II. LORD ELGIN'S SECOND MISSION.
Invasion of Peking—Convention of Peking—Establishment of the British Legation—Russian and British, a contrast.
The Chinese perfidy at Taku had of course to be avenged. A formidable expedition was equipped by the Allied Powers, Lord Elgin and Baron Gros being reappointed as plenipotentiaries. The history of the famous Peking campaign of 1860, with its tragic incidents, has been impressed on the world by so many writers, military and civil, most of them actors in the scenes they depict, that the barest outline of events may suffice in this place.
In the preliminary agreement between the two Governments, the British military force was limited to 10,000 effectives; but the number actually placed in the field exceeded that figure by the consent of the French, whose forces were between 6000 and 7000. The British contingent was commanded by General Sir Hope Grant, the French by General Montauban, afterwards created Count Palikao,—"a fine, handsome, soldier-like man, apparently under sixty years of age."
The naval forces were commanded respectively by Vice-Admiral Sir James Hope, "a tall, noble-looking man, with a prepossessing and most gentlemanlike appearance,"[42] and by Admiral Page, "a superior man with a great deal of dry humour, but bad-tempered."[43]
The friction arising between Allies working together, waiting for each other, consulting at every step, taking precedence of each other on alternate days, at first vexatious, was in the end overcome by the tact of the commanders on both sides.
The first operation of war was to occupy the harbour of Chusan as an intermediate base. After that the British force was conveyed in transports to Talien-wan, where they were disembarked, while the French were landed at Chefoo, on the opposite shore of the Gulf of Pechili. At these points preparations were made for the intended descent on the coast of the province of Chihli, between 200 and 300 miles to the westward. The British force included 1000 cavalry in splendid condition, and a battery of Armstrong guns, then for the first time used in active service. The French had no cavalry, the attempts to import horses from Japan were not successful, and the scarcity of draught-animals on their side caused great delay in the sailing of the expedition from the temporary depots. At length on July 26 a fleet of over 200 sail—a magnificent spectacle—carried the two armies to within twenty miles of the Peiho, where they anchored, waiting for favourable weather and a minute reconnaissance.
The one piece of strategy in the campaign was the choice of a landing-place. The Taku forts, which had been strong enough to repulse Sir James Hope with severe loss a year before, had been further strengthened, for to the Chinese it was a matter of life and death to bar the entrance to the Peiho. The chain barrier across the mouth of the river could not be forced under the concentrated fire of the forts; only the lightest draught vessels could approach within five miles; and a frontal attack was not to be thought of. But a decided difference of opinion between the Allied generals had disclosed itself as to the mode of procedure. The French commander was determined to land on the coast to the southward of the forts; the English was still more resolute in selecting as a landing-place the mouth of the Peitang river, eight miles northward of Taku. So irreconcilable were their views that it was agreed that each should go his own way, only starting simultaneously. After more careful study, however, General Montauban came to think better of his own scheme, and proposed to Sir Hope Grant to join him in the landing at Peitang.
So on August 2 the first detachments of 2000 from each army were disembarked, and the campaign proper commenced. The forts at Peitang were easily occupied, "a kind old man" pointing out where there were loaded shells which would explode on foot pressure on a gun-lock laid so as to fire a train. By means of a raised causeway leading through a sea of "briny slush," positions were reached whence the Taku forts could be attacked from the rear. Though bravely defended, the forts on the left bank were captured, and as they commanded those on the opposite bank no resistance was offered by the latter. The Peiho was thus opened for the conveyance of troops and stores to Tientsin, which was made the base of operations for the advance of the Allied armies on Peking.
The military movements were hampered by the presence of the two plenipotentiaries, who stopped on the way to negotiate with the unbeaten foe. Delay was not the only untoward consequence of these proceedings. At one moment a military disaster seemed to have been narrowly escaped. Taking advantage of the singular credulity of the Allies, the Chinese, while engaging them in friendly negotiations, had planned to decoy the army into a convenient camping-ground at Changchia-wan, towards which the troops were marching, when, "To my surprise," writes the commander-in-chief, "we found a strong Tartar picket, who retired on our approach; and a little farther on were seen great bodies of cavalry and infantry, the latter drawn up behind a large nullah to our right front, displaying a number of banners." In the meantime the envoys, Parkes, Loch, and other officers, who had been negotiating with the higher mandarins at Tungchow, a couple of miles off, were seized and made prisoners with their escort, all being subsequently cruelly tortured, and most of them massacred, in accordance with Chinese practice in war.
Sir Hope Grant, finding his army of 4000 men in process of being hemmed in, attacked and routed the Chinese troops on September 18, resuming his march on the 21st, when the remainder of his force had joined him. He had not gone far, however, when the way was again barred, and another action had to be fought at the bridge Pali-chiao, ten miles from Peking, where General Montauban distinguished himself, and whence he derived his title.
Far from owning themselves defeated, the Chinese on the morrow resumed negotiations as between equals. The Imperial Commissioners who had mismanaged the affair were replaced by Prince Kung, a brother of the emperor, who sent letters under a flag of truce, saying he was ready to come to terms, but "said nothing about our poor prisoners." The Allied plenipotentiaries declined to treat until the captives should be returned, whereupon Prince Kung sent another letter saying they were safe, but would only be sent back on the restitution of the Taku forts and the evacuation of the river by the Allied fleets.
Lord Elgin had demanded that he should deliver the Queen's letter in person to the emperor. Prince Kung refused this demand, which Lord Elgin incontinently abandoned. Waxing bolder, Prince Kung next threatened that the entry of the Allied forces into the capital would be followed by the instant massacre of the prisoners. The plenipotentiaries retorted by intimating that the surrender of prisoners was a necessary condition of the suspension of hostilities. A week having been wasted in this vain seesaw, an ultimatum was sent into Peking on September 30. This was answered by the Chinese inviting the Allies to retire to Changchia-wan, the scene of the great defeat of their army, offering to sign the treaty there. And so the contest was maintained until the Allied artillery was planted within sixty yards of the north gate, and the hour was about to strike when the wall was to be battered down.
Most valuable information—the topography of the city—had been supplied by General Ignatieff, who accompanied the Allies. A map which he lent to Sir Hope Grant showed every street and house of importance in Peking, laid down by a scientific member of the Russian mission in the city. The data had been obtained by traversing the streets in a cart, from which angles were taken, while an indicator fixed to the wheel marked the distances covered. Without this plan the attack would have been made from the south side, as proposed by General Montauban, which would have involved a march through the commercial or Chinese quarter, and the surmounting first of the Chinese and then of the Tartar wall. The map made it clear that from every point of view the north side offered the most eligible point of attack, where nothing intervened between a great open plain and the wall of the Manchu city.
Passing over the dramatic incidents of the destruction of the Summer Palace, an act of calculated vengeance for the murder and maltreatment of envoys and prisoners, the flight of the emperor on a hunting tour to Jêho, whence he never returned, the release of the prisoners and their account of the captivity, the new treaty was signed at the Hall of Ceremonies on October 22, 1860, by Prince Kung, "a delicate gentlemanlike man, evidently overcome with fear," and his coadjutor, Hangki. The treaties of Tientsin were ratified, and some further indemnities exacted. The special provisions introduced into the French treaty will be referred to in a subsequent chapter.[44]
The closing scene was marked by a degree of haste somewhat recalling Tientsin in 1858. The very slow advance on Peking brought the climax of the campaign unpleasantly close to the season when communication by water would be shut off by ice; "the weather became bitterly cold, some of the hills being covered with snow." And Sir Hope Grant's never-failing counsellor, Ignatieff, with "his usual extreme kindness," furnished him with the most important information that the Peiho would soon become frozen up and it would be unsafe to linger in Peking. Mr Loch's galloping off with the treaty, as shown in the illustration, was rather typical of the whole business. The treaty as such was of little consequence—the fulfilment of its provisions was everything.
MR LOCH DEPARTS FROM PEKING FOR ENGLAND WITH CHINESE TREATY.
Some lessons, nevertheless, had been learned in the school of diplomatic adversity. Peking was not left without a locum tenens of the Minister, Tientsin was not left without a garrison, and the Taku forts were occupied by the Allies for a couple of years after the final conclusion of peace.
"Ring out the old; ring in the new." There seemed a natural fitness in the Hon. Frederick Bruce succeeding the Earl of Elgin as Minister plenipotentiary, and there was a dramatic finish in the farewell ceremonial when the retiring representative of the Queen vacated the seat of honour, placing therein his younger brother, whom he introduced to Prince Kung as the accredited agent of Great Britain. The new era was inaugurated; a real representative of her Britannic Majesty was installed in the capital of the Son of Heaven.
The season was late, and though two palaces had been granted on lease for the residences of the British and the French Ministers, many alterations and repairs were needed to render them fit for occupation, which could not be effected before the closing of the sea communication by ice. The Ministers therefore resolved to withdraw from Peking for the winter, placing their respective legations in charge of a junior consular officer, Mr Thomas Adkins, who volunteered to hold the post until the return of the plenipotentiaries in the following spring.
Mr Adkins was not the only foreign sojourner in the Chinese capital. There was a French Lazarist priest, Mouilli by name, who, having successfully concealed himself among his native Christians during the military advance of the Allies, emerged from his hiding-place on the triumphant entry of the ambassadors, and showed himself in the streets in a sedan chair with four bearers. There was the permanent Russian establishment within the city, with its unbroken record of 173 years. Originally composed of prisoners taken at the siege of Albazin, it had become a seminary of the Orthodox Church and a political vedette of the Russian empire, invaluable to the two masterful diplomatists who appeared suddenly on the scene in the years 1858 and 1860. The mission served as a speculum through which Russia could look into the inner recesses of the Chinese State, while to the Chinese it was a window of bottle-glass through which the external world was refracted for them. The Russian Government selects its agents on the principle on which we select university crews or All-England elevens—namely, the most fit. So important and far-sighted a scheme as the Peking mission was not left to chance or the claims of seniority, but was maintained in the highest efficiency. Its members—six ecclesiastical and four lay—were changed every ten years. All of them, from the Archimandrite downwards, were accomplished linguists, speaking Chinese like the natives, and masters also of the Manchu and Mongol languages. Their relations with the Chinese officials were unostentatious, yet brotherly. Few secrets, either of administration, dynastic politics, or official intrigue, no communications between the Government, provincial or imperial, and any foreigners, escaped record in the archives of the Russian mission. The personnel were protected from outrage or insult by their own tact and their traditional prestige; and as the Daimios of Japan in their anti-foreign manifestos declared that every foreigner could be insulted with impunity except the Russians, so in China the name was a talisman of security. While the Anglo-French expedition was marching towards Peking the Russian Secretary, M. Popoff, had occasion to leave that city and pass the night at a native inn on the road to Tientsin. The place became filled with the retreating Chinese soldiery, and M. Popoff had the pleasure of hearing their excited conversation respecting himself. They were for dragging him out and killing him on the spot, when the landlord interposed. "That foreigner is a Russian," said he; "it will be dangerous to lay a hand on him."
MONSEIGNEUR MOUILLI.
M. Popoff's errand was to meet General Ignatieff, who was making his way to Peking with the Allied forces. It was of the utmost importance that he should arrive simultaneously with the French and English plenipotentiaries in order to save China from her doom. China's extremity was Russia's opportunity for showing the sincerity of her long unbroken friendship. The foreigners had come to possess themselves of the empire and destroy the dynasty. Their ruthless character was soon to be shown in the burning and pillage of the Summer Palace. The Chinese Court's apprehension of the impending calamity was proved by the flight of the emperor to a quasi-inaccessible retreat. In that terrible crisis no sacrifice would have been deemed by the imperial family too great to "get rid of the barbarians." Confirming their own worst fears as to the designs of the invaders, General Ignatieff revealed to them the only way of salvation. Nothing would arrest the schemes of the Allies but the intervention of a strong Power friendly to China. He had it in his power to make such representations to Baron Gros and Lord Elgin as would induce them to withdraw their troops. This essential service he offered to the Chinese for a nominal consideration. Only a rectification of frontier by inclusion of a sterile region inhabited by robbers and infested by tigers, where no mandarin could make a living, fit only for a penal settlement, with a rugged sea-coast where no Chinese sail was ever seen. Prince Kung jumped at the providential offer of deliverance, and so that great province called Primorsk, with its 600 miles of coast-line, which gave to Russia the dominion of the East—"Vladivostock"—was signed away by the panic-stricken rulers of China. A year later this transaction cropped up in conversation over the teacups, after the business of the day had been disposed of, between Prince Kung and a certain foreign diplomatist, who remarked that there was never the remotest intention on the part of the Allies of keeping a single soldier in China after the treaty was made. The Prince looked aghast, then said solemnly, "Do you mean to say we have been deceived?" "Utterly," replied the other; and then the dejection of the Prince was such as the foreigner, who lived to enjoy a twenty-years' acquaintance with him, declared he never saw in his or any other Chinese countenance. Thus General Ignatieff, without any force, in the vulgar sense, of his own, was adroit enough and bold enough to wield the forces of his belligerent neighbours so as to carry off the only solid fruit of the war, while fulfilling the obligations of friendship for China and denouncing her spoilers.
The Russian envoy had not the same incentive to hurry away from Peking as the other treaty-makers had, for the ice which would imprison them would afford him the most expeditious road for travel homewards through Siberia. He was nearly as much relieved as Prince Kung himself at getting rid of these "barbarians," for then he had the field of diplomacy all to himself. He made his treaty, and departed during the winter by the back door, across Mongolia.
Ignatieff was a man well known in English society, and thoroughly conversant with England. Like most educated Russians, he was affable and sympathetic—a "charming fellow." He was courteous and companionable to the locum tenens of the English Legation, and in taking leave of Mr Adkins expressed the opinion that he would be all right in his isolation so long as the emperor did not return to Peking, but in that event his position would not be an enviable one. However, "if you fear any trouble, go over to the Russian mission: they will take care of you."
The winter of 1860 left the statesmen of China some food for reflection. The thundering legions had passed like a tornado which leaves a great calm behind it. The "still small voice" had also departed, with a province in his chemadán, gained without a shot or even a shout. Two strongly contrasted foreign types had thus been simultaneously presented to the astonished Chinese. Can it be doubted which left the deeper impression?
Preparations were made during the winter for receiving the foreign Ministers in the spring. A department of Foreign Affairs was created under the title of "Tsung-li Koh Kwoh She Yu Yamên," or briefly, "Tsungli-Yamên," the three original members being Prince Kung, Kweiliang, and Wênsiang. The Yamên was established by imperial decrees in January; Mr Bruce and M. Bourboulon arrived in March 1861, when diplomacy proper began, the thread of which will be resumed in a later section.
