Gentlemen Rovers

by E. Alexander Powell

Ward, who appreciated the necessity of winning the recognition and confidence of the higher authorities, well knew that the regaining of this sacred city would endear him to the religious heart of China as nothing else could do. But Sunkiang, with its walls twenty feet high and five miles in circumference, and with a garrison of five thousand fanatics to defend those walls, was no easy nut to crack even for a powerful force well supplied with artillery. The idea of its being taken by Ward and his five hundred desperadoes was preposterous, unthinkable, absurd. He first tried the weapon he had so painstakingly forged on a July morning, in 1860. Just as his European critics in Shanghai had prophesied, the attack on Sunkiang proved the most dismal of failures. His stealthy approach being discovered by the Taipings, he was greeted with such a withering fire upon reaching the walls that, being without supports, and perceiving the hopelessness of the situation, he ordered his buglers to sound the retreat.

But Ward was one of those rare men to whom discouragements and disasters are but incidents, annoying but not disheartening, in the day's work. He spent a fortnight in strengthening the weakened morale of his force, and then he tried again, making his onset with the suddenness and fury of a tiger's spring just at break of day. Slipping like ghosts through the grayness of the dawn, Ward and his men stole across the surrounding rice-fields, and were almost under the city walls before the Taiping sentries discovered their approach. As the first rifle cracked, Ward and one of his lieutenants raced ahead with bags of powder, placed them beneath the main gate of the city, and lighted the fuse. Like an echo of the ensuing explosion rose the shrill yell of the legionaries, who dashed forward like sprinters in a race. Instead of the gates being blown to pieces as they had expected, they found that they had been forced apart only enough for one man to pass at a time—and on the other side of that door of death five thousand rebels waited eagerly for the first of the attackers to appear. "Come on, boys!" roared Ward, his voice rising above the crash of the musketry, "We're going in!" and plunged through the narrow opening, a revolver in each hand. Hard on his heels crowded his legionaries. Though they were going to what was almost certain death, such was the magnetism of their leader that not a man hung back, not a man faltered. Before half a dozen men were through they were attacked by hundreds, but, so deadly was the fire they poured in with their repeaters, they were able to hold off the defenders until the whole attacking force was within the gate. Then began one of the most desperate and unequal fights in history. The key to the city was the howitzer battery, which was stationed on the top of the massive main gate, forty feet above. Up the narrow ramps the legionaries fought their way, five hundred against five thousand, hacking, stabbing, firing, at such close range that their rifles set fire to their opponents' clothing, driving their bayonets into the human wall before them as a field-hand pitchforks hay. Wherever there was space for a man to plant his feet or swing his sword, there a Taiping was to be found. The passageway was choked with them, but they sullenly gave way before the frenzy of Ward's attack as a hillside slowly disintegrates before the stream from a hydraulic nozzle. Ward was wounded, and his men were falling about him by dozens, but those that were left, mad with the lust of battle, fought on, until with a final surge and cheer they reached the top, and the position which commanded the city was in their hands. Then the Taipings broke and fled, some to be overtaken and slaughtered by the legionaries, others throwing themselves into the streets below. Bayoneting the rebel gunners, the howitzers were turned upon the city, raking the streets, sweeping the crowded walls and house-tops, and leaving heaps of dead and dying where Taiping regiments had stood before.

"Come on, boys!" shouted Ward. "We're going in!" and plunged through the narrow opening, a revolver in each hand.

For four-and-twenty hours Ward and the exhausted survivors of his legion, without food and without water, held the gate in the face of the most desperate efforts to retake it. Then the Chinese reinforcements for which he had asked tardily arrived, and Sunkiang was an Imperial city again. The American had taken the first trick in the great game he was playing. It was at fearful cost, however, for of the five hundred men who followed him into action, but one hundred and twenty-eight remained alive, and of these only twenty-seven were without wounds. In other words, the casualties amounted to more than ninety-four per cent of the entire force. Ward had ridden out of Shanghai a despised adventurer to whom the foreign officers refused to speak. He returned to that city a hero and a power in China. The priesthood acclaimed him as the saviour of the sacred city; the emperor made him a Mandarin of the Red Button; the merchants of Shanghai voiced their relief by adding a splendid estate to the promised reward of seventy-five thousand dollars. His reputation would have been secure if he had never fought another battle.

Leaving Sunkiang heavily garrisoned by imperial troops, Ward withdrew to Shanghai for the purpose of recruiting his shattered forces. Such a glamour of romance now surrounded the legion that Ward was fairly besieged by European as well as Oriental volunteers. Shortly after the capture of Sunkiang, Ward had occasion to visit Shanghai with reference to the care of his wounded. While riding through the streets of the city he was arrested by a British patrol, and despite his protestations that he was an officer in the imperial service, was hustled aboard the flag-ship of Admiral Sir James Hope, which lay in the harbor, and was placed in close confinement. In reply to his inquiries he was told that he was to be tried for recruiting British man-o'-war's-men for service in his legion. Though the arrest was high-handed and unjustified, there seemed no immediate prospect of release, for the American consul-general refused to interfere on the ground that Ward, by taking service under the Chinese government, had forfeited his right to American protection; the imperial authorities were powerless to take any action; while the British were notoriously fearful of the dangerous ascendancy which this American might gain if his successful career was permitted to continue. The only hope for Ward—and for China—lay in his escape. A friend perfected a plan of flight. While visiting Ward, who was confined in an outside cabin of the flag-ship, with a marine constantly on guard at the door, he synchronized his watch with that of the cabin clock, and whispered to the prisoner that he would be in a sampan under his cabin window at precisely two o'clock in the morning. Taking off his coat and shoes that he might be unhampered in the water, Ward sat on the edge of his berth with his eyes on the face of the clock. Just as the minute-hand touched the figure II, Ward made a dash for the window and sprang head-foremost through the sash, for the windows of the old fashioned men-of-war were much larger than the ports of modern battle-ships. He had hardly touched the water before he was pulled aboard a sampan, which disappeared in the darkness long before the flag-ship's boats could be manned and lowered. This daring exploit enormously increased Ward's prestige among both Chinese and Europeans, with whom the British, as a result of their insolent and overbearing attitude, were intensely unpopular. Some days later Admiral Hope sent a message to Ward requesting an interview, and, upon Ward assuring him that he would no longer recruit his ranks from the British navy, the old sea fighter became his strong partisan and friend.

With his ranks once more repleted, Ward made preparations for a second venture. This time it was the city of Sing-po toward which he turned; but the Taipings, getting wind of his intentions, secretly threw an overwhelming force into the place under a renegade Englishman named Savage. Ward was without artillery with which to breach the walls, and, after several desperate assaults, in leading which he was severely wounded, he was forced to retire. Ten days later, regardless of his wounds, he tried again, but this time he was taken in the rear by a Taiping army of twenty thousand men, his little force being completely surrounded. So certain was the rebel leader that the famous general was within his grasp, that he consulted with his officers as to what methods of torture they should use upon him. But he was a trifle premature, for Ward struck the Taiping cordon at its weakest point, fought his way through, and reached Shanghai with a loss of only one hundred men. His secret agents bringing him word that the powerful force from which he had just escaped was to be used in the recapture of Sunkiang, Ward, by making night marches, slipped unperceived into that city. When the Taipings attempted to carry it by storm a few days later, instead of meeting with the half-hearted resistance which they had grown to expect from Chinese garrisons, they were astounded to see the helmeted figure of the dreaded American upon the walls, and were greeted with a blast of rifle fire which swept away their leading columns and crumpled up their army as effectually as though it had encountered an earthquake.

Dangerously weakened by half a dozen wounds, Ward was reluctantly compelled to go to Paris in the fall of 1860 for surgical attention. Back at Shanghai again at the beginning of the following summer, he found that the Taipings, emboldened by his absence, were flaunting their banner within sight of the city walls. From end to end of the empire there existed an unparalleled reign of terror, the rebels now having grown so strong that they demanded the recognition of the European powers. Ward, meanwhile, had become convinced that the true solution of the problem lay in raising an army of natives, rather than foreigners, for not only was the supply of Chinese unlimited, but his experience had shown him that there was splendid fighting material in them if they were properly drilled and led. When he asked permission of the imperial government to raise and drill a Chinese force, therefore, it was gladly granted.

An opportunity to put his theories regarding the fighting capabilities of the Chinese to a test soon came. Learning that a force of rebels, ten thousand strong, was advancing in the direction of Shanghai, Ward sallied forth from his headquarters at Sunkiang with two thousand five hundred men, struck the Taiping army, curled it up like a withered leaf, and drove it a dozen miles into the interior. Pressing on, he captured the city of Quan-fu-ling, which the rebels had garrisoned and fortified, and with it several hundred junks loaded with supplies. Throughout these actions his Chinese displayed all the steadiness and courage of European veterans. That he showed sound judgment in pinning his faith to natives is best proved by the fact that from that time on he never met with a reverse. His motto was "Cold steel," and his tactics would have delighted the old-time sea fighters, for, appreciating the fact that few Oriental troops are capable of remaining steady under a galling long-range fire, he invariably threw his men against the enemy in an overwhelming charge, and finished the business at close quarters with the bayonet.

Moving up from Sunkiang with a thousand of his men, Ward joined a combined force of French and British bluejackets, who had with them a light howitzer battery, in an attack on Kaschiaou, just opposite Shanghai, which was the city's main source of supplies, and which the rebels had seized and fortified. Using the contingent from the war-ships as a reserve, Ward and his Chinamen did the work alone, carrying the stockades by storm and capturing two thousand rebels, as a result of which the enemy fell back from the neighborhood of Shanghai. So strongly impressed were the British officers with the behavior of Ward's soldiery that Sir James Mitchel, the commander-in-chief on the China station, strongly urged that the task of suppressing the rebellion be placed in the American's hands, and that he be empowered to raise his force to ten thousand men. A few weeks later Ward received an imperial rescript acknowledging his great services to China, and appointing him an admiral-general of the empire, the highest rank that the emperor could bestow. With this came the authority to recruit his force to six thousand men, and its baptism, by imperial order, with the sonorous and thrilling title of Chun Chen Chun, or the Ever-Victorious Army.