II. NEW PORTS AND OPENING OF THE YANGTZE.
Seven new coast ports—Admiral Hope's Yangtze expedition—His relations with Taiping rebels—Hankow, Kiukiang, and Chinkiang opened to trade—Panic in Hankow, and exodus of population for fear of rebels.
The new ports opened to trade—Tientsin, Newchwang, and Chefoo in the North; Swatow, and two Formosan ports; Kiungchow in Hainan—added considerably to the range of foreign commerce, and necessitated a large extension of the foreign customs and of the consular services. But the most important feature in the new arrangements was the effective opening of the river Yangtze. It was interesting, as giving access to the commercial centre of the empire; and as bringing foreigners into direct contact, possibly conflict, with the Taiping rebels. For the banks of the great river were at the time checkered with the alternate strongholds of rebels and imperialists. Trade must therefore either be carried on on sufferance from both, or be efficiently protected from the interference of either belligerent. Obviously this was a matter to be gone about discreetly.
The course and capabilities of the great waterway, and the disposition of the military forces on its banks, had been well reconnoitred by Lord Elgin himself in 1858; and the ports to be opened, which were left unnamed in the treaty, were pretty definitely indicated in the survey then made. There were to be three in all. Chinkiang, which had been recently recovered from the rebels, situated at the intersection of the Imperial Canal and the Yangtze-kiang, was definitely fixed. The two others farther up river remained to be selected.
The opening of the river was by treaty made contingent on the restoration of imperial authority on its banks; but as there was nothing more likely to accelerate that consummation than commercial traffic on the river, the Chinese Government acquiesced in the British authorities making the experiment, at their own risk as regarded possible trouble with the insurgents. The object was to "throw open the general coasting trade of the river"; and Lord Elgin, on his departure from China, left the undertaking in the hands of Admiral Hope, to whom he attached Mr Parkes, withdrawn for the occasion from his duties as commissioner in Canton.
FIRST BRITISH CONSULATE AT KOLENGSOO, AMOY, 1844.
The admiral started from Shanghai in advance of Mr Parkes, with a squadron of light-draught steamers, on February 11, 1861. He carried an exploring expedition composed of Colonel Sarel, Captain Blakiston, Mr Shereshewsky, and Dr A. Barton, whose proceedings are reported in Blakiston's 'Five Months on the Upper Yangtze'; several American missionaries; two Frenchmen, afterwards distinguished, MM. Eugène Simon and A. Dupuis, the latter proving the means of eventually giving Tongking to France; a French military attaché; Lieut.-Colonel Wolseley, D.A.Q.-M.G.; and a delegation from the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce, with several private persons. Whether the pilots presumed upon light draught and steam power, or whether the course of the river had changed so much since the previous surveys were made, the vessels got stranded, one after another, in the estuary; and as each grounded a companion was told off to stand by her, so that before they had got clear of what is known as the Langshan Crossing (the home of the famous breed of black poultry) the admiral's tender, the Coromandel, was the only vessel left in a mobile condition. Not to lose time, the admiral determined to push on in that non-combatant craft to Nanking, the rebel capital, and test the temper and intentions of the Taipings.
As the steamer slowly approached the landing-place, in bright sunshine and a still atmosphere, the batteries on the river front were crowded, but remained silent.
"What will you do, sir, if they fire?" the admiral was asked.
"Oh, I will just drop down out of range, and send and ask them what they mean by it," he replied, with deep deliberate utterance, not unlike Beaconsfield's.
An officer was sent ashore to parley, some rebel officers came on board, and the prospect of an amicable understanding appeared to be satisfactory. It was a critical juncture in the history both of the Taiping movement itself and of foreign relations with it and with China. Without exaggeration, it may be said that the proximate fate of the Taipings then lay hidden within the brain of Sir James Hope, and each occasion of contact between him and them during the next few months added its definite contribution to the data on which the momentous decision was ultimately taken. Although he had then no higher opinion of the Taipings than that they were "an organised band of robbers," the admiral was resolved to give them fair play; and since no diplomatic intercourse could be held with insurgents, he determined to take relations with them under his own supervision (March 8, 1861). "The principle I shall adopt being that in the district of country of which they hold possession the Taiping authorities must be regarded as those of the de facto Government, ... and this principle being likely to lead to the payment of double duties (to rebels and imperialists) on all trade conducted at places in their possession, I am desirous of definite instructions on the subject."
The first point to be settled with the rebel authorities at Nanking was the non-molestation of British traffic passing up and down the river within range of their batteries or otherwise, to secure which object it had been determined to station a ship of war abreast of the city. The sanction of the Taiping chiefs was wanted to this arrangement, which, however, without such sanction, it would have been all the more necessary to insist upon. The second point affected the general relations between foreign trade and the rebel movement. The next aim of the admiral was to arrive at an understanding with the leaders for the neutralisation of Shanghai and Wusung within an area of thirty miles round these two places.
Not being prepared to enter into definite negotiations until the arrival of Mr Parkes, who had not yet joined the expedition, Sir James Hope returned to the squadron which he had left aground in the lower reaches of the river. But thinking the time and the opportunity might be usefully employed in gathering some acquaintance with the Taipings at their headquarters, he landed three volunteers at Nanking, whose presence he ascertained would not be unwelcome to the authorities there. They were to remain in the city as the guests of the rebels till the admiral's return. The party consisted of Lieut.-Colonel Wolseley, Mr P. J. Hughes, vice-consul designate of Kiukiang, and one of the Shanghai delegates. They were joined on shore by the Rev. William Muirhead, missionary, who had reached Nanking by land from Shanghai. The party was thus a thoroughly representative one. On the return of the admiral a week later, accompanied by Mr Parkes, the arrangements for a guard-ship were satisfactorily settled after some puerile obstruction, and the expedition proceeded on its way up the river to Hankow, where, as also at Kiukiang and Chinkiang, consular officers were established; and the Yangtze was declared open by notification in Shanghai on March 18, 1861.
The expedition was fruitful in information concerning the rebels, all tending to confirm the purely destructive character of the movement. Certain incidents of the voyage were also most instructive to the visitors. While the expedition was still at Hankow the Taipings had captured a walled city, fifty miles distant, which had been passed by the squadron on its way up a few days before. The news created a universal panic throughout the three cities, Wuchang, Hanyang, and Hankow, and the scene which followed could not be paralleled. It is thus laconically referred to in the report of the delegates of the Chamber of Commerce: "The abandonment was most complete, not a house nor a shop was open, and it became equally impossible to purchase goods, to check quotations, or pursue inquiries."
One day the deep Han river was so packed with junks that one might almost walk from bank to bank over their mat coverings. The next day everything that could float was crowded with fugitive families with their household stuff huddled precariously on the decks, and such a fleet as, for number and picturesqueness, was probably never seen, covered the broad bosom of the Yangtze, making slow headway under sail against the current.
Mr Parkes, eminently a man of fact, thus describes what he was witness to:—
Darkness fell upon crowds of the people lying with their weeping families, and the débris of their property, under the walls of Wuchang, anxious only to escape from defences that should have proved their protection.... The noise and cries attending their embarkation continued throughout the night, but daylight brought with it a stillness that was not less impressive than the previous commotion. By that time all the fugitives had left the shore, and the river, as far as the eye could reach, was covered with junks and boats of every description bearing slowly away up-stream the bulk of the population of three cities, which a few days before we had computed at 1,000,000 of souls.
Of what came of this and many such another melancholy exodus of humanity, without resources, ready to brave any death rather than fall into the hands of the destroyers, there is no record; and the scene at Hankow, magnified a hundred times, would give an inadequate conception of the havoc of the fifteen years of the Taiping rebellion.