Gordon had arrived in China in 1860 in time to share in the last act of the Peking campaign; he passed the year 1861 at Tientsin, where he was highly esteemed as a model man and meritorious officer. In the winter of 1861 he had conferences with Mr Bruce and Prince Kung on the question of suppressing the rebellion; but none of their ideas, nor the policy of the British Government, were then sufficiently advanced to lead to any practical result. Gordon accompanied his corps to Shanghai in the spring of 1862, and was engaged in the operations for clearing the thirty-mile radius under General Staveley, who spoke warmly of his daring reconnoitring services, for which Gordon had been already distinguished in the Crimea. In the following winter he was busy surveying and mapping the country which had been reconquered from the rebels, and in the spring of 1863 he was offered by his chief the leadership of Ward's force. Gordon's was no doubt the best selection that could have been made, having regard only to the abilities which were then recognised in him; for though General Staveley knew him well both in Tientsin and Shanghai, it is not claimed for him, or any one else, that he had prescience of those transcendent qualities and that magnetic power which the subsequent campaign against the rebels was the means of bringing to light. When Gordon took command of the "Ever-Victorious," the force had had two years' training and regular campaigning, and the men were entitled to rank as veteran troops. Gordon, however, was to infuse new life into the corps by his dynamic personality and by the diligent use of the regenerative agency of "Sergeant What's-his-name." The number of foreigners actually employed in the force is doubtful, but detailed returns of killed and wounded in the course of a year's operations gave a hundred names. Gordon's faculty of control was probably more severely tested by his management of that motley foreign crew than of the whole indigenous force; but the best of which it was capable was got out of this fortuitous concourse of men, and under the inspiration of the commander several names of distinction emerged from the cosmopolitan group.
When Gordon took over the command in March 1863 it was six months since the thirty-mile radius had been entirely cleared of rebels, and the first duty of the "Ever-Victorious" was to keep that area clear; its second to carry the war as far as it was able into the regions beyond. Its efficiency, especially for this latter purpose, depended on the support and co-operation of the British and French commanders, whose troops remained in occupation of the treaty port of Shanghai. For a time there was danger of a lapse in this co-operation. The dismissed General Burgevine carried his grievances to Peking, and made such an impression by his plausible address on the American and British Ministers there, that Mr Bruce espoused his cause and wrote strong despatches to the British commander, Staveley (April 10, 1863), urging the reinstatement of Burgevine and the suppression of Gordon, to whom it was to be explained that the step was no reflection on him, &c. Again and again the Minister returned to the charge, both to the commander in Shanghai and to the Foreign Office at home; but the Governor Li was firm, and adduced such cogent reasons for the dismissal of Burgevine that Major-General Brown, who had just succeeded to the British command, joined Li in resolutely protesting against the removal of Gordon, whom, it may be remarked, the English general had never yet seen. The men on the spot prevailed against the man who was theorising from a distance, and on the worst data conceivable, the culprit's own account of himself. Mr Bruce, who, as we have seen, was well acquainted with Gordon, must have had reasons for his policy not given in his official despatches, for these were inadequate and narrow for a man of his large capacity.
We have said Major-General Brown had not then seen Gordon. He had arrived from India in April to relieve General Staveley of the command of the British troops in China. He was a wiry man and of an active temperament, and rapidly mastered the situation. Probably to him is due the credit of the first true perception of what manner of man this young engineer officer was. General Brown was for a few days after his arrival a guest in one of the spacious hongs in the Shanghai settlement, which had a wide verandah, giving access to all the bedrooms. One morning very early the general, excited by a message that had just reached him, rushed round in déshabillé calling for his host with a piece of coarse Chinese paper in his hand. "Do you know Major Gordon?" he said. "Why, yes, a very nice fellow, and reported to be a first-rate officer." "But," exclaimed the general, "he is a genius! Just look what I have received from him from the front," and he unfolded the whitey-brown paper with some rough diagrams, and a few not very legible pencil notes indicating his position and plan of attack on Taitsan (where Captain Holland had been repulsed) and Kuensan,[46] both cities on the line of communication with the provincial capital, Soochow. "The man is a genius," reiterated the general, "and must be supported." A few days later another of these cryptic missives arrived, when a similar scene was repeated with redoubled emphasis. "I tell you that man is a military genius; that's what I call him, a military genius," said the dapper little soldier in his vivacious reiterative manner. "I'll support him for all I am worth." And then he developed his own plan of relieving the "Ever-Victorious" of garrison duty, leaving the whole force—secure of its base—free to engage in aggressive operations. This plan of giving effective support to Gordon's force was carried out to the letter, as subsequently described by the general in his official despatches reporting the capture of Taitsan and Kuensan: "I had a field force acting in conjunction, as a support, moving on the extreme edge of our boundary, ... which was of great assistance to Major Gordon in his operations." He adds: "Kuensan having fallen, Major Gordon now proposes to make it his headquarters; ... and as the futai intends to make Taitsan his headquarters, I shall bring it within the boundary, thus giving the imperialists every confidence to hold it, knowing they could receive support from me at any moment." How vital to the fortunes of the "Ever-Victorious Army" was this decided action of General Brown's was seen when, three months later, General Burgevine had gone over, with a certain following of malcontents, to the Taipings, a movement which suggested to Gordon serious misgivings as to the loyalty of the foreigners remaining in his own force. Burgevine, however, had no success in the rebel camp, and soon, in a secret interview with Gordon, sued for safe-conduct and amnesty. Improving his acquaintance, however, with the new commander of the "Ever-Victorious," Burgevine's next proposal was the bold one of eliminating as between themselves all questions of conflicting loyalty to the respective belligerents by throwing over both, and by joining forces on their own account, to capture Soochow, and there raise an army to march on Peking. It was a partnership which did in nowise commend itself to Gordon, but the proposal served to show how shrewd Li Hung-chang had been in his estimate of the deposed leader.
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.
V. THE END OF THE REBELLION.
Gordon's brilliant campaign—His quarrel with Li Hung-chang—And reconciliation—Other French and English officers co-operate in suppression of rebellion—Russian aid offered.