“And then?” the consul prompted.
“Kennedy palavered with the Mandarins, but they couldn’t understand a word of English. So he hoisted the Union Jack and went off to call young Harry Parkes, Her Majesty’s Acting Consul.”
Fronah’s attention strayed. Instead of listening to the tale she had already heard several times, she admired the long line of Lionel’s close-shaven jaw. Her fiancé’s eagerness to talk about his brush with history was not only endearing but reassuring. She had feared he might be a shade too self-possessed, too cool and too aloof, perhaps blasé. His enthusiasm set the seal of perfection on the man she was to marry.
The Arrow affair was, Fronah knew, complex. Though owned by a Chinese, the vessel was British because she was registered in Hong Kong—and therefore was not subject to the Mandarins’ jurisdiction. Yet they had high-handedly ignored her extraterritorial status and seized her crew. Even if the older Chinese crewman actually was, as they charged, a notorious pirate, the Viceroy had deliberately flouted British rights and insulted Britain’s flag. Those were grave offenses under both international law and the treaties that governed relations between the Chinese Empire and the foreign powers.
Although the dignitaries clustered around Lionel were demanding minute details, the rest of the tale was more straightforward. Acting Consul Harry Parkes had required that the Viceroy not only release the captured crewmen but apologize. At first recalcitrant, the Viceroy had rendered up the entire crew when Parkes ordered an Imperial war junk seized in retaliation, and the Arrow had returned to Hong Kong. But the Viceroy would not apologize.
He could not apologize, Fronah knew, for an apology would acknowledge that he had erred. Because he acted directly for the Emperor, no Senior Mandarin could make such a confession. An apology would not only humiliate the Son of Heaven but would imperil the Viceroy’s career—and perhaps his head.
Apparently just as stubborn, the British could not overlook the insult to their flag. It was not only pride that moved them, but the conviction that all trade would be imperiled if they did. If a major article could be flouted with impunity, the hard-won treaty would become meaningless—and the Manchus would retreat into surly isolation, damming the stream of commerce.
Failing to receive the impossible apology, Rear Admiral Sir Michael Seymour ordered his gunboats to bombard Canton on October 23. His purpose was to humble the Chinese rather than to inflict great destruction.
The Viceroy was profoundly humiliated when his forces proved powerless to halt the bombardment, which continued for five days. At precise ten-minute intervals, shells fell on the Viceroy’s yamen, except on October 26, which was a Sunday and therefore declared a day of rest for the British crews. His humiliation deepened by that contemptuous respite, the Viceroy ordered his frail gunboats to attack Admiral Seymour’s flotilla two days later. His humiliation was abysmal when that attack was easily repelled. In retaliation, the British not only seized the forts protecting Canton but marched on the Viceroy’s yamen, which they looted.
There matters stood for the moment. Tempers were high on both sides, and indignation could move either to further provocation. Fronah’s adoptive brother Aaron was talking of war against Britain. That sober young man, who had no reason to love the Manchus, though he loved his country, was a reliable barometer of moderate Chinese sentiment.
“… so you see, gentlemen, I’m confident it’ll all blow over,” Lionel was saying. “Just a whiff of grapeshot, that’s all the Chinese need. Only way to deal with them.”
“Lionel,” Fronah said impulsively, “perhaps the Chinese don’t see it that way.”
The dignitaries were startled by her interjection. Lionel Henriques flushed, and his eyes narrowed. Fronah feared an angry retort.
“It is rather complicated, my dear,” he said tolerantly instead. “I’m afraid I don’t see quite what you mean.”
“The Viceroy can’t apologize,” she persisted. “If he does, he humiliates the Emperor. Why, it could mean … it could mean anything. He’d be thrown out of office, and all his possessions would be confiscated. He could even be beheaded.”
“Surely the Chinese aren’t that savage, Miss Haleevie?” the Royal Navy commander asked.
“They are, Commander,” she said. “They do terrible things to each other. The Viceroy simply can’t apologize. I’m afraid the Chinese won’t give in. Even in Shanghai, they’re talking about war.”
“My dear, it won’t come to that, you know.” Lionel patted her hand. “I … we all … respect your knowledge of the Chinese, and your sympathy for them. But the whiff of grapeshot has done it. I assure you it won’t come to war.”
Fronah flushed and did not reply. The conversation was silenced by an imperative tinkling. Standing on a chair, Saul Haleevie lifted a goblet of champagne to toast the betrothed couple.
“Your Excellencies, gallant officers, ladies and gentlemen,” he began his much rehearsed speech. “We are met today to wish good fortune and happiness to …”
Fronah clasped Lionel’s arm. They would have to rub off each other’s rough edges, as her mother had warned, but only in private, never in public. He must learn that he could not snub her in public, and she would make an effort never to contradict him in public. Their present disagreement was a trifle beside their mutual love.
Sunlight streamed through the panels of the shamiana, and motes of dust danced in the radiance. Lit by the golden glow, Fronah and Lionel raised their glasses to acknowledge their guests’ good wishes.
BOOK III August 24, 1860–September 1, 1864
THE COLLAPSE
CHAPTER 34
August 24, 1860
ZIKAWEI
Gabriel Hyde stiffened in surprise when his pony trotted into the square before the red-brick church banded with granite, which dominated Zikawei, the Roman Catholic village south of the French Concession. The late-afternoon scene was astonishingly commonplace. He had expected to see the devastation the Holy Soldiers normally left behind them nowadays, for their puritanical discipline had deteriorated in the four years since the fratricidal slaughter of late 1856. The Loyal King, who was the Taiping Commander in Chief, had that morning withdrawn from Zikawei after six days in occupation. Instead of maimed corpses, burning houses, and a gutted house of worship, the American saw humdrum tranquillity.
The long shadow of the church spire imprinted a great black cross on the cobblestones. The Lord of Heaven, as Chinese Catholics called their God, had, it appeared, set His mark indelibly on this small corner of the Manchu Empire. Like glossy crows in their black cassocks, six European Jesuits strolled around the square serenely reading their breviaries. Through the open windows of the schoolhouse treble voices chorused rote responses to a catechist’s baritone interrogation. Other children, already released from their studies, lazily kicked shuttlecocks beneath the stone arch erected to commemorate Candida Soo. That first great lady of Chinese Catholicism had endowed the school in her ancestral village at the close of the Ming Dynasty. Like the arch, the plaque on the tumulus covering the remains of her grandfather, the Grand Chancellor Dr. Paul Hsü, whose labors had planted the Catholic faith in China, was untouched by the Holy Soldiers’ usual destructive wrath against that “idolatrous and superstitious creed.”
As the cool dusk succeeded the heat of the late-August afternoon in the year 1860, the Catholic village drowsed in unbroken peace. Resurgent after their prolonged fratricidal strife, the invaders had spared the adherents and the property of the creed they hated as much as Buddhism and Confucianism. Zikawei was untouched by the fury of the most sanguinary conflict in the history of mankind, which had cost more than twenty million lives during the past decade.
Gabriel Hyde turned in his saddle to speak to his confidant, David Lee. But David trotted toward the red double doors of the church, the rhinoceros of a Military Mandarin of the Ninth Grade lowering on his blue jacket.
“Look at that, Gabe.” His quirt tapped the parchment nailed to the door. “Just look at
that.”
“I could look all day and be none the wiser,” Gabriel said, laughing. “What does it say?”
“For a moment I forgot you were illiterate. A proclamation signed by the Chung Wang, the Loyal King himself: Any soldier who molests any foreigner or damages any foreign property in the slightest, any Holy Soldier who desecrates any church of any foreign creed, even the idols of the false creed of the Lord of Heaven, will suffer immediate decapitation. No appeal will be entertained. Heed this or die!”
After six tumultuous years, China had lost almost all her capacity to surprise the American officer. But he was astonished by the Taipings’ withdrawing before their assault on Shanghai had fairly begun and by their leaving unscathed the stronghold of the Catholics. He was inured to atrocities but shocked by chivalry, astounded when either Taipings or Manchus behaved decently.
Since David and he had, nearly four years earlier, fled the suicidal convulsions of the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace, its resurgence was also astounding. Just before they escaped from the Gate of the One True God in January 1857, the Assistant King had returned to the Heavenly Capital with an overwhelming force. After crushing the revolt against the Heavenly King and imposing a funereal peace with the sword, the Assistant King had himself broken with his sovereign and marched west to establish a virtually independent realm in distant Szechwan. Once again the ferocious theocracy appeared doomed by the intransigence of its adherents, the loss of its most capable leaders, and the apathy of its sovereign, whose interest was engaged only by his visions and his seraglio.
Even the effete Hsien Feng Emperor in Peking moved more vigorously than the peasant-scholar who had almost overthrown the Great Pure Dynasty. The Manchu’s sloth was enlivened by the energy of his half-brother, Prince Kung, and the prodding of his favorite concubine, Yehenala, the mother of his only son. Encouraged by that formidable pair, the Emperor had restored much of the vigor of his armies. His most telling measure was appointing a single commander for the forces fighting the Taipings. The Imperial Court had recently given Generalissimo Tseng Kuo-fan far greater power than any Chinese had previously wielded under the Manchu Dynasty. As Viceroy of two rich provinces in Central China, the Imperial Commissioner for Suppressing the Rebellion was the most powerful commoner in the Great Empire.
The doom of the Taipings appeared sealed by his appointment. But the Taipings struck while the Viceroy methodically tested the levers of his new power and regrouped his forces.
An obscure rebel general called Li Hsiu-cheng had been gathering his own forces virtually unnoticed. Li had been a minor brigadier at the relief of Chenkiang, the Citadel of the River, in 1856, but his cool competence during the subsequent internal strife had won him the title Chung Wang, Loyal King—and command of all Taiping armies. From the convulsions of the Heavenly Kingdom emerged a twenty-six-year-old Generalissimo who was not only fearless in battle, but a brilliant strategist. He was also a gallant foe, who hated the atrocities that marred the rebel cause. A horde of religious fanatics, medieval in their ferocity, had cast up a paladin of medieval chivalry.
Under the Loyal King’s leadership, the Holy Soldiers again destroyed the Imperials’ Great Headquarters Camp South of the Long River and routed the Manchu armies that again threatened the Heavenly Capital. The Taipings then swept over all Kiangsu Province except the foreign enclave of Shanghai. The Loyal King now maintained his headquarters in the Mountainview Tower in Soochow, the city of silks. He was confident he would soon destroy the Manchu Dynasty and establish the Heavenly Empire, as was divinely ordained.
The Loyal King was also determined to correct past errors of strategy, above all the Taipings’ failure to exploit the Small Swords’ occupation of the South City in the early 1850s. As long as the rebels were cut off from direct access to the technology and trade of the Foreign Settlement, they could not overthrow the Manchus. After making his base secure, the Loyal King had, therefore, led his legions southeast toward Shanghai in the summer of 1860. He confidently expected the foreigners, who were his “brothers in Christ,” to welcome him.
The Taiping Commander in Chief, Gabriel Hyde reflected, must have been utterly bewildered by the outlanders’ response to his pacific advance. Not only the Catholic French but the presumably friendly Protestant British aggressively defended Shanghai. The Loyal King had just withdrawn rather than hurl more than fifty thousand Holy Soldiers at a thousand or so stubborn foreign troops. No hotheaded swashbuckler, the Loyal King realized that the victory he could so easily win by force would in the long run be a defeat.
He required a victory by consent, and he required the foreigners’ willing cooperation. But those prizes were denied him. After years of delay, while some official envoys and many missionaries encouraged the Taipings’ expectations of foreign support, the first major intervention of regular European troops in China’s civil war had decisively benefited the Imperials.
Ironically, the Foreign Rifle Corps organized for the Manchus by Gabriel’s fellow townsman, the Salem adventurer Frederick Townsend Ward, had hardly affected the campaign. After a few victories followed by a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Loyal King, Ward had just sailed for France to recuperate from his wounds. Though Gabriel Hyde wore the tiger of a captain in the Imperial Water Force, his personal sympathies were in flux. Having once despaired of the barbaric Taipings, he again wondered whether their triumph might not be possible—and desirable. Even David Lee, seconded to military service after qualifying for the Mandarinate by his brilliant performance in the first civil service examination, sometimes wondered wistfully whether the Taipings could yet crush the decadent Manchus. His elder brother, Aaron, bitter after twice failing the examination, was vehement against the Imps and threatened to join the Taipings. But that was just talk, Gabriel was reflecting when a Jesuit broke into his reverie.
“The rebels, they were vicious in Shanghai, non?” the French priest with the beaked nose asked. “The Lord God moved them to spare Zikawei. But they looted and killed in Shanghai, non?”
“Not at all, Father,” Gabriel replied. “They hardly touched the city.”
“My son, there are columns of smoke over Shanghai, and we heard much shooting. The cursed rebels must have rampaged through the Foreign Settlement till our brave soldiers drove them off.”
“That, Father, was the brave defenders, not the rebels,” Gabriel answered bitterly. “But what’s happened here? We’re ordered to report on the situation in Zikawei, though our escort lost itself on the way.”
“There’s little to tell, my son. Only six days ago, the rebels marched in. Our little garrison, of thirty French riflemen, naturally hurried to join the defense of Shanghai itself. And then nothing till this morning, when the Loyal King withdrew quietly. But what of Shanghai?”
“It wasn’t as simple as it sounds, but we’ve learned the Taiping Prime Minister was so confident he came along to discuss an alliance with the consuls. The Loyal King obviously never expected to use force, even beheaded one of his men for violating his pledge not to harm foreigners. That poor fellow’s unit clashed with a patrol and killed four foreigners in the Manchu service.”
“The same theme here. We come in peace, the rebels said. But in Shanghai?”
“The Loyal King believed he’d been promised a free hand and, in turn, promised the consuls he’d protect all foreign nationals. He directed them to fly yellow flags over their property so it wouldn’t be damaged. In the only clash his troops drove off that Imperial patrol. As they pursued it toward the city gate, British soldiers opened fire.
“The Loyal King, I gather, was astonished.… Not only by that resistance, but by seeing foreign flags instead of the yellow flags expected. He took no action for an hour or two while his troops milled about awaiting the truce he expected. The English and the Sikhs killed several hundred Holy Soldiers. It was like shooting fish in a barrel.”
“And the fires … the fighting inside the city?”
“All our own work, Father. The French,
if you’ll pardon my saying so, started pillaging, then the British joined in. Finally the Loyal King led his full force toward the British settlement, this time certain they’d be welcomed. They were welcomed warmly by rifles and fieldpieces, while the warships on the Hwangpoo lobbed shells. We heard the Loyal King was hit in the cheek before he withdrew to Zikawei.”
“He was wounded, my son. He looked pale and weak when he rode out this morning. A fine soldierly man, even if a heretic—he’s tall and fair, and his nose is well shaped. Except for his eyes, you’d think him an Italian or Spanish cavalier. The children liked him, and he seemed fond of them.”
“So the invasion’s finished,” Gabriel commented. “It wasn’t much.”
“The British and French are now committed to the Imperial cause? The rebels can expect no more sympathy from civilized men?”
“I guess you’re right, Father, if we’re civilized.”
“This so-called Loyal King did behave impeccably, and he was very fond of the children. I shall pray for his soul.”
“Yes, Father. And now, if you’ll excuse us, my friend and I have to return to make our report.”
The ponies’ hooves scuffed along the dirt road, throwing up pink dust in the twilight. As the sun dipped below the horizon, darkness crept over the paddy fields. Beneath the clouds that screened the moon, lanterns guttered in scattered villages. Worried about Taiping stragglers, Gabriel slapped his pony’s flank.
“What’s your hurry, Gabe?” David asked.
“Got to get back.” The American was laconic. “Besides, we could meet some Holy Soldiers.”
“More danger from your people,” David pointed out. “The way they’re acting.”
“It’s funny, Davy.” Gabriel allowed his pony to resume its weary shuffle. “For years, the people of Shanghai have lived in fear. The city is crammed with refugees from the terrible Taipings, and the Foreign Settlement’s been quaking for months. So the demons in human form finally arrive—and what happens?”
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