China

by Demetrius Charles Boulger

One of the last acts of Taoukwang's reign showed to what a depth of mental hesitation and misery he had sunk. It seems that the Chinese New Year's day—February 12, 1850—was to be marked by an eclipse of the sun, which was considered very inauspicious, and as the emperor was especially susceptible to superstitious influences, he sought to get out of the difficulty, and to avert any evil consequences, by decreeing that the new year should begin on the previous day. But all-powerful as a Chinese emperor is, there are some things he cannot do, and the good sense of the Chinese revolted against this attempt to alter the course of nature. The imperial decree was completely disregarded, and received with expressions of derision, and in several towns the placards were torn down and defaced. Notwithstanding the eclipse, the Chinese year began at its appointed time. Some excuse might be made for Taoukwang on the ground of ill-health, for he was then suffering from the illness which carried him off a few weeks later. His health had long been precarious, the troubles of his reign had prematurely aged him, and he had experienced a rude shock from the death, at the end of 1849, of his adopted mother, toward whom he seems to have preserved the most affectionate feelings. From the first day of his illness its gravity seems to have been appreciated, and an unfavorable issue expected. On February 25, a grand council was held in the emperor's bed-chamber, and the emperor wrote in his bed an edict proclaiming his fourth son his heir and chosen successor. Taoukwang survived this important act only a very short time, but the exact date of his death is uncertain. There is some reason for thinking that his end was hastened by the outbreak of a fire within the Imperial City, which threatened it with destruction. The event was duly notified to the Chinese people in a proclamation by his successor, in which he dilated on the virtues of his predecessor, and expressed the stereotyped wish that he could have lived a hundred years.

Taoukwang was in his sixty-ninth year, having been born on September 12, 1781, and the thirty years over which his reign had nearly extended were among the most eventful, and in some respects the most unfortunate, in the annals of his country. When he was a young man, the power of his grandfather, Keen Lung, was at its pinnacle, but the misfortunes of his father's reign had prepared him for the greater misfortunes of his own, and the school of adversity in which he had passed the greater portion of his life had imbued him only with the disposition to bear calamity, and not the vigor to grapple with it. Yet Taoukwang was not without many good points, and he seems to have realized the extent of the national trouble, and to have felt acutely his inability to retrieve what had been lost. He was also averse to all unnecessary display, and his expenditure on the court and himself was less than that of any of his predecessors or successors. He never wasted the public money on his own person, and that was a great matter. His habits were simple and manly.

Although Taoukwang's reign had been marked by unqualified misfortune, he seems to have derived consolation from the belief that the worst was over, and that as his authority had recovered from such rude shocks it was not likely to experience anything worse. He had managed to extricate himself from a foreign war, which was attended with an actual invasion of a most alarming character, without any diminution of his authority. The symptoms of internal rebellion which had revealed themselves in more than one quarter of the empire had not attained any formidable dimensions, and seemed likely to pass away without endangering the Chinese constitution. Taoukwang may have hoped that while he had suffered much he had saved his family and dynasty from more serious calamities, and that on him alone had fallen the resentment of an offended Heaven. The experience of the next fifteen years was to show how inaccurately he had measured the situation, and how far the troubles of the fifteen years following his death were to exceed those of his reign; for just as he had inherited from his father, Kiaking, a legacy of trouble, so did he pass on to his son an inheritance of misfortune and difficulty, rendered all the more onerous by the pretension of supreme power without the means to support it.

The accession of Prince Yihchoo—who took the name of Hienfung, which means "great abundance," or "complete prosperity"—to the throne threatened for a moment to be disturbed by the ambition of his uncle, Hwuy Wang, who, it will be remembered, had attempted to seize the throne from his brother Taoukwang. This prince had lived in retirement during the last years of his brother's reign, and the circumstances which emboldened him to again put forward his pretensions will not be known until the state history of the Manchu dynasty is published. His attempt signally failed, but Hienfung spared his life, while he punished the ministers, Keying and Muchangah, for their supposed apathy, or secret sympathy with the aspirant to the imperial office, by dismissing them from their posts. When Hienfung became emperor he was less than twenty years of age, and one of his first acts was to confer the title of Prince on his four younger brothers, and to associate them in the administration with himself. This was a new departure in the Manchu policy, as all the previous emperors had systematically kept their brothers in the background. Hienfung's brothers became known in the order of their ages as Princes Kung, Shun, Chun, and Fu, and as Hienfung was the fourth son of Taoukwang, they were also distinguished numerically as the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth princes. Although Hienfung became emperor at a time of great national distress, he was so far fortunate that an abundant harvest, in the year 1850, tended to mitigate it, and by having recourse to the common Chinese practice of "voluntary contributions," a sufficiently large sum was raised to remove the worst features of the prevailing scarcity and suffering. But these temporary and local measures could not improve a situation that was radically bad, or allay a volume of popular discontent that was rapidly developing into unconcealed rebellion.

An imperial proclamation was drawn up by the Hanlin College in which Hienfung took upon himself the whole blame of the national misfortunes, but the crisis had got far beyond a remedy of words. The corruption of the public service had gradually alienated the sympathies of the people. Justice and probity had for a time been banished from the civil service of China. The example of the few men of honor and capacity served but to bring into more prominent relief the faults of the whole class. Justice was nowhere to be found; the verdict was sold to the highest bidder. The guilty, if well provided in worldly goods, escaped scot-free; the poor suffered for their own frailties as well as the crimes of wealthier offenders. There was seen the far from uncommon case of individuals sentenced to death obtaining substitutes for the capital punishment. Offices were sold to men who had never passed an examination, and who were wholly illiterate, and the sole value of office was as the means of extortion. The nation was heavily taxed, but the taxes to the state were only the smaller part of the sums wrung from the people of the Middle Kingdom. How was honor, or a sense of duty, to be expected from men who knew that their term of office must be short, and who had to receive their purchase money and the anticipated profit before their post was sold again to some fresh and possibly higher bidder? The officials waxed rich on ill- gotten wealth, and a few individuals accumulated enormous fortunes, while the government sank lower and lower in the estimation of the people. It lost also in efficiency and striking power. A corrupt and effeminate body of officers and administrators can serve but as poor defenders for an embarrassed prince and an assailed government against even enemies who are in themselves insignificant and not free from the vices of a corrupt society and a decaying age, and it was only on such that Hienfung had in the first place to lean against his opponents. Even his own Manchus, the warlike Tartars, who, despite the smallness of their numbers, had conquered the whole of China, had lost their primitive virtue and warlike efficiency in the southern climes which they had made their home. To them the opulent cities of the Chinese had proved as fatal as Capua to the army of the Carthaginian, and, as the self-immolations of Chapoo and Chinkiangfoo proved to have no successors, they showed themselves unworthy of the empire won by their ancestors. For the first time since the revolt of Wou Sankwei, the Manchus were brought face to face with a danger threatening their right of conquest; yet on the eve of the Taeping Rebellion all Hienfung could think of to oppose his foes with was fine words as to his shortcomings and lavish promises of amendment.

Among the secret societies the Triads were the first to give a political and dynastic significance to their propaganda. The opening sentence of the oath of membership read as follows: "We combine everywhere to recall the Ming and exterminate the barbarians, cut off the Tsing and await the right prince." But as there were none of the Mings left, and as their name had lost whatever hold it may have possessed on the minds of the Chinese people, this proclaimed object tended rather to deter than to invite recruits to the society. Yet if any secret society shared in the origination of the Taeping Rebellion that credit belongs to the Triads, whose anti-Manchu literature enjoyed a wide circulation through Southern China, and they may have had a large share in drafting the programme that the Taeping leader, Tien Wang, attempted to carry out.

The individual on whom that exalted title was subsequently bestowed had a very common origin, and sprang from an inferior race. Hung-tsiuen, such was his own name, was the son of a small farmer near Canton, and he was a hakka, a despised race of tramps who bear some resemblance to our gypsies. He was born in the year 1813, and he seems to have passed all his examinations with special credit; but the prejudice on account of his birth prevented his obtaining any employment in the civil service of his country. He was therefore a disappointed aspirant to office, and at such a period it was not surprising that he should have become an enemy of the constituted authorities and the government. As he could not be the servant of the state he set himself the ambitious task of being its master, and with this object in view he resorted to religious practices in order to acquire a popular reputation, and a following among the masses. He took up his residence in a Buddhist monastery; and the ascetic deprivations, the loud prayers and invocations, the supernatural counsels and meetings, were the course of training which every religious devotee adopts as the proper novitiate for those honors based on the superstitious reverence of mankind which are sometimes no inadequate substitute for temporal power and influence, even when they fail to pave the way to their attainment. He left his place of seclusion to place himself at the head of the largest party of rebels, who had made their headquarters in the remote province of Kwangsi, and he there proclaimed himself as Tien Wang, which means the Heavenly Prince, and as an aspirant to the imperial dignity. Gradually the rebels acquired possession of the whole of the territory south of the Canton River, and when they captured the strong and important military station at Nanning the emperor sent three commissioners, one of them being his principal minister Saichangah, to bring them to reason, but the result was not encouraging, and although the Taepings were repulsed in their attempt on Kweiling, they remained masters of the open part of the province. One of the Chinese officers had the courage to write and tell the emperor that "the outlaws were neither exterminated nor made prisoners." Notwithstanding the enormous expenditure on the war and the collection of a large body of troops the imperial forces made no real progress in crushing the rebels. Fear or inexperience prevented them from coming at once to close quarters with the Taepings, when their superior numbers must have decided the struggle in their favor and nipped a most formidable rebellion in the bud. That some of Hienfung's officers realized the position can be gathered from the following letter, written at this period by a Chinese mandarin: "The whole country swarms with rebels. Our funds are nearly at an end, and our troops few; our officers disagree, and the power is not concentrated. The commander of the forces wants to extinguish a burning wagonload of fagots with a cupful of water. I fear we shall hereafter have some serious affair—that the great body will rise against us, and our own people leave us." The military operations in Kwangsi languished during two years, although the tide of war declared itself, on the whole, against the imperialists; but the rebels themselves were exposed to this danger—that they were exclusively dependent on the resources of the province, and that these being exhausted, they were in danger of being compelled to retire into Tonquin. It was at this exceedingly critical moment that Tien Wang showed himself an able leader of men by coming to the momentous decision to march out of Kwangsi, and invade the vast and yet untouched provinces of Central China. If the step was more the pressure of dire need than the inspiration of genius, it none the less forms the real turning-point in the rebellion.

Tien Wang announced his decision by issuing a proclamation, in the course of which he declared that he had received "the Divine commission to exterminate the Manchus, and to possess the empire as its true sovereign"; and, as it was also at this time that his followers became commonly known as Taepings, it may be noted that the origin of this name is somewhat obscure. According to the most plausible explanation it is derived from the small town of that name, situated in the southwest corner of the province of Kwangsi, where the rebel movement seems to have commenced. Another derivation gives it as the style of the dynasty which Tien Wang hoped to found, and its meaning as "Universal peace." Having called in all his outlying detachments and proclaimed his five principal lieutenants by titles which have been rendered as the northern, southern, eastern, western and assistant kings, Tien Wang began his northern march in April, 1852. At the town of Yungan, on the eastern borders of the province of Kwangsi, where he seems to have hesitated between an attack on Canton and the invasion of Hoonan, an event occurred which threatened to break up his force. The Triad chiefs, who had allied themselves with Tien Wang, were superior in knowledge and station to the immediate followers of the Taeping leader, and they took offense at the arrogance of his lieutenants after they had been elevated to the rank of kings. These officers, who possessed no claim to the dignity they had received, assumed the yellow dress and insignia of Chinese royalty, and looked down on all their comrades, especially the Triad organizers, who thought themselves the true originators of the rebellion. Irritated by this treatment, the Triads took their sudden and secret departure from the Taeping camp, and hastened to make their peace with the imperialists. Of these Triads one chief, named Chang Kwoliang, received an important command, and played a considerable part in the later stages of the struggle.

The defection of the Triads put an end to the idea of attacking Canton, and the Taepings marched to attack Kweiling, where the Imperial Commissioners still remained. Tien Wang's assault was repulsed with some loss, and, afraid of discouraging his troops by any further attempt to seize so strong a place, he marched into Hoonan. Had the imperial commanders, who had shown no inconsiderable capacity in defense, exhibited as much energy in offensive measures, they might then and there have annihilated the power of the Taepings. Had they pursued the Taeping army they might have harassed its rear, delayed its progress, and eventually brought it to a decisive engagement at the most favorable moment. But the Imperial Commissioners did nothing, being apparently well satisfied with having rid themselves of such troublesome neighbors. The advance of the Taepings across the vast province of Hoonan was almost unopposed. The towns were unprepared to resist an assailant, and it was not until Tien Wang reached the provincial capital, Changsha, that he encountered any resistance worthy of the name. Some vigorous preparations had been made here to resist the rebels. Not merely was there a garrison in the place, but it so happened that Tseng Kwofan, a man of considerable ability and of an influential family, was residing near the town. Tseng had held several offices in the public service, and, as a member of the Hanlin, enjoyed a high position and reputation; but he happened to be at his own home in retirement in consequence of the death of a near relation when tidings of the approaching Taepings reached him, and he at once made himself responsible for the defense of Changsha. He threw himself with all the forces his influence or resources enabled him to collect into that town, and at the same time he ordered all the militia of the province to collect and harass the enemy. He called upon all those who had the means to show their duty to the state and sovereign by raising recruits or by promising rewards to those volunteers who would serve in the army against the rebels. Had the example of Tseng Kwofan been generally followed, it is not too much to say that the Taepings would never have got to Nankin. When the rebels reached Changsha, therefore, they found the gates closed, the walls manned, and the town victualed for a siege. They attempted to starve the place into surrender, and to frighten the garrison into yielding by threats of extermination; but when these efforts failed they delivered three separate assaults, all of which were repulsed. After a siege of eighty days, and having suffered very considerable losses, the Taepings abandoned the attack, and on the 1st of December resumed their march northward, which, if information could have been rapidly transmitted, would have soon resulted in their overthrow. On breaking up from before Changsha they succeeded in seizing a sufficient number of junks and boats to cross the great inland lake of Tungting, and on reaching the Yangtsekiang at Yochow they found that the imperial garrison had fled at the mere mention of their approach. The capture of Yochow was important, because the Taepings acquired there an important arsenal of much-needed weapons and a large supply of gunpowder, which was said to have been the property of Wou Sankwei. Thus, well equipped and supplying their other deficiencies by celerity of movement, they attacked the important city of Hankow, which surrendered without a blow. The scarcely less important town of Wouchang, on the southern and opposite bank of the river, was then attacked, and carried after a siege of a fortnight. The third town of Hanyang, which forms, with the others, the most important industrial and commercial hive in Central China, also surrendered without any attempt at resistance, and this striking success at once restored the sinking courage of the Taepings, and made the danger from them to the dynasty again wear an aspect of the most pressing importance.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the effect of this success on the spirits of the Taepings, who had been seriously discouraged before they achieved this gratifying result. The capture of these towns removed all their most serious causes of doubt, and enabled them to repay themselves for the losses and hardships they had undergone, while it also showed that the enterprise they had in hand was not likely to prove unprofitable. After one month's rest at Hankow, and having been joined by many thousands of new followers, the Taepings resolved to pursue their onward course. To tell the truth, they were still apprehensive of pursuit from Tseng Kwofan, who had been joined by the Triad loader, Chang Kwoliang; but there was no ground for the fear, as these officials considered themselves tied to their own province, and unfortunately the report of the success of the imperialists in Hoonan blinded people to the danger in the Yangtse Valley from the Taepings. The Taepings resumed active operations with the capture of Kiukiang and Ganking, and in March, 1853, they sat down before Nankin. The siege continued for a fortnight, but notwithstanding that there was a large Manchu force in the Tartar city, which might easily have been defended against an enemy without artillery, the resistance offered was singularly and unexpectedly faint-hearted. The Taepings succeeded in blowing in one of the gates, the townspeople fraternized with the assailants, and the very Manchus who had defied Sir Hugh Gough in 1842 surrendered their lives and their honor to a force which was nothing more than an armed rabble. The Tartar colony at Nankin, numbering 2,000 families, had evidently lost the courage and discipline which could alone enable them to maintain their position in China. Instead of dying at their posts they threw themselves on the mercy of the Taeping leader, imploring him for pity and for their lives when the gate was blown in by Tien Wang's soldiery. Their cowardice helped them not; of 20,000 Manchus not one hundred escaped. The tale rests on undoubted evidence. A Taeping who took part in the massacre said, "We killed them all, to the infant in arms; we left not a root to sprout from, and the bodies of the slain we cast into the Yangtse."