Mandarin

by Elegant, Robert;

  Such effusively respectful and tortuously insubordinate behavior had resulted in the scene Gabriel saw as the poet Li Po’s temple dwindled in the golden dusk. A dozen paddle steamers churned northeast toward the great bend of the Long River dominated by Nanking, the old Southern Capital, which the Taiping occupiers called Tienking, the Heavenly Capital. The steamers carried some four thousand troops of the Mandarin’s Army of Huai, the ancient—and still the popular—name for Anhwei Province. A third of the soldiers carried muskets or flintlock pistols, while ten platoons, two in each of the five battalions, were armed with small mortars called pi-shan pau, mountain-smashing cannon. The force was sailing toward Shanghai, though the Court had ordered them to march overland to Chenkiang, the Citadel of the River.

  Once having fought past the Taiping stronghold at Nanking, the troops would run the gantlet of the lower Yangtze, which was dominated by the Holy Soldiers. The Mencius and two other gunboats, as well as a flotilla of war junks already left behind by the swift steamers, had therefore been detailed to escort the troopships. Feints by British and French soldiers might divert the Taipings, as might sallies by the British gunboats.

  Gabriel had little confidence in the plan. He wondered again why he was risking his life in the Manchu Empire when his own country needed every trained naval officer. Besides, he was fed up with Chinese intrigue.

  Though the Court would tolerate creative insubordination, it would not acknowledge that Shanghai was the key to crushing the rebellion. Yehenala had therefore repeatedly directed the Viceroy to dispatch the Mandarin Li Hung-chang and his Army of Huai to Chenkiang, the Citadel of the River, to consolidate the Dynasty’s only remaining base on the Lower Yangtze and to challenge the Loyal King’s stronghold at Soochow. Influential Mandarins from Shanghai, however, pointed out that their native city was the Empire’s richest source of revenue, and wars were fought with treasure as well as weapons. Besides, guns and steamers, obtainable only from the foreigners at Shanghai, would enable the new regional armies to finally crush the Taipings.

  Yehenala was not convinced. The Viceroy filed her latest Decree, which would have ensured the destruction of the Army of Huai by dispatching it overland to Chenkiang. But he had no vessels to transport that army to Shanghai, and the governor of Kiangsu Province was uncooperative, employing the same delaying tactics against his superior, the Viceroy, that the Viceroy used against the Court. The Taipings did not frighten him half as much as the threat to his perquisites posed by the Mandarin Li Hung-chang.

  Having reached Shanghai, the Army of Huai would defend the lives and property of the foreigners. But European shipping firms were not in business for their health—or, it appeared, for their security. Since profits were their right, the foreign ship owners demanded 200,000 taels to charter steamers for the Army of Huai. Approximately £70,000 (or US$350,000) was an immense sum, and the Viceroy’s war chest was empty. Chivied by Saul Haleevie, some foreign merchants finally agreed to meet that cost in conjunction with Chinese merchants chivied by David Lee. Once the flotilla passed Nanking unscathed on its passage upriver, the Army of Huai was committed to sailing for Shanghai.

  Gabriel Hyde did not believe the troop convoy would reach the treaty port unscathed. The Taipings’ intelligence network was highly effective, and they undoubtedly knew the convoy’s destination, as well as its purpose. The rebels would hardly allow a formidable new enemy force to establish itself unopposed in their rear.

  The Mandarin Li Hung-chang broke into the American’s thoughts and his technical discussion of the ballistics of the breech-loading cannon.

  “I can’t take in any more now,” he said. “We’ll talk again later. When do we reach Nanking?”

  “At this rate, sir, shortly after dawn tomorrow morning.”

  “In that case, perhaps you’d better return to your ship.”

  The lookouts saw the sentinel mountains around Nanking just before dawn. The spires of pagodas on the crags gleamed as their tiles caught the rising sun, and Gabriel felt a thrill of fear. A horde of fanatics lay hidden behind the clifflike walls of the Holy Capital, and a powerful fleet lurked in the river flowing beneath those walls.

  A cannon shot echoed across the Yangtze where it veered eastward around the great fortress of the Heavenly Kingdom. A gray puff drifted above the river gate, and broad yellow banners rose on the slender flagpoles rimming the battlements. To attack the convoy the Taiping Water Force would have to beat out of its anchorage against the north wind that shredded the cannon smoke and whipped the banners.

  Gabriel barked at the bosun to hurry the men at their breakfast. The sailors dropped their bowls and trotted to action stations when they saw the pennants of the Taiping infantry on the foreshore beneath the walls.

  Across the muddy face of the Long River rolled the melancholy war music of the Holy Soldiers: horns wailing and cymbals clashing above the roar of oxhide drums. Narrow galleys with crude cannon mounted on their prows poured out of the mouth of the Chinhuai River, their sweeps flashing in the dawn light.

  The Mencius churned toward the enemy flotilla. Gabriel glanced over his shoulder to assure himself that her sister gunboats were following and saw that the big steamers were drawing together for mutual defense. Since foreign captains under a resolute Chinese commander were taking coordinated action, the Army of Huai might escape the ambush only slightly mauled.

  A curtain of orange flame and black smoke rippled along the battlements of the Heavenly Capital, and, an instant later, Gabriel heard the thunder of a hundred cannon. The salvo fell short, raising a wall of white spray a hundred and fifty yards from the Mencius. The next salvo thundered a half-minute later. Not only the Imperials, but the insurgents, too, employed European officers to command their artillery. Gabriel directed the Mencius through the water spouts, keeping a weather eye on the oncoming galleys.

  The first shot from the Forest gun on the foredeck arched over the lead galleys to splash in the open water between the first and second squadrons. The second shot skipped between the two foremost galleys. Both vessels slewed around in a tangle of snapped sweeps and drifted broadside down on the following war vessels.

  Cannon barked from the prows of twenty galleys. The shot threw up widely dispersed water spouts, since the rebel gunners were firing from pitching platforms into the rising wind. The galleys would have to close with the more agile Imperial gunboats if the weight of their numbers was to tell. They would have to close and board.

  “Hard starboard,” Gabriel commanded when fire and smoke rippled along the battlements again. “Now, port. Port, I say.”

  The Mencius dodged between the great spouts raised by the salvos of the shore guns. Gabriel was blinded by the solid spray. He heard a crash amidships, and his vessel trembled. A solid shot was embedded in the gunboat’s planking behind the deckhouse. The Mencius shook herself like a drenched retriever and plowed doggedly through the roiled water, twisting and swiveling.

  Behind him Gabriel heard the high-pitched yapping of the light cannon on the steamers and the popping of muskets. When the Mencius emerged from the smoke bank of her own broadside, the convoy was half-obscured by powder smoke. A swarm of galleys was bearing down on the steamers from the north shore, their sweeps shining wetly in the sunrise, their small purple sails distended by the following breeze. Behind the galleys, Rebel war junks cut through the swells of the Long River, white water curling from their heavy prows. The Taiping squadrons concealed behind the cape on the north bank were borne down on the unprotected convoy by the north wind.

  The Mencius wheeled, her paddle wheels hurling frothy spume, and raced toward the lightly armed troopships. Gabriel leaned forward as if his weight could move the gunboat faster. The convoy would be overwhelmed unless the gunboats could cut the rebel squadrons off from the steamers. Mencius had not covered half the intervening distance when he saw with despair that the foremost Taiping war vessels were only a hundred yards from the vulnerable merchantmen and moving fast. He watched, fascinated and
impotent, as they closed.

  Gabriel’s mouth dropped open in astonishment. A minute later, he smiled with incredulous relief.

  The convoy was sailing through the rebel flotilla. The frail hulls of galleys and war junks were brushed aside or shattered by the steamers’ powerful bows, Taiping sailors were struggling in the choppy waters. As vast and as impregnable as floating castles, the paddle-steamers churned through the wreckage.

  He might, the American realized, be watching the turning point in the civil war that had engulfed two-thirds of the Manchu Empire, engaged millions of troops, slaughtered tens of millions of civilians, and almost toppled the Great Pure Dynasty after more than two centuries of despotic rule. Not just the speed of steam engines and the shells of quick-firing guns had effortlessly broken the mass attack by traditional Chinese war vessels. The size of the steamers made them virtually invulnerable to the swarm of lighter craft. The ships of the Imperial convoy had passed through the Taiping ambush almost unscathed, and the Army of Huai would soon scour the countryside from its base at Shanghai.

  The first major Western intervention in the Chinese civil war, which had begun with the commitment of French and British regulars in January, was proving decisive.

  Gabriel Hyde spoke softly to the coxswain at the teak steering wheel. In response to her captain’s command, the Mencius pointed her prow downriver, leaving the Heavenly Capital behind her bluff stern.

  CHAPTER 48

  May 12, 1862

  SOOCHOW

  The Loyal King brooded over his battle maps under the arched wooden ceiling as the afternoon clouds drifted across the distant hills, veiling the granite outcrops that scarred their green faces. It had pleased him to build the simple two-story pavilion in the mock-modestly named Garden of the Humble Administrator after he took Soochow, the city of silk and pleasure, in mid-1860. It had also pleased him to call his retreat Mountainview Tower and to join it to his staff’s offices with a path under a black-tiled roof that writhed like a rampant dragon. He now regretted yielding to his officers’ insistence that the residence of a king, even if austere, must impress his subjects with his majesty. If he were planning Mountainview Tower today, he would not allow the builders to arch its roofs and stud their black tiles with spikes so that the pavilion appeared to be the head of an Imperial dragon with gaping jaws.

  He nodded, and his long hair brushed his neck. The commander-in-chief of the armies of the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace realized that he was very weary. He pushed the war maps away and looked through the bank of windows at the man-made pond, where weeping willows drooped over gray boulders. His dispositions for the envelopment of Shanghai were already fixed. Directed by the failed Mandarin Lee Ailun, whom the foreigners called Aaron, his secretariat had yesterday drafted the final orders. He could do no more until the troops marched at dawn.

  A frown clouded the high brow of the thirty-eight-year-old rebel Generalissimo, and doubt flickered in his candid eyes. His chief failing as a strategist, he recognized, was his excessive straightforwardness. It was meet to fight God’s battles in accordance with God’s command to be truthful and unafraid. This once, however, he had chosen to throw a dust storm of deceit between his enemies and himself.

  The tall Englishman with the yellow hair was vital in the offensive against the enemy’s minds. He was obviously better born and better educated than most of the foreign adventurers drawn into the service of the Heavenly Kingdom by hope of gain or to escape punishment for prior crimes. Also far more clever than those rascals, the Englishman was the prime mover of the campaign to break their foreign enemies’ will.

  Although he hated aristocrats, having spent his life fighting their oppression, the commander-in-chief found this English aristocrat congenial. Most important, he was beyond doubt a fervent convert to the doctrines of the Heavenly King, the younger brother of Jesus Christ. The failed Mandarin Lee Ailun, the Englishman’s brother-in-law, was a skeptic, inspired solely by his passion for revenge upon the Manchus.

  The Generalissimo assured himself that he was absolutely confident. Still, it would be useful to review the campaign to warp their enemies’ minds with the Englishman and his brother-in-law. He tapped a gong and instructed his orderly to summon them. While he waited, he watched the shadows creep across the pond, his hand, delicate for a soldier of his prowess, nervously stroking the polished window sill. Honest with all men, above all with himself, the Loyal King knew he was staking the future of the Heavenly Kingdom on the assault against Shanghai. Could his armies take the Treaty Port this time, or would they exhaust themselves against the Army of Huai and its foreign auxiliaries? But he would take Shanghai—because he must take Shanghai.

  He turned to greet his subordinates, both ready for the campaign in the green-fringed yellow tunics of field-grade officers over black trousers tucked into leather half-boots. The Englishman’s complexion, browned by the sun, contrasted with his fair hair. The failed Mandarin Lee’s long face was pale, but his arched nose bespoke resolution.

  “I regret interrupting your leisure,” the Loyal King apologized. “But it is necessary.”

  “Another general would have berated us for not being on hand immediately,” Aaron Lee answered.

  Lionel Henriques nodded agreement when Aaron translated the exchange for him. The cold Englishman, Aaron saw, felt the same fondness for their general he himself did. Lionel could not truly appreciate the extraordinary consideration the Loyal King extended to his officers since he was not Chinese, but instinct roused his affection for their remarkable commander-in-chief.

  “The rumors are afoot, Lee?” the Loyal King asked. “Is the enemy taking the bait?”

  “It’s early to tell, sir,” Aaron replied. “But my brother-in-law believes the measures are already effective.”

  “The Foreign Settlement must be in a panic,” Lionel interposed. “They’re probably quaking in their boots.”

  “Can we be certain they believe a frontal assault will fall on Shanghai?”

  “From what I’ve heard,” Aaron said, “they’re pulling back their forces to defend the city.”

  “And leaving the countryside open to us? Then the strategy of the flags is working on the foreign-commanded garrisons.”

  “I believe so, sir,” Lionel replied. “The foreign officers are always nervous, isolated as they are in a hostile countryside. And they don’t really trust their Chinese soldiers. If they believe they’re facing overwhelmingly superior forces, they’ll surely draw back.”

  “Are they doing so?”

  “I can’t be certain, but there are signs. I propose that we triple the number of flying columns showing their flags. Particularly around the foreign-garrisoned towns.”

  “They must believe my forces are so strong they’ll be crushed by weight alone,” the Generalissimo mused. “All right. Triple the flag columns.”

  “Yes, sir.” Aaron made a note. “Further instructions, sir?”

  “Not until we move out. Do you have any further suggestions?”

  As fervently as the Loyal King, Lionel longed for a Taiping victory, which would change his life. If the Holy Soldiers took Shanghai, he would no longer be an outcast but a senior officer of the conquerors. His father-in-law, whom he despised as a parvenu but respected as a shrewd trader, would acknowledge that he had been wise to join the Taipings. Morever, his new faith exhorted him to care for Fronah and their son Judah. How better reclaim his family—and his father-in-law’s good will—than by protecting the Haleevies amid the disorder following a Taiping victory?

  “More gold, sir, for the foreign officers,” Lionel finally suggested. “I know a dozen men who will come over if we meet their price.”

  “Are you certain?” the Loyal King asked. “Our stock of gold is small.”

  “Use it now, sir,” Lionel urged. “The foreigners must believe we possess not only overwhelming force but overwhelming wealth. Power and riches are the only gods they worship.”

  “You don’t think highl
y of your countrymen, do you?” the Generalissimo said. “I remember how they deceived me, promising to open the gates, then massacring my poor soldiers. Well, I’ll consider it.”

  Soochow was to Lionel Henriques the most appealing city in China. Not primarily for its baronial private parks like the fifteen-acre Garden of the Humble Administrator, where the Loyal King had his headquarters, but for its extraordinary ambiance.

  With its mansions and shops, the Foreign Settlement of Shanghai was a dreamy simulacrum of a provincial European town, while the Chinese-inhabited South City was inexpressibly squalid. Though he lamented the destruction of the Summer Palaces, he had not found the Imperial splendor for which Peking was renowned. For all its martial fierceness, Nanking, the Heavenly Capital, was dirty and dusty.

  Soochow was, however, quintessentially beautiful and quintessentially Chinese. Though its canals recalled Venice, Soochow was unique.

  Lionel stood on an arched stone bridge near the Garden of the Humble Administrator, his hand resting on the miniature stone lion that capped its balustrade. Gondola-like sampans glided along the canal, pausing at the landing stages between the wooden houses with overhanging balconies. The cascades of purple wisteria intertwined with creamy clematis on the unpainted eaves were reflected in the still water. The elusive fragrance of Soochow was wholly different from the stench of Shanghai or Nanking. He could be happy here, Lionel knew. A lifetime would not suffice to penetrate the mysteries that lay behind shuttered doors and latticed-paper windows.

  “You’ve found something here, haven’t you, Lionel?” Aaron asked. “I’ve never seen you so much at peace.”

  The Englishman dropped a pebble into the canal and watched the gentle ripples widen. He was reluctant to discuss his emotions, though Aaron was not only his companion and his interpreter, but his sole remaining link to Fronah.