Flashman And The Dragon fp-8

by George MacDonald Fraser

  His next entry is divided between national affairs and the progress being made on the coffin. There are "rumours that Pekin would be bombarded on the 27th [sic], so that everyone was escaping who could. On the 27th we put on the second coating of lacquer. On that day our troops captured the barbarian leader Pa-hsia-li (Parkes) with eight others, and they were imprisoned in the Board of Punishments." He notes that the Emperor was preparing to leave, but the Imperial Concubine Yi persuaded some of the high officials to memorialise him to remain. All officials were now sending their families and valuables out of the city.

  His mother's death was clearly approaching, so the ceremonial robes were prepared. His mother thought the coverlet was too heavy, so one of silk was substituted, but she thought that too luxurious. "Her parents-in-law," she pointed out, "had not had grave-wrappings of such valuable stuff." Meanwhile, in "the battle at Chi Hua Gate" (which presumably means Pah-li-chao), "the Mongol cavalry broke, and many were trampled to death in the general rout."

  And now "the Princes and Ministers besought the Concubine Yi to induce His Majesty to leave … His Majesty was only too anxious to start at once … (but she) persuaded the two Grand Secretaries to memorialise against his doing so, and … a decree was issued stating that in no circumstances would the Emperor leave the capital."

  Another battle was reported the next day (September 22; this was either a false rumour, or more probably the Allies mopping up after Pah-li-chao), and the Emperor, "attended by his concubines, the Princes, Ministers and Dukes [sic], and all the officers of the household, left the city in desperate rout and disorder unspeakable". In fact, the doctor notes, the barbarians were still some way off, and the court was at the Summer Palace, so there was nothing to fear.

  "Up to the last the Yi Concubine begged him to remain … as his presence could not fail to awe the barbarians, and thus to exert a protecting influence for the good of the city and people. How, she said, could the barbarians be expected to spare the city if the Sacred Chariot had fled, leaving unprotected the tutelary shrines and the altars of the gods?"

  Shortly after this, the doctor's mother died, "abandoning her most undutiful son … her death lies at my door, because of my ignorance of medicine." He was worried about having her buried, in case the barbarians should desecrate her grave, but finally had her buried in a temple. A few days later he notes briefly "vast columns of smoke seen rising to the north-west".

  "When the Yi Concubine heard of the … surrender, she implored the Emperor to reopen hostilities." But His Majesty was dangerously ill, "so our revenge must be postponed for the time being".

  He was not a Doctor of Letters for nothing, for in short space he conjures up a most moving and vivid picture: of life and death going on in a small house in Pekin while the captains and the kings make history; of his concern for the indomitable old lady reproving his extravagance while the Imperial Army crumbles; of his touching self-reproach at her death and his admiration for the fiery Yi Concubine vainly urging resistance for the honour of China; of his fears for his mother's grave while the Summer Palace is burning. And perhaps the strongest impression he leaves is that if the men of Pekin had matched the spirit of the women, Lord Elgin would have bought his treaty dear. (For the Doctor's diary, see Backhouse and Bland.)

  NOTES

  1. Flashman is usually vague about dates, but from internal evidence (see p. 31) it is clear that the ten days were March 1-11, 1860. It is not known why he was on transit through Hong Kong at this time; approximately eighteen months earlier, in the autumn of 1858, he was definitely in India, preparing to return to England at the end of his service in the Indian Mutiny, which earned him a V.C. and knighthood (see Flashman in the Great Game), but the present narrative makes it plain that this return did not take place, and that during 1859 he was engaged in further foreign service. What this was a later packet of the Papers may explain, but there is some reason to suppose that it was connected with China, since up to the end of 1858 he had never visited that country, yet at the beginning of the present memoir he writes of it with apparent familiarity, and displays some fluency in Chinese, a language not mentioned in his earlier reminiscences. There is a possible alternative for 1859, far-fetched though it may seem: one reference in his earlier writings suggests an acquaintance with John Brown, the American abolitionist, whose celebrated raid on Harper's Ferry took place in October, 1859, and since Flashman had been at one time an agent (albeit an unwilling one) of the Underground Railroad, it is not impossible that the missing eighteen months were partly spent in the United States—although in what capacity it would be rash to speculate.

  2. A reasonable summary of Anglo-Chinese relations up to 1860, including the Arrow War of 1856. For details of the Palmerston-Cobden debate (February 26, 1857), see Division IV of J. Ewing Ritchie's Life and Times of Viscount Palmerston.

  3. Flashman, of course, had no scruples about the opium trade, but the mere fact that he mentioned morality to Mrs Carpenter is some reflection of the opposition that was growing against the opium interests. China had legalised the traffic for the first time under the 1858 Treaty of Tientsin; the opium lobby brazenly claimed that this was voluntary; Sir Thomas Wade, a leading China expert, said the concession had been "extorted", and Lord Elgin postponed the relevant clause rather than force China's hand. In fact, the Chinese recognised that there was nothing they could do about it; "the present generation of smokers must and will have opium," their commissioner told Elgin, a fact recognised by such experienced observers as the missionary Alexander Williamson, who called for abolition by Britain, but admitted that it would make little difference to the Chinese, who would get their drug anyway (Williamson knew the figures, and that it was not uncommon for a labourer to smoke 80 cash worth of opium a day out of his wage of 120 cash (21/2p.)). This argument was fastened on by the opium lobby, whose line is echoed by Mrs Carpenter; what is surprising is that even old China hands like John Scarth could assert that the drug was smoked as a sedative rather than as a narcotic. An excellent summary of the subject is J. Spencer Hill's Maitland Prize-winning essay of 1882, The Indo-Chinese Opium Trade (1884); Hill came to the subject strongly prejudiced against the anti-opium lobby, but his investigations changed his mind. (See also John Scarth, Twelve Years in China (1860); Alexander Williamson, Travels in North China (1870); H. B. Morse, The Trade and Administration of the Chinese Empire, 1908.)

  4. Unless there were two Jack Fishers, midshipmen on the China Station in 1860, Flashman's young acquaintance can only have been John Arbuthnot ("Jackie") Fisher, later admiral of the fleet, Baron Fisher of Kilverstone, godfather of the Dreadnought battleship, and the foremost name in the Royal Navy since Nelson. Just as Wolseley (see Note 6) may be called the architect of the modern British Army, so Fisher with his "big-gun" turbine ships gave the Royal Navy command of the seas in the first half of the present century. He entered the navy when he was thirteen, and served during the Crimea before going to the China Station in 1859, where he took part in the capture of Canton and the attack on Taku Forts. He was in Chinese waters in the spring of 1860, and still a midshipman although acting-lieutenant, a rank not confirmed until the end of the year. Since Flashman certainly knew Fisher in later life, it is surprising that he does not identify him at their first meeting; on the other hand, his brief description sounds very like the young "Bulldog Jackie".

  5. Chinese secret societies, tongs and triads (the Heaven and Earth Association, the Dagger Men, and others) had various recognition signals; three fingers round a cup was that of the White Lilies. (See Scarth.)

  6. Garnet Joseph Wolseley (1833-1913), "the model of a modern major-general", was one of Britain's most important soldiers. He won no distinction as a commander in a great war, but his record in the so-called "little wars"—indeed, the variety and success of his service generally—is probably unique in the history of arms. An Anglo-Irishman, he followed his own maxim that if a young officer wants to do well he should try to get himself killed; Wolseley tried really ha
rd, first in the Burma War, when he was badly wounded leading the attack on an enemy stockade; in the Crimea, where he was twice wounded, losing an eye; in the Indian Mutiny, where he served in the relief and siege of Lucknow, being five times mentioned in despatches; in the China War of 1860; in Canada, where in his first independent command he put down the Red River Rebellion without a casualty; in Africa, where he won a lightning campaign against King Koffee of Ashanti, and captured Cetewayo, the Zulu leader; in Egypt, where he beat Arabi Pasha at Tel-el-Kebir and took Cairo; in the Sudan, where he reached Khartoum just too late to rescue Gordon, his old friend of the Crimea and China. He was made a viscount, and later field marshal.

  But Wolseley's real importance was as a military reformer and creator of the modern British Army; having seen and suffered under a traditional regime which, while largely successful, had hardly changed in centuries, and being a confirmed champion of the private soldier, he foresaw the need for change in a rapidly changing military world. He had seen the first "modern war" in the struggle between the American States (where he met Lee and Stonewall Jackson), and his reforms and reorganisations, bitterly opposed at the time, prepared the British Army for a new era of warfare; his influence, largely forgotten, is on the Army still. He was (as Gilbert and Grossmith recognised when they caricatured him in "The Pirates of Penzance") a man of many talents; a trained draughtsman and surveyor, he sketched and painted well, and wrote several books, including most notably The Soldier's Pocket Book, a life of Marlborough, a novel, and his reminiscences of the China campaign.

  Flashman shows him briefly as a young staff-officer, before the full flowering of the quick temper and impatient efficiency which were to make the expression "All Sir Garnet" synonymous with the modern "Right on!" Wolseley always wanted the best; typically, he chose for one campaign a man who had beaten him in competition. Disraeli passed an illuminating judgment on him: "Wolseley is an egotist and a braggart. So was Nelson." (See his Narrative of the War with China in 1860 (1862), and Story of a Soldier's Life (1903); Sir John Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol XIII (1930); Dictionary of National Biography.

  7. Since Flashman probably knew more eminent fighting men—including the great names of the Crimea, Mutiny, U.S. Civil War, and Afghan and American frontiers, to say nothing of his various native foemen—than any other observer of his day, his opinion of James Hope Grant (1808-75) has to be taken seriously. The record seems to bear him out; Grant's active service in India and China is chiefly remarkable for the amount of time he spent in hand-to-hand combat, to which he brought an iron constitution and an apparently total disregard for his own safety. "To die is nothing," he once explained, "it's only going from one room to another." It was in outpost work and the leadership of flying cavalry columns that his talent lay, although his one major command (China, 1860) was conducted with efficiency, despite his being to some extent at the mercy of his diplomats (Fortescue is scathing on this). Flashman's character sketch and physical description are sound; he makes the important point that the terrible fighter and stern disciplinarian was an unusually gentle and kindly man, whose consuming interest was music—Grant was a gifted 'cellist and composer, and indeed owed an early advancement to the fact that his commanding general was a keen violinist who wanted a 'cello player as brigade-major. Despite his sketchy education, Grant was something of a military innovator; he is credited with introducing regular manoeuvres and the war game, and it is interesting that Wolseley, the most intellectual of soldiers, should say: "If I have attained any measure of military prosperity, my gratitude is due to one man, and that man is Sir Hope Grant." (See Sir Hope Grant and Major Knollys, Incidents in the China War; Fortescue; D.N.B.)

  8. The Hon. F. W. A. Bruce was at 46 a diplomat of considerable experience, having served in South America, Egypt, Hong Kong (as colonial secretary), Newfoundland (as governor), and in China, first as secretary to his brother, and from 1858 as superintendent of trade and envoy extraordinary to the Chinese Empire.

  9. The Inn of Mutual Prosperity was fairly typical, to judge from the experience of that sturdy missionary, the Rev. Alexander Williamson, who stayed in similar establishments while ranging North China on behalf of the National Bible Society of Scotland. He and John Scarth (their works are cited in Note 3) are lively and informative sources for China at this time, and their observations of the social scene, customs, manners, recreations, costume, food, crime, punishment, etc., accord closely with Flashman's. Mr William-son has a keen eye for detail and a fine sweeping style; thus the Chinese are "ignorant, conceited and supercilious" and regard Europeans as a fierce, mentally deficient, semi-tamed breed "to be placated like dogs, or as wilful children." He is scathing on Chinese morals: "Secret dens of hideous licentiousness exist in every city", and on the great roads "all disguise is thrown off." Scarth takes a particular delight in minutiae, and is good with the telling phrase: professional mourners he describes as "howling for hire". They and many foreign writers confirm Flashman's strong impression of the Chinese conviction of superiority over all other races, whom they regarded as having tributary status.

  10. Professional bandits, pirates, and members of the triad secret societies occasionally joined the Taipings, as did other rebels against the Manchu regime, only to fall away because of the revolutionaries' strict social and religious discipline, and because regular crime paid better. Some of the bandits continued as auxiliaries, among them at least two female brigand leaders, one of whom was called Szu-Zhan.

  It was an offshoot of the triads, the Small Sword Society, which took Shanghai in 1853, a conquest which Flashman mistakenly attributes to the Taipings (see p.45). In fact, the Small Swords claimed association with the rebels, but the Taipings repudiated them "because of their immoral habits and vicious propensities", and so missed the opportunity of gaining a major port. (See H. B. Morse, The International Relations of the Chinese Empire, vol i, 1910.)

  11. Flashman's account of the formidable Taiping army is in accord with other contemporary descriptions, so far as armaments, uniforms, organisation, battle tactics, black flags, etc., are concerned. (See especially Augustus Lindley, and the other sources listed in Appendix I). But one eminent military man disagreed with him about the rebels' discipline: Wolseley, who visited Nanking a year later, thought the Taipings "an undrilled, undisciplined rabble" whose strength lay in the fact that the Imperial army was even worse. Even so, Wolseley had a deep admiration for the Chinese, whom he saw as "the coming rulers of the world." His vision of Armageddon was China versus the United States—"fast becoming the greatest power of the world. Thank heaven, they speak English." (Wolseley, The Story of a Soldier's Life, 1903).

  12. One revolution is probably very much like another, and readers of Flashman's narrative will no doubt detect resemblances between Taipingdom and Communist China a few decades ago. The Taipings were, of course, a socialist movement (at the risk of attracting thunderous denunciation, it may be said that certain aspects of Soviet life today awake more echoes of Tsarist Russia than a modern Russian might care to admit). This is not the place to labour the point; sufficient to say that the pronouncements of the Heavenly King seem to have been received with the same kind of reverence later accorded to the thoughts of Chairman Mao. (Dr Sun-yat-sen, the father of the Chinese Republic, may be seen as an interesting link between the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace and modern China; he was the nephew (one historian says the son) of a Taiping rebel, and in his early days described himself as "the new Hung Hsiu-chuan" who would expel the Manchus.)

  13. Flashman's description of Loyal Prince Lee (Li-Hsiu-ch'eng), Chung Wang and Taiping commander-in-chief, requires some qualification. Whatever Flashman may have thought (and he seems to have been in some doubt), Lee was certainly not mad. A former charcoal burner who had joined the Taipings as a private soldier, the Chung Wang was the best of the rebel generals, and many authorities believe that had he had sole control of the movement, the revolution would have succeeded. An intelligent, en-lightened, and (at lea
st by Taiping standards) humane soldier, Lee had a sincere belief in the Taiping mission, and in the bond of Christianity which he supposed should exist between the Taipings and the foreign powers; in the latter he was to be bitterly disappointed. He was said to be egotistical and jealous (particularly of Hung Jen-kan, the Taiping Prime Minister), but the impression left by Lindley is of a courteous, capable, and thoroughly rational man. He also seems to have been a good administrator, unlike most of his fellow-generals. Flashman's physical description is close to Lindley's. (See Lindley and Appendix I.)

  14. Flashman's description of Nanking and what he saw there is so detailed that it really requires foot-noting throughout. To save space, it should be said that everything which he saw and heard in the city can be verified from other sources, principally Thomas W. Blakiston's Five Months on the Yangtze, 1862, which contains, among much other information, R. J. Forrest's account of a progress through the city almost identical to Flashman's. Forrest corroborates virtually everything, from the street scenes, the ante-rooms of he Heavenly King's palace, and social conditions, to the furnishings and life-style in the homes of the Taiping leaders. Flashman's personal adventures are, of course, another matter, but for the rest, from the Taiping soldier with his attendant urchins to the bottles of Coward's mixed pickles in Jen-kan's living-room, the author can be accepted as an accurate reporter. (See also Wolseley, Story of a Soldier's Life, and other works cited in these notes.)

  15. The character and personality of Hung Hsiu-chuan, inspirer and leader of the Taiping Rebellion, remain a mystery which Chinese scholars are still working hard to solve, chiefly by examination of the writings attributed to him. Obviously he was one of these rare, unfathomable folk with the gift of communicating religious zeal and inspiring devotion in a way which is hardly understood even by those who know them intimately. Hung's case is complicated by the fact that he was, by any normal standards, quite mad, and his condition seems to have deteriorated with time. Although almost a recluse at Nanking, he was seen by visitors on occasion; he is described as being about five feet five inches tall, well-built and inclining to stoutness, with a handsome, rather round face, sandy beard, black hair, and piercing dark eyes. He was said to be physically very strong, with a forceful personality. At the time of his meeting with Flashman he was 47 years old.