
On the 4th day of the 3rd month, Zheng Dingchen loaded firewood, gunpowder and combustibles onto his boats and sailed them
to Meishan, where his fleet divided into three columns to continue northward. Captain Xu Jiabao’s fire-boats were tied together to form fire-rafts, and these were launched one after the other against the harbour where three British warships were moored. As they surrounded these ships they were set alight. A strong south-easterly fanned the flames, which lit up the sky. Men’s cries were like the boiling of a great cauldron. Our rearguard arrived in support, firing guns and cannon, attacking the ships headlong and spreading terror and confusion amongst them. Many vessels rammed each other and sank. One tried to flee the harbour, but the chief of the water braves went after it. The rebels fired guns and rockets at the chief’s boat but only succeeded in setting its kindling ablaze. As it burned it set light to many ships. The biggest warship, moored in the outer anchorage, was the target of a concentrated attack from over twenty large fire-boats. These set fire to her mainmast and rigging. When her magazine ignited, the smoke and flames shot high above the peak of the nearby island, the mast collapsed and the ship sank without trace. When our braves in Tinghae saw these flames they began to put the rebels’ dwellings to the torch, killing dozens of them. A white man and many swords and guns were captured. Others burned buildings outside the city walls to add to the spectacle. Zheng Dingchen, seeing an enemy encampment, landed to attack. The British fled, but our men chased down and killed a dozen of them. Two steamers arrived from the northward and were fired upon. It is calculated that four British warships were destroyed by fire, of which one sank; dozens of smaller boats were burnt or sunk, three to four hundred rebels were burned to death, drowned, or shot in the city. There were no Chinese losses. [6]
The emperor was beside himself. After months of planning, a great victory had been gained over an enemy who had terrorised his coasts for too long: ‘How can I express my joy at reading this memorial?’ he asked, and awarded General Yijing a double-eyed peacock feather. As reports of the fighting filtered back to Hangzhou, Yijing was able to confirm the scale of the victory from the accounts of local merchants, and added details for the emperor’s titillation: the batteries on Josshouse Hill had opened fire in panic when the fires broke out in the harbour below, their thunderous explosions shaking the ground for miles around. One such shot had dismasted a British ship. Many British sailors had died when, the braves having let out a terrifying battle cry, they jumped overboard in terror. Some had scrambled ashore but most had drowned. One of the steamers had been damaged by Chinese cannon, but managed to sail back and forth across the harbour as day dawned, firing to keep the braves at bay. It was only this rearguard action that finally made Zheng’s men withdraw, but as they looked back at Tinghae they could see flames and smoke still filling the sky.
Sir William Parker, unaware for now of Zheng’s claims, informed his superiors of the very same attack in the drily matter-of-fact way expected of a British admiral:
An abortive attempt was made by the Chinese to set fire to HM ships and transports in the harbour of Tinghae, and the adjoining anchorage, at Chusan, on the night of the 14th instant. About 10pm I received information from Captain Dennis, the military magistrate of Tinghae, which he had just obtained from his scouts, that fire-rafts, formed of large boats, prepared with powder and other combustible materials, well assorted for the purpose, were supposed to be on their way from Sinkong. An hour had scarcely elapsed when several fire-rafts were discovered in flames, on the eastern side of the harbour, and drifting towards the shipping, while the others approached between Macclesfield and Trumball, on the south side, where the Nemesis had for some days been undergoing repair; others attempted to enter the anchorage occupied by the ships of war to the northward of Tea Island, and some even to the southward of that island, in which latter direction the Jupiter was moored. [7]
The ships’ boats of the Royal Navy vessels and the transports in the harbour were manned, and the whole of the fire-boats — Zheng had assembled some five dozen — were grappled clear of the fleet without doing the slightest harm. Shots had been fired at the sentries in the north gate, but nobody had been hurt. Parties were sent the same night as far as Sinkong to hunt out other fire-boats. Finding some thirty moored near one of the harbour islands, they burned them all. When the next day Nemesis and Phlegethon scoured the coast they found even more, the last remnants of Zheng’s once-numerous fleet. The attack had caused no more than a night’s lost sleep, and the highest-ranking Manchu on the Zhejiang coast had again failed to make the slightest impression on the enemy. Such was the reality of the imbalance in power. [8]
Despite the celebrations in Hangzhou and Peking over the supposed sinking of the British fleet, one man remained unconvinced by Zheng’s boasts. Since Chusan’s fall, a Major Zhou Shifa of the now-exiled Tinghae garrison had been receiving regular briefings from his own spies in the city, and these were adamant that Zheng’s fire-attack had done no damage. The senior licentiate of Tinghae’s Confucian college, whom Zheng’s report had credited with having burned buildings during the attack, denied any such involvement. Major Zhou wrote to Zhejiang’s Governor Liu with his misgivings, and Liu forwarded them to General Yijing. Major Zhou’s doubts put the general in a delicate position: he had told the emperor of a great victory in no uncertain language and now sported a double-eyed peacock feather on the strength of it. Opting for a cover-up, he sent an underling to tamper with the licentiate’s statement and ordered that the man resubmit it to Governor Liu. When Liu remained adamant that the first version had been accurate, Yijing appointed a committee of inquiry. Sending it not into occupied Tinghae (where it would quickly have become clear that the fleet was unscathed) but to the safety of Zhapu, from where Zheng’s fleet had set sail, he was all the more perturbed when it found the evidence ambiguous. A new committee was set up, one member obediently reporting back that Zheng’s story was true, but another daring to bring up inconsistencies. Governor Liu persisted, forwarding a report from an undercover agent on Chusan confirming Major Zhou’s original scepticism. But General Yijing of course held the trump card — the Son of Heaven was his uncle. He cut the inquiry short and announced its verdict: Zheng had told the truth all along. As the situation moved from bad to worse, the encouraging myth that a bereaved son had struck back at the invaders was preferable to the unpalatable truth — that the Qing dynasty’s bureaucracy was thoroughly corrupt and that the mighty empire was powerless against a few thousand so-called barbarians. The emperor himself was quite certain of what had happened:
There is no doubt that the British fleet was burned in Tinghae harbour. Major Zhou’s petition was not in agreement with the situation as uncovered, and was clearly untrue. Let him be severely punished! [9]
Of course, Daoguang’s pronouncements did nothing to alter the reality in Zhejiang. The British fleet, far from lying on the bed of Tinghae harbour, was as strong as ever and soon to be reinforced further still. Back in London, Viscount Melbourne had resigned as prime minister to be replaced by Sir Robert Peel and his Tories, and Palmerston had been replaced by the notably less hawkish Lord Aberdeen at the Foreign Office. With a view to concluding the war in China as early as possible — and there was never any doubt in London as to the ultimate success of Pottinger’s expedition — an additional dozen warships, eight steamers, and thousands of fresh troops were now on their way to Hong Kong.
In the meantime, Gough and Parker had recommenced campaigning on the mainland. In mid-May of 1842 the Nemesis reconnoitred the defences thrown up at Zhapu, seventy miles from Tinghae on the northern shore of Hangzhou Bay. Two days later, after a brief but unexpectedly bloody resistance, the town was taken. Finding Hangzhou’s Qiantang River too treacherous (it still regularly claims the lives of people who gather to view its spectacular tidal bore), it was decided not to attack the provincial capital but to head instead straight for the Yangtze and China’s heartland. By mid-June the Wusong forts defending the approach to Shanghai had been disposed of and the city had fallen. (With cannonballs whizzing through the air during the engagement, Captain Hall’s protégé
the Chusanese orphan Afah was spotted on the walkway between the Nemesis’ paddlewheels. Chastised, he told Captain Hall that he had only come up on deck ‘to see the fun and what go on.’) In early July, the billowing sails of a 72-strong British fleet began to move upriver, causing little short of panic in the Forbidden City. This was the first time that a foreign war-fleet had dared to enter the Yangtze, China’s greatest river. If not stopped, it would in just a few days’ sailing have reached Zhenjiang and the junction with the Grand Canal, the route by which hundreds of thousands of tons of grain and supplies were shipped to Peking. The Qing could not hope to cling to power for long once those cargos were denied to them; a British fleet anchored foursquare on the Yangtze across the canal’s mouth would act like an embolism to China’s body politic. Just fifty miles further lay Nanking, the Southern Capital, China’s second city, and it was within Pottinger’s power to reduce it to rubble if the whim took him. [10]
Chusan Page 17