“Teach the Emperor a lesson, you mean?” says I, not greatly interested.
“Oh, no. He’s teaching China. The word will go to the ends of the Empire – how the barbarians came, and smashed the chalice, and went away. And for the first time all China will realise that they’re not the world’s core, that their Emperor is not God, and that the dream they’ve lived in for thousands of years, is just … a dream. Gros was right – it’ll bring down the Manchoos, no error; not today, perhaps not for years, but at last. The mystery that binds China will go up in smoke with the Summer Palace, you see. And just by the way – China will break no more treaties; not in our time.”
I thought about Yehonala, and wondered if he was right. As it turned out, he was, almost; China was quiet for forty years, until she roused the Boxers against us. And now the Manchoos are gone, and who’ll deny that it was the fire that Elgin kindled that made China’s millions think thoughts they’d never thought before?
He called me over presently, and asked – not ordered, mark you, but asked, which wasn’t his usual style – if I’d mind going with Michel as guide, so that no buildings were missed. “You know the Summer Palace better, I daresay, than any European living,” says he. “Had that occurred to you?” It hadn’t, as it happened. “But the duty’s not distasteful to you, Flashman?” I said I didn’t mind.
Grant had gone off, and we were alone by the table in the temple garden. He gave me a keen look, and then fell to examining the peeled skin on the back of his hand, smiling a little.
“I seem to sense some disapproval in my staff,” says he, “but since I dislike embarrassment almost as much as I dislike contradiction, I have borne it in silence. A chief of intelligence, however, has an obligation to be forthright. Do you agree with Gros?”
Once on a day I’d have cried no, my lord, you’re entirely right, my lord, burn the bugger hull and sticks, my lord, like a good little toady. But it’s better fun to tell the truth, when it can’t hurt, and is bound to cause devilment. So I said:
“No, my lord. I’m sure your decision is correct.” I waited until he was looking at me to see that I meant it, and then added: “But in your position, I’d not burn the Summer Palace.”
He stared at me, frowning. “I don’t understand, Flashman. You think it right … but you wouldn’t do it? What can you mean?”
“I mean I wouldn’t dare, my lord.” I do love to stir ’em up; oh, I’ll fry in hell for it. “You see, Gros is right in one thing: it’ll get a dam’ bad press. And I’d not care to have Punch labelling me Harry the Hun.”
His jaw jerked at that, and for a moment I thought he was going to explode. Then he gave a jarring laugh. “By God,” says he, “you’re an uncomfortable man! Well, you’re honest, at least. Which is more than can be said for the French, who have already looted the place, but take care to escape the odium for its destruction. Ha! And while crying ‘Philistine!’ they and the other Powers will be happy enough to enjoy the trade benefits and safe commerce which our salutary action will have ensured.” He folded his arms, leaning back, and gave me a bleak look. “Harry the Hun, indeed. They’ll have no need to coin a nickname for me; the Chinese have done it for them, have they not?”
The Big Barbarian, he was thinking; he knew what to expect, but it had rattled him to have me state it so bluntly – which is why I’d done it, of course. Yet he wasn’t altogether displeased; I wondered if he wasn’t glad, in a way, to be bearing the blame alone. He was odd fish, was Elgin. He was no vandal, certainly; indeed, bar Wolseley, he was probably the most sincere lover of the arts in the army – not that I’m an authority, you understand; give me Rubens and you can keep the rest. So how could he bring himself to destroy so much that was rare and beautiful and valuable? I’ll tell you. He was avenging our dead with cold-blooded fury, striking at their murderers (the Emperor, Sang, Prince I, and – although he didn’t know it – Yehonala, who probably shaped Imperial policy more than all the rest) in the way he knew would hurt them most. For he was right there; he knew the Chinese mind; he was hitting ’em where they lived – and putting the fear of God into China, too.
But I suspect he had another reason, which he may not have admitted to himself: I believe that the Summer Palace offended Elgin; that the thought of so much luxury and extravagance for the pleasure of a privileged, selfish few, while the coolie millions paid for it and lived in squalor, was too much for his Scotch stomach. Odd notions for a belted earl, you think? Well, perhaps I’m wrong.44
Tragedy usually has a fair element of farce about it, and this was seen next day when the mass funeral of our dead took place at the Russian Cemetery, outside Pekin. As Elgin observed, the French had a wonderful time, making speeches in bad taste and following their usual practice of firing the final volleys into the grave and not over it. Chinese observers were heard to remark that this was to make sure the corpses were dead. There were Protestant, Roman, and Greek priests officiating together, which looked odd enough, but the sight I wouldn’t have missed was Hope Grant taking part in Papist rituals, sprinkling holy water at Montauban’s request, and plainly enjoying it as much as John Knox in a music hall.
We began to burn the Summer Palace the day after. Michel’s division marched up to the Ewen-ming-ewen gate, where they were split into parties, furnished with crowbars, sledges, axes, and combustibles, and despatched under their officers to chosen spots in the four great gardens – the Enclosed and Beautiful, the Golden and Brilliant, the Birthday, and the Fragrant Hills. I rode round to the Birthday Garden entrance, because I had no great desire to view the whole splendid panorama again from the Ewen slope before the fires were lighted. It was a glorious day; there wasn’t a soul to be seen, and the park seemed to glow in the sunlight, the great beds of flowers and avenues of shrubs had never been so brilliant, or the lawns so green; a little breeze was ruffling the waters of the lake and stirring the leaves in the woods; her pavilion gleamed white among its trees, the birds were singing and the deer posing in the sunshine, and there was such a perfume on the warm air as you might breathe in paradise. From a long way off I caught the first drift of wood-smoke.
Then there were distant voices, and the soft tramp of feet, and someone calling the step, sounding closer, and the stamp as they halted, and the clatter of crowbars and hammers being grounded. And a voice sings out: “Which ’un fust, sir?” and “Over there, sarn’t!” and “Right you are, lads! This way!” and the first smash of timber.
I’m a bad man. I’ve done most wickedness, and I’d do it again, for the pleasure it gave me. I’ve hurt, and done spite, and amused myself most viciously, often at the expense of others, and I don’t feel regret enough to keep me awake of nights. I guess, if drink and the devil were in me, I could ruin a Summer Palace in my own way, rampaging and whooping and hollering and breaking windows and heaving vases downstairs for the joy of hearing ’em smash, and stuffing my pockets with whatever I could lay hands on, like the fellows Wolseley and I watched at the Ewen. I’d certainly have to be drunk – but, yes, I know my nature; I’d do it, and revel in the doing, until I got fed up, or my eye lit on a woman.
But I couldn’t do it as it was done that day – methodically, carefully, almost by numbers, with a gang to each house, all ticked on the list, and smash goes the door under the axes, and in tramp the carriers to remove the best pieces, and the hammermen to smash the rest with sledges, and the sappers to knock out a few beams and windows for draught, and set the oily rags and straw just so, and “Give us one o’ your fusees, corporal … right … fall in outside!” And then on to the next house, while behind the flames lick up, blistering the enamels, cracking the porcelain, charring the polished wood, blackening the bright paint, smouldering the silks and rugs, crackling under the eaves. Next to the wreck of a human body, nothing looks so foul as a pretty house in its setting, when the smoke eddies from the roof, and the glare shines in the windows, and the air shakes with the heat.
That was how it was done, by word of command, one plac
e after another, tramp-tramp-tramp, smash-smash-smash, burn-burn-burn, by men who didn’t talk much, or swear, or laugh – that was the uncanny thing. British soldiers can make a jest of anything, including their own deaths: but no one joked in the Summer Palace. They went about it sour-tempered, grudging; I’d say they were heartsick, or just plain dull and morose. I remember one North Country voice saying it seemed a reet shame to spoil that many pretty things, but the only other note of protest came in a great set-to when some woods caught fire, and a red-faced fellow comes roaring:
“What the hell are you about, sir? Your orders are to burn buildings! That’s good timber – fine trees, damnation take you! Are you a madman, or what?” And the reply: “No, sir, I’m not! But in case it’s escaped your notice, bloody trees are made of bloody wood, you know, which commonly burns when exposed to bloody fire, and d’you expect me to race about catching all the bloody sparks?”
Now the curious thing about this was that one of the speakers was Major-General Sir John Michel, and the other a private soldier, gentleman-ranker, and they cussed each other blind, with no thought of discipline – and no reprisals, either. It was a strange day, that.
Later I remember the rending sound of roofs caving in, and the great rush of flames, the red glare of fire on bare chests and sweat-grimed faces, the harsh crackling and the foul stench as choking smoke drifted across the lawns, blotting out the lakes and flowers, the weary shouts and hoarse commands as the gangs moved on to the next little white jewel among the trees.
I’ve said I couldn’t have done it – which is to say I wouldn’t, for choice, but could if I had to, just as I’ve packed Dahomey slaves when needful. The Summer Palace was just about as sickly as that, but I watched, for curiosity, and because there was nothing else to do – Michel’s men seemed to find the houses without my assistance. And it was curiosity that took me up the Ewen slope, towards evening, to look back on the great pall of smoke, many miles in extent, covering the country to the distant hills, with ugly patches of flame behind it, and here and there a break where you could see a blazing building, or a smouldering ruin, or a patch of burning forest, or virgin parkland, or a pool of dull grey water that had been a shining lake, or even a white palace, untouched amid the green. It looked pretty much like hell.
I’m not saying Elgin was wrong; it achieved what he wanted, without his having to break down a door or smash a window or set a match. That’s the great thing about policy, and why the world is such an infernal place: the man who makes the policy don’t have to carry it out, and the man who carries it out ain’t responsible for the policy. Which is how our folk were tortured to death and the Summer Palace was burned. Mind you, if that wasn’t the case, precious little would ever get done.
But didn’t a tear mist my eye, or a lump rise in my throat; didn’t I turn away at last with a manly sob? Well, no. Yes, as the chap remarked, it was a shame so many pretty things were spoiled – but I’m no great admirer of objects d’art, myself; they just bring out the worst in connoisseurs and female students. But even you, Flashman, surely to God, must have been moved at the destruction of so much beauty, in a spot where you had spent so many idyllic hours? Well, again, no. You see, I don’t live there; I’m here, in Berkeley Square, and when I want to visit the Summer Palace, I can close my eyes, and there it is, and so is she.
Chapter 15
It burned for almost a week, with a vast pillar of smoke a mile high in the windless air, like some great brooding genie from a bottle, spreading his pall across the countryside; Pekin was a city in twilight, its people awestricken to silence. To them it was incredible, yet there it was, and they saw it, and believed at last. If we hadn’t burned it, but had merely occupied Pekin for a season and gone away again, I don’t doubt that in no time the Manchoo propagandists would have convinced the population that we’d never been there at all. But with the Summer Palace in flames they couldn’t doubt the truth – the barbarians had won, the Son of Heaven had been humbled to the dust, and there was the funeral pyre to prove it.
As some callous scoundrel remarked – and it may have been me, by the sound of it – at least The Times couldn’t complain that Elgin hadn’t avenged their correspondent properly; poor young Bowlby having been one of the Emperor’s victims, you see. That smoke spread, metaphorically, all over the world, and some called Elgin a Visigoth, and others said he’d done the right thing, but one of the warmest debates was over exactly what he had done. Most folk still believe that one great palace building was burned; in fact, there were more than two hundred destroyed, to my knowledge, with most of their contents and great areas of woodland and garden. Some, like Loch, have softened it as best they can by claiming that many buildings and much treasure escaped, that some palaces were only half-burned(!), that few manuscripts were lost, and that the damage was less than it looked. The plain truth is that the great Summer Palace, eight miles by ten, was a charred ruin, and if Lloyds had been faced with the bill they’d have shut up shop and fled the country.
The lesson was driven home with the usual Horse Guards pomp when the convention was signed a few days later, Kung having had to agree to everything we demanded, including £100,000 for the families of our dead. Elgin, looking like Pickwick strayed into an Aladdin pantomime, was toted through the streets of Pekin in an enormous palanquin by liveried Chinese, with our troops lining the route for three miles to the Hall of Ceremonies, the band playing the National Anthem, an escort of infantry and cavalry hundreds strong, and the senior men mounted in full fig, wearing that curious ceremonial expression of solemn intensity, as though they were trying not to fart. I can’t be doing with Hyde Park soldiering; it looks so dam’ ridiculous, when anyone can see with half an eye that it costs more time and trouble and expense than fighting a war, and the jacks-in-office and hangers-on who take part plainly think it’s a whole heap more important. I’d abolish the Tin Bellies and Trooping the Colour, if I had my way. But that’s by the by; the public love it, and there’s no question it awed the Chinese; they gazed at Elgin in stricken silence, and knocked head as he went by.
The treaty was signed with tremendous ceremony, before a great concourse of mandarins in dragon robes, and ourselves in dress uniforms, Elgin looking damned disinheriting and poor little Prince Kung plainly scared out of his wits by Beato’s camera, which he seemed to think was some kind of gun. (The picture never came out, either.) It was infernally dull and went on for hours, both sides loathing each other with icy politeness, and the only possibility of fun was when Parkes, that imperturbable diplomat, spotted the chap who’d pulled his hair, standing among the Chinese dignitaries, and I believe would have gone for him then and there, if Loch, the spoilsport, hadn’t restrained him.45 (Parkes got his revenge, though; he had Prince I turned out of his splendid palace, and bagged it for the new British Embassy.)
And then, quite suddenly, it was all over. Elgin had his piece of paper, with red seals and yellow ribbon; China and Britain were sworn to eternal friendship; our traders were free to deluge the market with pulse, grain, sulphur, salt-petre, cash, opium (ha-ha!), brimstone, and even spelter; there were a few hundred new graves along the Peiho (Moyes at Tang-ku and Nolan at Pah-li-chao among them); the Summer Palace was a smoking ruin; in Jehol a dainty silver finger-nail was poised to pin the Chinese Empire; and I was going down-river on Coromandel, with Elgin’s kindly note of appreciation in my pocket, a black jade chess set in my valise, and a few memories in mind.
So often it’s like that, when the most vivid chapters end; the storm of war and action hurtles you along in blood and thunder, seeking vainly for a hold to cling to, and then the wind drops, and in a moment you’re at peace and dog-tired, with your back to a gun-wheel at Gwalior, or closing your eyes in a corner seat of the Deadwood Stage, or drinking tea contentedly with an old Kirghiz bandit in a serai on the Golden Road, or sitting alone with the President of the United States at the end of a great war, listening to him softly whistling “Dixie”.
So it was now �
� for that’s my China story done, save for one curious little postscript – and I could loaf at the rail, looking forward to a tranquil voyage home to Elspeth and a gentleman’s life, far away from mist and mud and rice-paddy and dry-dung smells and Tiger soldiers and silk banners and nightmare Bannermen and belching ornamental cannon and crazy Taipings and even crazier Yankees and fire-crackers and yellow faces … no, I wouldn’t even miss the gigantic bandit women and jolly Hong Kong boaters and beauteous dragon queens … not too much, anyway.
Possibly those three were in my mind, though, a few weeks later, as I sat in Dutranquoy’s bar in Singapore, where the mail had dropped me, idly wondering how I’d kill the fortnight before the P. & O. Cape ship sailed for Home – for I was shot if I was going by that infernal Suez route. At any rate, something awoke a memory of the voluptuous Madam Sabba, with whom I’d wrestled so enjoyably on my last visit there, until she’d spoiled sport by whistling up the hatchet-men – heavens, that had been more than fifteen years ago. Still, I doubted if Singapore had gone Baptist in the meantime, so I took a palki across the river and up through Chinatown to the pleasant residential area which I remembered, where the big houses stood back in their gardens, with paper lanterns glimmering on the dark drives and burly Sikh porters bowing at the front door. Very genteel resorts they were; no trollops on view or anything of that sort; you had a capital dinner and caught the waiter’s eye, and he drummed up the flashtail discreetly.
I demanded to be taken to the best place, and it looked A1, with a big dimly-lit club dining-room where silent bearers waited on the tables, and two smart hostesses went the rounds to see that all was in order. One of them was a stately ivory who might have been Sabba’s daughter; I considered her carefully as I ate my duck curry with a bottle of bubbly, but then I noticed the other one, at the far end of the room, and changed my mind. She was white and fair and excellently set up, and I felt an almighty urge to try some civilised goods for a change; I heard her soft laughter as she paused by a table where half-a-dozen planters were eating; then she passed on to a solitary diner, a blond-bearded young stalwart in good linen with a clipper-captain look to him, and I wondered if he was on the same lay as myself, for she stood in talk for quite five minutes, while I consumed a jealous soufflé. But then she turned away and swayed to my corner, smiling graciously and asking if everything was to my satisfaction.
Flashman Papers Omnibus Page 367
