Tso was born, one of nine sons in a poor family, in 1812. He took his provincial graduate degree at the age of twenty; thereafter, he seems to have abandoned literary work, for he never passed the Metropolitan examination. This did not prevent the Empress Dowager from appointing him, after his victorious campaign, to the Grand Secretariat, the only instance of a provincial graduate attaining to that high honour. For three years he was Tseng Kuo-fan’s ablest lieutenant against the Taipings, and became Governor of Fukhien in 1863. In 1868 he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial forces against the Mahomedan rebels, and began a campaign which lasted, with breathing spaces, until the beginning of 1878. His victorious progress through the western and north-western provinces began at Hsiang-Yang, on the Han river, in Hupei. Thence, after driving the rebels from Hsi-an, through Shansi and Kansu, he came to a halt before the strong city of Su-chou fu, on the north-west frontier of Kansu. The siege of this place lasted nearly three years, for his force was badly off for ordnance, and he was compelled to wait until his deputies purchased artillery for him from a German firm at Shanghai. The guns were sent up in the leisurely manner affected by the Mandarins, and Tso was obliged to put his troops to agricultural work in order to provide himself with commissariat.

Su-chou had been for ten years in the hands of the rebels. It fell to the Imperialists in October, 1873, some say by treachery, according to others by assault. Be this as it may, Tso, whose method of dealing with rebels was absolutely pitiless, reduced the place to a heap of ruins, killing men, women and children indiscriminately, throughout large tracts of country. So fearful were the wholesale massacres and treacherous atrocities committed by his Hunanese troops, that General Kauffmann, commanding the Russian forces on the frontier, considered it his duty to address him on the subject, and to protest indignantly at the indiscriminate killing of non-combatants. General Kauffmann alluded chiefly to the massacre which had followed the taking of the town of Manas (November, 1876), but similar atrocities had been perpetrated at Su-chou, Hami, and many other important places. At Hami the entire population was put to the sword. Eye-witnesses of the scene of desolation, which stretched from Hsi-an in Shensi to Kashgar, have recorded that scarcely a woman was left alive in all those ruined cities—one might ride for days and not see one—a fact which accounts for the failure of the country unto this day to recover from the passing of that scourge. In more than one instance, Tso said with pride that he had left no living thing to sow new seeds of rebellion.[139]

Nor do the Chinese find anything reprehensible in his action. Instinctively a peace-loving people, they have learned through centuries of dreadful experience that there can be no humanitarianism in these ever-recurring rebellions, which are but one phase of the deadly struggle for life in China, and that the survival of the fittest implies the extermination of the unfit. Tso had first learned this lesson in the fierce warfare of the Taiping rebellion, where there was no question of quarter, asked or given, on either side. “If I destroy them not,” he would say with simple grimness, “if I leave root or branch, they may destroy me.”

In private life the man was genial and kindly, of a rugged simplicity; short of stature, and in later years stout, with a twinkling eye and hearty laugh; sober and frugal in his habits, practising the classical virtues of the ancients in all sincerity: a strict disciplinarian, and much beloved of his soldiers. He delighted in gardening and the planting of trees. Along the entire length of the Imperial highway that runs from Hsi-an to Chia-Yü Kuan beyond the Great Wall, thirty-six days’ journey, he planted an avenue of trees, a stately monument of green to mark the red route of his devastating armies. One of the few Europeans who saw him at Hami records that it was his habit to walk in the Viceregal gardens every afternoon, accompanied by a large suite of officials and Generals, when he would count his melons and expatiate on the beauty of his favourite flowers. With him, ready for duty at a word, walked his Chief Executioner.

He was as careful for the welfare of his people as for the extermination of rebels, and erected a large woollen factory at Lan-chou fu, whereby he hoped to establish a flourishing industry throughout the north-western provinces. He was fiercely opposed to opium cultivation, and completely suppressed it along the valley of the Yellow River for several years. The penalty for opium-smoking in his army was the loss of one ear for a first offence, and death for the second.

Yakoub Beg, the last leader and forlorn hope of the rebellion, died in May, 1877. Tso, following up his successes, captured in turn Yarkand, Kashgar and Khotan (January, 1878), and thus ended the insurrection. At the conclusion of the campaign he had some forty thousand Hunanese troops at Hami, and twenty thousand more under General Liu[140] at Kashgar. One of his Generals was that Tung Fu-hsiang who subsequently became known to the world as the leader of the bloodthirsty Kansuh soldiery at Peking in 1900; at the taking of Khotan he laid the foundations of his reputation for truculent ferocity. Tso firmly believed that his Hunanese were the finest fighting men in the world, and was most anxious to use them, in 1879, in trying conclusions with the Russians, boasting that with two hundred thousand of them he would easily march to St. Petersburg and there dictate a peace which should wipe out the humiliating concessions negotiated by Ch’ung Hou in the Treaty of Livadia. Fortunately for him, his patriotic ambitions came to the ears of the Empress Dowager, who, desiring no more complications, recalled him in hot haste to Peking, where she loaded him with honours and rewards.

His was the simple nature of the elementary fighter, inured to the hard life of camps. He knew little of other lands, but professed the greatest admiration for Bismarck, chiefly because of the enormous indemnity which the German conqueror had exacted as the price of victory, Tso’s own troops being accustomed to live almost exclusively on the spoils of war. He despised wealth for himself, but loved plunder for his men.

Upon his triumphant return to Peking he was informed that the Palace authorities expected him to pay forty thousand taels as “gate-money” before entering the capital. Tso flatly refused. “The Emperor has sent for me,” he said, “and I have come, but I will not pay a cash. If he wishes to see me, he must either obtain for me free entry or pay the gate-money himself.” He waited stolidly five days and then had his way, entering scot-free. Later, when the Empress Dowager made him a present of ten thousand taels, he divided the money between his soldiers and the poor.

SUN CHIA-NAI

This official, chiefly known to fame among his countrymen as one of the tutors of His Majesty Kuang-Hsü, was a sturdy Conservative of the orthodox type, but an honest and kindly man. His character and opinions may be gauged from a well-known saying of his: “One Chinese character is better than ten thousand words of the barbarians. By knowing Chinese a man may rise to become a Grand Secretary; by knowing the tongues of the barbarians, he can at best aspire to become the mouth-piece of other men.”