by Carl Crow
Members of Hung’s own family were his first converts and they were followed by many others in the neighborhood. Hung’s interpretation of the new religion was naturally tinged by his old Taoist beliefs, and it did not do great violence to the superstitions of the ignorant country people. It does not appear that, except for Mr. Roberts, any of the many American missionaries who were then living in and around Canton were appealed to for religious instruction. Hung had been converted by a printed tract, and he and his converts were avid readers of evangelistic literature to which they gave their own interpretation. For example, Mr. Roberts, who believed in total immersion, had failed to convince his disciple on this point and Hung worked out his own technique of baptism. This included a thorough scrubbing of the surface of the body directly over the heart.
As the converts grew in number they called themselves “God Worshipers” and developed a ritual and a theology that were strange combinations of Christian beliefs and Taoist superstitions. The converts themselves saw visions with every attack of indigestion. They spoke in strange tongues and prophesied and hunted witches and saw miracles performed and cured diseases by magical methods. One of them could transfer the disease of another to his own body, and though he suffered temporary inconvenience and pain, it was never for very long, for he was a stout fellow and soon recovered. An early activity of the sect was the smashing of idols in Buddhist and Taoist temples and the fact that they could reduce to dust and splinters some of the most powerful gods in China without appearing to suffer any ill effects indicated their power and brought them many new adherents. In their zeal they destroyed the Confucian tablets in the schools and the images in the Catholic churches.
The sect had been growing as a religious body for several years until in 1850 it was turned into an anti-dynastic movement with the avowed purpose of overthrowing the Manchus and setting up a new regime. There was nothing new about the idea. There had been for generations sporadic attempts to drive them out of China, and in no part of the country could a movement of this sort gain stronger support than in and around rebellious Canton. This was a very appropriate time to launch a campaign of this sort, for British and French troops had humbled and weakened the Manchus and had shown that their soldiers were not the powerful fighting men they had been in the past.
It was not a very difficult matter to turn this religious body into an efficient fighting machine, for the converts had been regimented and disciplined. Obedience to the Ten Commandments was enjoined on pain of death, and men and women were executed for the vague crime of being sinful. In preparation for the time when he would succeed the Manchus and become an emperor of China, Hung had a brass crown made for himself and assumed the title of “Heavenly King.” There were a number of other kings, each having particular royal duties to perform.
The rebels, who now called themselves Taipings, “Great Pure,” swept northward in a rabble which constantly increased in number as town after town fell before them. The Imperial forces which had never been very formidable had suffered defeats by the attacks of British and French troops and were sadly disorganized. In a very short time the Taipings were in complete control of the ancient and important city of Nanking where Hung set up his court and ruled practically all of South China for almost ten years. While here he sent for his old teacher, the Rev. Mr. Roberts, to come and help him “propagate the gospel and administer the ordinance of baptism.” But the intimate and friendly relations of the past were not resumed. Mr. Roberts attended a comic opera court. The Heavenly King who punished adultery with death had emulated Solomon in the number of wives and concubines in his harem. But it was over the rites of baptism that the two had a final quarrel. Mr. Roberts failed in his attempt to get the Heavenly King to decree the practice of total immersion and left him in anger.
He was not the only missionary who had a change of heart regarding Hung and his sect. Having been converted by tracts, Hung became a producer of them; and his works were printed by the million. He was an accomplished essay writer; and his tracts were probably of a higher literary standard than those turned out by the missionaries to whom Chinese was a secondary language. As the tracts fell into their hands, they were given their most enthusiastic approval. This is not surprising considering the fact that most of them were paraphrases of tracts the missionaries themselves had written, but composed in better style. The joy of the missionaries was as great as was their disillusionment later. The rapid spread of the sect appeared to justify the conclusion that prayers had been answered and that mass conversions by the million might be expected. In many parts of the world, and especially in England and America, devout Christians prayed earnestly for the success of the Taipings. But by 1860 these prayers had ceased, and most of the suppliants were hoping that Heaven had been just a little deaf. Hung had started as a Christian convert - one of the very few in China - and the missionaries at first had been willing to overlook his unorthodox practices. But as he grew in power he became less and less of a Christian fanatic and more and more of a cruel tyrant.
There had been widespread unrest under the Manchus for generations; and as the weakness of the government had been demonstrated by the trouncings given it by the small French and British forces, it was inevitable that there should be an attempt made to overthrow the dynasty. That the translation of the Bible by Morrison and the publication of tracts written by his one convert should be the cause of such a great rebellion with such an appalling loss of life was just a curious manifestation of the workings of fate.
By an equally curious coincidence two other foreigners, also one an American and the other a Briton, played leading parts in bringing the Taiping Rebellion to a close after almost half of the country had been devastated and the loss of life amounted to about twenty-five millions. The initiative was taken by Frederick Ward, of Salem, who served the usual Salem apprenticeship of sailing ships and then deserted the sea for soldiering. At the age of sixteen he tried to run away from home to join the American troops in the Mexican War, and his parents in order to prevent any further escapades of this sort sent him to a military academy. After two years in school he was off on a series of adventures in many parts of the world which continued until his death. He took part in a number of revolutions in Central and South America and was an assistant to William Walker in that adventurer’s attempt to set up himself as the head of a Yankee republic in Nicaragua.
He was not a champion of just causes, a chivalrous defender of the weak, nor did he pretend to be. As a brave and experienced soldier his services were of value in any armed conflict and were openly for sale. There is good reason to believe that, like a genuine Yankee, he drove a hard bargain with his employers and convincing evidence that once the bargain was made, he served faithfully. That was his record in China and must be accepted as his standard of conduct, for little is known about the details of his activities in other countries.
News of the progress of the Taiping Rebellion had a personal interest to Ward, for he had made a number of visits to China Coast ports while on sailing ships. He itched to get into the fight and left New York where he had attempted to settle down and go into business with his father. He rode on horseback all the way from New York to San Francisco where he was employed as mate on a boat sailing to Shanghai. He had at this time no definite idea as to which side he would join, for he did not know which one would offer the greatest rewards. He knew that both the Taipings and the Imperialists were employing foreigners in large numbers, and he also knew that no matter which side he joined, there was more money to be made in a wealthy country like China than in any of the impoverished little Latin-American republics he had been fighting for or against. He had ambitious plans. Before this he had been only one of the many officers on the pay roll of some dictator or would-be dictator. His idea now was to organize a small army of his own which would enable him to demand a high price in cash for his services and might lead to great power and glory. A resolute and experienced soldier in command of a small but efficient army migh
t travel far. With less abilities than Ward the British adventurer Brook had become rajah of Sarawak. He may have dreamed of accomplishing in China what Walker had so nearly accomplished in Nicaragua, possibly of supplanting the Manchus himself. In order to prepare the way for his adventures he relinquished his rights as an American citizen, acquired Chinese nationality and married a Chinese wife.
On his arrival in Shanghai Ward found some differences of opinion, not only as to the merits of the Taiping cause, but also as to which party was likely to be victorious. He kept his plans to himself and for a time was employed as mate on a Yangtze sailing ship which gave him an excellent opportunity to survey the military situation; for his voyage took him through an important part of the territory occupied by the Taipings. On his return to Shanghai his plans were matured and definite and he had decided to support the Manchus if the proper financial arrangements could be made.
He must have been a good salesman to get the approval of the Chinese officials to the ambitious scheme he laid before them. He proposed to organize a small army of a few hundred foreigners who would be recruited from the Shanghai water front, equipped, and paid by the Imperial government. He was to be in complete charge of the expedition and in addition to his salary was to be paid a reward for every city taken from the Taipings. If Ward’s plans for a series of swift and smashing victories had succeeded, he would, in a year, have been the richest foreigner in China, with ample means to equip and maintain an army which would presumably be able to march from one end of the country to the other. The prospects of his friend, William Walker, had not been half so promising when he had set out on his temporarily successful attempt to make himself the ruler of Nicaragua.
Recruiting of men in Shanghai was easy. The British and French were anchored there in preparation for further developments. The harbor was crowded with merchant ships, and the comparatively high wages offered by Ward encouraged many desertions. The Chinese officials, having paid out money, were characteristically demanding action; and after a brief period of training, the important stronghold of Sung-kiang was attacked. Ward’s plan was to bring his two hundred men to the edge of the city wall under cover of darkness and make a surprise assault at dawn. His rowdy henchmen spoiled his strategy by staging a drunken carousal that gave the Taipings ample warning. The attack was a complete failure. It was all over in a few minutes, and Ward’s men streamed back to Shanghai carrying many dead and wounded.
A second force was organized, captured the city, and Ward collected prize money which was variously estimated at between $45,000 and $133,000. No guess was ever made of the loot he and his officers carried away, but its value must have been very large. Certainly from that time until his death Ward was generally considered to be a very wealthy man.
Attempts to take other cities were not successful. In one of them a few months after the Sungkiang victory Ward was wounded and went to France for treatment. His army was inactive during his absence and when he returned, he had worked out an entirely new plan of organization. At the beginning he had had the conventional contempt of the foreigner for the Chinese as a fighting man, but his experience against the poorly equipped rabble of Taiping soldiery had caused him to change his opinions. His plan now was for an army in which only the officers would be foreigners who would train and direct Chinese troops. In spite of the series of defeats he had suffered, he was able to get the officials to finance this larger and more expensive organization. The foreign recruits still came from the Shanghai water front, but as Ward was now looking only for officers he made a more careful selection. He preferred men who could qualify as drill masters; and before his new army of several thousand were sent against the Taipings, there was a long period of drill and training. The result was the creation of the “Ever Victorious Army,” an organization which justified its name in a series of battles in which there was not a single defeat. By the autumn of 1862 Ward’s army had cleared the rebels from the vicinity of Shanghai and was preparing for an assault on Soochow and Nanking when he was mortally wounded. By driving the Taipings away from the Settlements which they were preparing to attack, Ward became Shanghai’s first and only hero.
His first attempt to organize an army had met with no support in Shanghai. There was general agreement that he was a dangerous adventurer. After years of experience with the weak, shifty, and undependable Manchus, foreigners would have welcomed their overthrow if rule by the Taipings could have offered a satisfactory substitute. For some time the British wavered but then concluded that the inefficient government of the Manchus was better than anything the Taipings could set up, and gave the Imperialists their support. The British admiral who a few months previously had held Ward as a prisoner gave him all the help possible in his final battles. The military machine Ward had created had broken the back of the Taiping Rebellion, and at the time of his death he was the most important foreigner in China. The problem of who should succeed him and complete the work he had undertaken was the most serious one the Chinese government had to solve.
The first appointment went to Burgevine, one of number of Americans who had been associated with Ward, but he failed to hold the loyalty of his men and made the fatal mistake of quarreling with the officials who were responsible for supplying him with funds. The Chinese government was glad to adopt the official British suggestion that the post be given to Captain Charles Gordon who was detached from the British army for this special service. He improved and strengthened Ward’s army and continued successful assaults against rebel strongholds. Within a few months one of the Taiping “kings” had been captured and beheaded, the others were in flight, and the movement had collapsed.
Every historian has credited Ward and Gordon with having put down the rebellion, but the respective credit due to each has been apportioned along national lines. Americans have claimed that Ward played the more important role, and Britons have been equally insistent that Gordon was the real hero.
Chinese appear to have placed a higher valuation on the services of Ward than of Gordon. His body was buried in the courtyard of the Confucian temple at Sungkiang which had been his headquarters at the time of his death. A proposal to erect a temple in his honor was dropped at the time because of objections by American missionaries; but the project was carried out fourteen years later, and he became the first and only foreigner to be made a Chinese saint. The Chinese text of the memorial inscriptions have been translated:
A wonderful hero from beyond the seas, the fame of whose loyalty reaches around the world, has sprinkled China with his azure blood.
A happy seat among the clouds and temples standing for a thousand years makes known to all the faithfulness of his heart.
For more than forty years the temple was cared for by the Chinese government, and the spirit of Ward comforted in the Chinese manner by the annual offering of sacrifices of food and wine and the burning of sticks of incense. But when the Republicans under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen finally brought about the abdication of the Manchus they remembered that this once powerful dynasty would have collapsed several generations earlier if it had not been for Ward. Sun’s father had been a Taiping rebel and many of his followers from regions in and around Canton had similar family affiliations. The sainthood of Ward was forgotten and the tomb neglected.
After the conclusion of the first World War when veterans organized the American Legion in Shanghai, they named their port after Ward, organized annual Memorial Day pilgrimages to the temple and undertook its care.
Morrison, Roberts, Ward, Gordon! Four foreign devils who did much to change the history of the flowery kingdom!
XIII
The city the foreign devils built
“Men, not walls, make a city.”
When the Treaty of Nanking was negotiated in 1842 the British demanded a small plot of ground at Shanghai where they could build a settlement for British traders to live in and carry on their business. The Chinese picked out a spot which was of the least value to themselves and at the same time one
that would not encourage the red-faced foreigners to make a prolonged stay. The site was a mud flat. The foreshore was flooded with every high tide; the hinterland was covered with mosquito-infested rice fields.
The walled town of Shanghai was a mean place. It was actually not important enough to justify the dignity of a wall which had been erected, solely as a protection against the raids of Japanese pirates. There were few among the foreigners on the China Coast who had confidence in the stability of the place and only one or two who had any visions of its future greatness. It was not on the broad Yangtze but about ten miles from its mouth on the unimportant Whangpoo. Silt deposited by this muddy river formed a bar across its mouth which was a constant threat to navigation even in the days of the shallow-draft sailing ships. Many thought that Wuhu or Foochow or beautiful Chinkiang would be more important as a port. They were certainly more attractive as places in which to live. For a long time there were more foreign residents in Ningpo than in Shanghai.
The little settlement grew very slowly but it grew steadily. Any Chinese hopes that foreigners would dislike the place so much that they would move away were disappointed. It was a horrible place to live in but a good place to make money and that is what the foreign devils came to China for. Instead of going away, more of them came.
The British having secured a settlement, the French also demanded one and were given the land between the so-called English settlement and the walled city. Not to be left behind, the American consul, who was a merchant and carried on his consular duties in his spare time, also demanded a settlement. The Chinese authorities didn’t know that this was an idea the consul had thought of all by himself and that Washington didn’t know anything about the matter. Perhaps the Chinese hoped that if they gave these foreign devils settlements alongside each other they would, after the fashion of barbarians, fight and kill each other and so rid China of their presence. At any rate Americans were given land to the north of Soochow Creek, the Honkow section which is at the moment in the possession of the Japanese. The three plots of land were all about the same size, each consisting of about two square miles.
