IV. THE LAY-OSBORN FLOTILLA.
Orders sent through Mr Hart to Mr Lay—Fleet equipped under Captain Osborn, R.N.—Ratification of their agreements refused in Peking—Government would not place foreigners in a position of authority—Misunderstandings and final sacrifice of Mr Lay—Ships paid off and sold—Crucial question the recapture of Nanking.
The invincible distrust of foreign auxiliaries which dominates Chinese policy and prevents the empire from ever having an army or a navy, received another signal illustration in the same year in the great fiasco of the Lay-Osborn flotilla. Mr H. N. Lay, Inspector-General of Chinese Maritime Customs, was in England on leave in 1861, his locum tenens in Peking being Mr (now Sir) Robert Hart. Conferences with the Chinese Ministers on the naval weakness of the empire resulted in a very important decision, in consequence of which Mr Hart was empowered to send to Mr Lay orders for certain armed vessels to be officered and manned by Englishmen. Mr Lay executed the rather "large order" according to his lights, engaging Captain Sherard Osborn to command the fleet, which was equipped on a war-footing. The foreign enlistment difficulties of the British Government were overcome, as the Government was by that time ready to go to any length in assisting the Government of China. The fleet duly arrived in China, and Mr Lay and Captain Osborn presented themselves in Peking to obtain ratification of their agreements from the Imperial Government. This was refused, the force was disbanded, and the ships sold, at a heavy pecuniary sacrifice to the Chinese, for they made no demur about payment.
The rock on which the scheme seemed to split was the contention of Mr Lay that the fleet was imperial, and that the commodore should take no orders from viceroys or provincial authorities, but only from the emperor, and through Mr Lay himself. This was a shock to the very edifice of Chinese Government, conceived of as feasible only under the belief that in its helpless condition the Government must accede to anything. But the scheme was really impossible. So also, however, was the alternative of provincialising the naval force, as has been shown by subsequent failures in the attempt to use the services of British officers in the Chinese navy. Such an instance of reckoning without your host was never heard of before or since. It was like a practical joke on a titanic scale. The ships were actually there, manned, officered, and armed. It was a dangerous knot, which had to be promptly cut or untied. Following the line of least resistance, Mr Lay was made the scapegoat, on whose head the Minister "laid both his hands"—rather heavily—"confessing over him the iniquities of all," and sending him away into the wilderness. In the general interest the sacrifice of Mr Lay was perhaps the safest way out of the imbroglio, for he was a pugnacious little man in whose hands despotic power might have been attended with inconvenience. Nevertheless, the blame of the failure belonged to all the parties concerned—to Prince Kung, Wênsiang, Mr Hart, Mr Bruce, and the British Government. They each entered into the scheme with different ideas, more or less vague, except Mr Lay's own, which had perforce to be reduced to the definite when he came to draw up contracts with British naval officers, and to meet the strict requirements of British law. The Chinese Ministers of course could have no conception what a foreign-equipped navy really meant, nor had they probably fully divulged what was really in their mind; Mr Lay and Mr Hart were young men with large ideas, but without experience; Mr Bruce was a man of the world who had seen service, and was, from his position, the most responsible of them all, and therefore the most culpable in deceiving himself, and allowing the British Government to be misled. He approved of the project, or it could never have been carried out. But what was it precisely that he approved of? He "saw with pleasure that Captain Osborn was about to reorganise the preventive service" (October 6, 1862), and as late as February 8, 1863, he wrote to Prince Kung of the "speedy arrival of the steam flotilla which your Imperial Highness has so wisely ordered"—as if it were a pair of official boots! Yet on the arrival of the flotilla it was found that everybody concerned was at cross-purposes, and the question naturally suggests itself, what steps her Majesty's Minister had taken to satisfy himself as to the real intentions of Prince Kung, whether they had been properly transmitted by Mr Hart and correctly interpreted by Mr Lay and fully communicated to her Majesty's Government. It appears that Mr Bruce had, in fact, undergone a change of mind—induced, no doubt, by cogent considerations—during Mr Lay's final sojourn in Peking. Having received a message from the Minister urging a stiff attitude with the Chinese Government and promising the full support of the Legation, Mr Lay proceeded to the Yamên and laid down the law strongly, as his manner was, in the full assurance that he had the British Minister at his back. But after thus burning his boats he found himself abandoned, for reasons of State which he was unable to appreciate. Such was the account of the crisis given at the time by Mr Lay himself to a confidential friend then residing in Peking. For the Chinese Government the scheme was necessarily a leap in the dark. For the British Government it involved a violent reversal of recently declared policy, and on a most important issue. It was consequently a case where extreme and minute precautions against possible misunderstandings would not have been superfluous, yet—so far as has yet been made public, for there is doubtless a missing link in the record—such seem to have been wholly absent from the inception of the enterprise.
The crux of the question, no doubt, was the position of Nanking. The lever Mr Lay employed to secure acceptance of his conditions was the prospect of the immediate capture of the Taiping capital, against which the provincial Government, represented by the Viceroy Tsêng, his brother, and the governor of Kiangsu, Li, were expending their forces. The temptation was exceedingly strong to close with Lay and secure the services—probably much overrated for that particular object—of the new flotilla, were it even by recourse to some ambiguous phrase which might leave a loophole of escape from the agreement when its immediate object had been served. Something like this might have been attempted but for the uncompromising attitude of Li Hung-chang, for it was he who smashed the flotilla scheme. It was true, he allowed, that the assistance of the ships would enable the viceroy's forces to capture the city at once; but, he added confidently, we shall succeed in time by our own resources, and it were better to lose the city and the province, and even the empire itself, than to place such power as Lay demanded in the hands of any foreigner. Burgevine was fresh in the futai's mind—was indeed at that very time in the rebel camp near him. Li's arguments clinched the matter. The flotilla was never commissioned. The whole chapter of experiences of the campaign in Kiangsu has left a vivid impression on the mind of Li Hung-chang: it was the most interesting period of his life, but no incident of it imparts such vivacity to his reminiscences as that of the Lay-Osborn fleet. Nothing warms him to dramatic locution like a reference to that episode.