ORDERED TO LIVE AT SHANGHAI--FIRST MEETING WITH "CHINESE GORDON"--THE
RECONCILIATION BETWEEN GORDON AND LI HUNG CHANG--THE TAKING OF
CHANG-CHOW-FU--DISBANDMENT OF "THE EVER-VICTORIOUS ARMY"--REWARDS FOR
GORDON
The first order transmitted by Prince Kung to the new
Inspector-General--or the I.G., as he was always familiarly
called--was that he should live at Shanghai. This gave him the
opportunity of meeting and working with the famous "Chinese Gordon,"
to whom the suppression of the Taiping Rebellion was so largely due.
For the history of that rebellion--how one soldier of fortune after
the other attempted to suppress it; how the picturesque American
Burgevine, on changing masters and seeking to better his fortune with
the rebels, was succeeded by the prosaic failure Holland; how at last,
on General Staveley's recommendation, Charles Gordon was lent with
several other young officers to the Imperialist cause--the reader must
go (and will thank me for sending him) to some of the many historians
who have immortalized the struggle.
Nothing remains to be told about that terrible war--except the part
that Robert Hart accidentally played in it.
His first meeting with Gordon was planned for October 1863, when
Major-General Brown, commanding the troops at Hongkong, came up
to Shanghai for the express purpose of seeing the brilliant young
commander of what was already known as "The Ever-Victorious
Army." Gordon sent the _Firefly_ to take the General and the
Inspector-General up the Soochow Creek to Quinsan, where he then
was, and on a certain Sunday morning they intended to have started.
Fortunately, as it afterwards turned out, Fate interfered at this
point.
The English mail arrived suddenly on Saturday night with important
despatches; the General sent his A.D.C. to say that he could not
possibly leave until they were answered; and so, reluctantly, the
visit was postponed--as the two men thought, for a few days, but in
reality for much longer. Next morning the A.D.C. hurried round
again almost before Hart was out of bed, and this time with the most
sensational news--the _Firefly_ had been boarded as she lay at her
moorings by foreign friends of the rebels, carried up stream, and
burnt. Both her European engineers had mysteriously disappeared.
The whole affair, of course, was a plot as deep laid as diabolical,
hatched by the rebels for the purpose of getting rid of General Brown,
who they feared was about to reinforce Gordon. But for the timely
arrival of those pressing despatches it would have succeeded, and he
and the I.G. would have been trapped and quietly murdered.
Not till the spring of 1864 did the delayed meeting finally take
place. There had been a serious difference of opinion between Gordon
and Li Hung Chang--a difference which arose over the taking of
Soochow. When the city, thanks to Gordon's co-operation, was captured,
certain of the Taiping princes agreed to surrender. General Ching went
to interview them outside one of the city gates, taking Gordon with
him. His idea was that if the great General Gordon showed the rebels
that he had actually been concerned in the successful operations
against them, they would be the more likely to consider further
resistance hopeless. Gordon, on the other hand, thought his presence
would be taken by them to mean surety for their safety. It was not an
unnatural misunderstanding, seeing that Gordon spoke no Chinese, that
neither the rebels nor General Ching understood English, and that
there was no interpreter present.
In the end the rebellious princes surrendered, not from any feeling
that Gordon's presence would ensure the sparing of their lives, but
because they believed--just as General Ching shrewdly guessed they
would--that his presence in Soochow made it useless to continue the
struggle. Had they only been wise enough to retire gracefully from
the field, all would have been well. But they swaggered into
Li's presence. "They appeared"--so an eyewitness described the
scene--"rather like leaders in a position to dictate terms than men
sharing in an act of clemency." They even had the audacity to suggest
that Li should pay their soldiers--_their_ soldiers, who had fought
_him_, mind you--and divide the city of Soochow by a great wall,
leaving half of it in rebel hands.
Naturally he refused to do either of these things; how could he
possibly agree to such quixotic demands? But through his refusal, he
found himself face to face with the problem of what to do with
the surrendered Wangs. He might keep them prisoners--that would be
difficult; or he might summarily behead them--and that would be easy.
The latter action must certainly be open to the ugly suspicion of
treachery, but he had as his excuse that the city was under martial
law, and that prompt and vigorous measures might be the means of
saving more bloodshed in the end. Accordingly he ordered the immediate
execution of the surrendered chiefs.
When Gordon heard of it he was as angry as only a passionate nature
such as his could be. The idea that his unspoken word of honour to
helpless prisoners had been broken for him made him mad with fury. Out
into the city he went, revolver in hand, to look for Li, and to avenge
what he called the "murder." His sense of his own guilt was certainly
morbid; morbid too was his treatment of the head of the Na Wang,
which he found exposed in an iron lantern on one of the city gates.
He brought it home, kept it for days beside him, even laying it on his
bed, and kneeling and asking forgiveness beside it. The Na Wang's son
he adopted into his bodyguard. No father could have treated his
own child more tenderly. I believe not once but a dozen times in an
afternoon he would turn to the boy and ask wistfully, "Who are you?"
receiving the same soft answer, "I am your son," each time with the
same pleasure.
Almost immediately after the decapitation of the Wangs, Gordon, still
fuming with rage, suddenly determined to break off all relations with
Li, to retire to Quinsan, and to take his "Ever-Victorious Army" with
him. Though his friends, singly and in company, did their best to
dissuade him from this rash course, and pointed out the consequences,
he would not listen, and he went.
The Chinese Government took fright at Gordon's dramatic move--there
was no knowing what he might do next--(I wonder if in the back of
their minds they had a sneaking fear he might join the rebels like
Burgevine?)--and consequently they thought it wisdom to send the I.G.
to make peace--since peace was so badly needed.
Robert Hart, in his new rôle of military arbitrator, left Shanghai
on January 19th by boat, creeping slowly through the canals. The
desolation along both banks was pitiful; every village had been
burned, every field trampled; not a living thing was in sight--not
even a dog--but the creeks were choked with corpses. No man could
pass through such a dreary waste unmoved, least of all one who had the
slightest power to alter the sad conditions, and Robert Hart met Li at
Soochow with his determination to do all in his power to reconcile him
with Gordon, and so end the war quickly, greatly strengthened.
Li promptly explained his action by justifying his policy from his own
point of view, and finally ended by saying, "Do tell Gordon I
never meant to do it; I meant to keep my word as to the Princes'
safe-conduct; but when I saw those fellows come in with their hair
long, the very sign of rebellion, and only wearing the white badge
of submission in their buttonholes, I thought it such insolence that
anger overcame me, and I gave the order for their execution. But it
was my doing, not Gordon's; my safe-conduct, not Gordon's, that had
been violated. Tell him that I am ready to proclaim far and wide that
he had nothing to do with it, so that he loses no reputation by it.
Can you not make peace with him for me?"
To find Gordon at that time was no easy matter. He was moving
about very rapidly. With his wonderful eye for country, he saw at a
glance--almost by instinct--a point that ought to be taken in order to
command other points, and wasted no time over the taking of it. Thus
he was never long in any particular spot, and Robert Hart had a
week's search before he came up with him at Quinsan. Truly that was
an exciting week's journey, I can promise you, dodging up and down
canals, expecting every moment to run round a corner into a rebel
camp--yet fortunately never doing it--in fact, doing nothing at all
more exciting than listening to the cries of startled pheasants.
Gordon greeted the I.G. very cordially and held a parade in his
honour, just by way of celebrating his arrival. That march past was
unforgettable. Though the soldiers were commonplace enough, plain
and businesslike the officers, of whom Gordon had about thirty of all
ages, sizes and tastes, usually designed their own uniforms, which
were sometimes fantastic, to say the least. On this great occasion you
may be sure none had neglected to appear in the fullest of full dress,
with highly comical results. Indeed their efforts amused Gordon so
much that all the time they were advancing he kept repeating as he
rubbed his hands gleefully together, "Go it, ye cripples; go it, ye
cripples!"
By contrast, he himself, the commander of them all, appeared so simple
in his long blue frock coat--the old uniform of the Engineers--with
his trousers tucked roughly into his big boots and a little cane, the
only weapon he ever carried--"I am too hot tempered for any other" he
would often say laughingly of himself--in his hand. This simplicity,
this utter absence of affectation, was the keynote to his
character--just as it was the keynote of Robert Hart's character.
Because both possessed it to an unusual degree, each understood the
other--and at once.
[Illustration: SIR ROBERT HART ABOUT 1866.]
Within a week of the I.G.'s arrival Gordon's fit of gloom, brought on
by the affair of the Wangs, was dissipating; within two it was gone,
for a character of such violent "downs" must have equally mercurial
"ups"; within three he capitulated to argument and agreed to go back
to Soochow and see Li. Impulsive and generous as ever, he then wished
that Hart should say he (Hart) had induced him to come to Li. "That
will give you immense influence with the Chinese," he declared. But
Hart would not have it so; he preferred to tell Li that Gordon
had come of his own free will, knowing that this would please Li
personally far more.
The three-cornered meeting passed off well. As little as possible
was said about past disagreements, as much as possible about future
agreements, and the end of it was that Gordon agreed to take the field
again. At the same time the I.G. took care to suggest the removal of
an excuse for future misunderstandings in the person of an officious,
inefficient interpreter whom Robert Hart himself described as a
"'Talkee talkee, me-no-savey,' the sort of person whose attempt at
Mandarin [official Chinese] is even viler than his English."
There then remained nothing more to do in Soochow, and Hart and Gordon
started back together to Quinsan, though not before they had visited
the historic Soochow stockades together, and Gordon, taking his friend
over every disputed foot of ground, had vividly described the bloody
fighting there--the victory so pleasant to remember, the tragedy so
difficult to forget.
I doubt if anything he ever did in China gave Robert Hart greater
pleasure than this reconciliation, or if there was any other single
episode in his career in which he took more pride; though he spoke of
it so seldom and so modestly that scarcely any one--certainly not
the public--knew of what he had done. It cost him a few friends among
minor officials who thought that negotiations should have passed
through their hands rather than his. But his old friend Sir Frederick
Bruce, to whom he wrote a report of the whole affair (afterwards
included in the Blue Book for 1864), took genuine pleasure in his
success, while the Chinese gratitude was unbounded; they realized very
clearly what the extremity had been and the difficulty from which they
had been rescued.
Three months after the reconciliation (April 28th) Robert Hart
went once again to see Gordon and to be present at the taking of
Chang-Chow-Fu. This was one of those typical water cities of Central
China, walled in of course and with a canal--the Grand Canal in this
case--doing duty for a moat. Gordon's headquarters were in boats,
and Hart and his little party--one of whom, Colonel Mann Stuart,
afterwards helped to keep the line of communications open for Gordon
in Khartoum--moored his flotilla alongside. The largest vessel of the
fleet was the common dining-room, and owed its excellent ventilation
to two holes opposite each other torn out close to the ceiling by a
shell while Gordon had been lunching a few days before.
This taking of Chang-Chow-Fu was to be a sight worth seeing--the
culminating point of the whole campaign. Nowhere had the rebels fought
with greater obstinacy or gathered in greater numbers. One spy told
Gordon that he had forty thousand soldiers against him; another
fifty thousand; a third a hundred thousand. It was impossible to get
accurate information. He only knew that twice the rebels were strong
enough to repulse the Imperialist attacks and that he himself was
determined to lead the third--from which there could be no turning
back. "You," said he to Robert Hart, "must arrange with Li that, if
I fall, some one is ready to take my place." Major Edwardes, also a
Royal Engineer, was the man chosen; but, after all, his services were
not needed.
The great attack was fixed for the 11th of May. On the 10th Gordon
determined to find out all he could about the position of the rebels
on the city wall, so taking a small party, which included Hart and two
of his faithful bodyguard, he went out to reconnoitre. No sooner had
the Taipings recognized the Ever-Victorious Leader than they pelted
shots at him. The wooden screen behind which he took shelter looked
in a very few minutes as if it were suffering from an acute attack of
smallpox.
But Gordon, with his usual miraculous luck--in his fighting before
more than twenty cities he was only once wounded--escaped scot-free,
though one of his bodyguard got a bullet in his chest. With all
possible haste the poor fellow was taken back to the doctor's boat,
and the surgeon began poking his fingers into the wound to find the
ball. It was not a pleasant operation for the guardsman, and he made
some grimaces, much to the amusement of several of his companions, who
stood on the bank and jeered at his lack of courage. Those jeers, in
addition to the pain, exasperated him greatly, and Hart, whose
boat was moored next to the doctor's overheard the man say to his
companions, "Yes, it's all very well for you to laugh, but if you had
a rebel fiend's bullet in your chest, and a foreign devil's fingers
groping after it, you would make more fuss than I do."
Very early in the morning of the 11th all was in readiness. The guns
from the various batteries around the city began to play. They barked
and roared until noon, when Gordon gave the order to "Cease fire."
"You see," he remarked to Hart by way of explanation, "those beggars
inside will be completely thrown off their guard by the silence. They
will take it that we have finished work for the day."
Gordon then snatched a hasty lunch, and at one o'clock the signal
was given for the big attack by four soldiers waving red flags on the
little hill where Li Hung Chang's tent stood. From this hill Hart
and Li stood together to watch the operations. Three rushes were
made simultaneously--two feints, and one led by Gordon himself. How
splendidly he called his men on, how he flourished his little cane,
just as though it had been a lance with flying pennant! I can imagine
how the watchers held their breath with excitement. "They're in--no,
they're out; no, they're in," one said to the other, I'm sure, till at
last they _were_ in, Gordon himself the very first to dash through
the narrow breach, his too reckless exposure of his own precious life
redeemed by the inspiring audacity of his presence.
The spectacular moment was over, but work still remained to be
done. The rebels immediately attempted a turning movement, which if
successful, threatened the artillery camp, and Gordon sent post haste
to Li with a request for more troops to help him. Li turned to the
I.G. in despair. "What can I do?" he said. "All my men are scattered
over the city looting by this time. How shall I collect them?" Hart
persuaded Li to send messengers and try. Meantime, luckily, the rebels
dispersed and the city fell.
They fled wildly in every direction, dropping flags, rifles, and the
fans without which no Chinese soldier of the old regime ever went to
war, as they ran. From the grey belt of city wall the I.G. looked down
on the whole tragic panorama. Fires were burning north, east, south
and west. In one street he saw an old woman hobble out of a house
supported by her two sons. Just before they could reach shelter a
narrow stone bridge over a pond had to be crossed. The old woman
limped pitifully to the middle, when a shrill ping rang out. A
sharpshooter's bullet struck her; she toppled over into the water,
while the men took to their heels and fled back into the smoke of the
burning building.
Similar horrors took place in nearly every lane; men were struck down
in the attitudes of escape, and the hateful lean dogs that infest
Chinese cities crept stealthily out of holes and corners.
As Robert Hart turned away from these sights and descended the ramp of
the wall, he noticed a dozen little boys following him, naked urchins
with uncombed hair on shoulders. Some of Li Hung Chang's men, seeing
them too, rushed up, rolling their sleeves high and flourishing
swords. Here, thought they, was an excellent opportunity to gain
favour with their master by cutting off some rebel heads and
exaggerating the exploit into a severe fight. But the I.G. immediately
stepped between, showed his revolver, and threatened to shoot the
first man who stirred a step nearer to the boys. "Are you not ashamed
to fight with children?" said he, and they slunk off.
At the end of the day, when he returned to the boats, the whole ragged
troop was there waiting, their number increased by a little fellow
of six or seven years, the son of the Taiping Wang (Prince) of
Chang-Chow-Fu, who had been left behind in the confusion and rescued
by Gordon from his father's burning palace. He was adopted at once by
the party, made much of, petted, and consoled for his fall from high
estate by being placed in the seat of honour; and he caused great
amusement to the assembled company by the matter-of-fact way in which
he accepted his dignity and looked about with serious eyes, as if to
say, "This is just what I am accustomed to."
Yet he ill repaid the care that was lavished on him till he grew to
manhood. Clothes, food, some education, and finally a position on one
of the Customs cruisers, were given to him. He wasted no breath in
thanks to his generous captors; but one day, when the wild fighting
blood in his veins asserted itself, disappeared. Nor from that day to
this has anything been heard of the errant princeling.
What to do with the other children was a problem. All could not be
adopted: so the youngest, a winning little fellow of ten years, who
lisped out "Lo Atsai" when asked his name, remained at headquarters,
while the rest were sent off to find their friends.
Lo Atsai was promptly handed over to the cook--with no cannibal
intent, but simply to be washed. "The energy and enthusiasm that cook
put into his task," the I.G. would remark when telling the story,
"made the whole operation most ludicrous. Into the river the child was
plunged again and again, our chef holding him stoutly by the hair all
the time as he bobbed up and down between the boats and the unsavoury
corpses sticking there, till he was considered clean enough to be
hauled on board again."
This little child, son of humble parents, was destined to rise far
higher in the world than the prince's son who sat in the place of
honour while Lo Atsai ingratiated himself with the servants in the
confined kitchen quarters of the boat. Because of his whole-hearted
allegiance, the I.G. sent him to school in Hongkong, where he improved
his opportunities so well that the Head Master, reporting on him,
could only say, "He is too conscientious; he will kill himself with
study."
He was truly wearing himself out with diligence, when a rich merchant
took a fancy to him and gave him a good position; then another gave
him a better, so that in a few years he had become a very rich man.
It is nice to add--for the benefit of those who sneer at Chinese
gratitude--that at every new year he would travel, no matter how far
away he might be, to see his old patron and friend. Nor did he ever
grow too grand to go into the kitchen afterwards and gossip with
the servants, sitting down in his sable robes and peacock's feathers
without thought of snobbery, without desire to make himself appear
great in humble eyes.
Chang-Chow-Fu was the last city Gordon took. Its fall closed his
career, and the I.G. arranged most of the details regarding the
disbandment of the famous "Ever-Victorious Army." He did more; once
again he smoothed out a difficulty for the too impulsive Gordon. At
the close of the rebellion the Chinese showed towards Gordon a warmth
of feeling which it has seldom been their habit to show to foreigners.
They thereupon begged Sir Frederick Bruce to advise them as to what
would be a suitable reward to offer him for his valuable services to
the Imperial cause. Finally a gratuity of £3,000 (Tls. 18,000) was
decided upon; but when Gordon got wind of this, he was so furious at
being treated like what he called "an adventurer," that he chased the
messenger out of the camp.
Now the Chinese were utterly at a loss to understand a man who grew
furious at the offer of a large sum of money, such an occurrence being
without precedent. As usual in times of perplexity, they asked the
ever-tactful I.G. to sound Gordon as to what he _would_ accept. "Tell
Wen Hsiang" (then Premier), was Gordon's answer, "that though I have
refused the money, I would like a Chinese costume." Accordingly, by
Imperial Decree, a costume was sent him, and, on Hart's suggestion,
the famous Yellow Jacket was added. Gordon afterwards had his
portrait painted in the full regalia, and, like a glorified Chinese
Field-Marshal in his quaint garb, he still looks down from over the
mantelpiece in the Royal Engineers' mess-room at Chatham.
Once again before his tragic death this strange soldier of destiny
was to see China, though on this second visit he did not meet his old
friend Robert Hart. He came in the early eighties direct from India,
where he had been Private Secretary to the Viceroy. The position never
suited his too independent character, and when the Chinese, perplexed
over Russian questions, invited him to the Middle Kingdom, he gladly
accepted their invitation.
Unfortunately the visit was a failure. His advice was unpractical, and
though, as the first prophet of "China for the Chinese," he found
a fundamental truth, he found it too soon for immediate utility. On
political matters he and the I.G. disagreed; the latter was far too
wise to hold with Gordon's somewhat visionary idea that China could
raise an army as good as the best in the twinkling of an eye; and when
Gordon left Peking after a very short stay, he left disappointed and
disgusted.
It was, however, characteristic of him that before he had got farther
than Hongkong he wrote an affectionate letter to his old friend,
acknowledging himself in the wrong and giving the highest praise to
that friend's policy. This, with all the rest of Gordon's letters to
the I.G., was burned in the Boxer outbreak of 1900.
But what nothing could destroy was Robert Hart's admiration for the
soldier hero. If the apparent inconsistencies of his character were
numerous, all of them added force and picturesqueness to it, and only
served to increase the affection of one who knew him and understood
him most thoroughly.