The first great event that woke China from her dream of solitary grandeur was the war with England, which broke out in 1839 and was closed three years later by the Treaty of Nanking. It was not, however, all that was needed to effect that object. It made the giant rub her eyes and give a reluctant assent to terms imposed by superior force. But many a rude lesson was still required before she came to perceive her true position, as on the lower side of an inclined plane. To bring her to this discovery four more foreign wars were to follow before the end of the century, culminating in a siege in Peking and massacres throughout the northern provinces which may be looked on as the fifth act in a long and bloody tragedy.
In the last three wars Li Hung Chang was a prominent actor. In the first two he took no part. Yet was it the shock which they gave to the empire that drove him from a life of literary seclusion to do battle in a more public arena.
The Opium War of 1839 is not improperly so designated, but nothing is more erroneous than to infer that it was waged by England for the purpose of forcing the product of her Indian poppy fields on the markets of China. Opium was the occasion, not the cause. The cause, if we are to put it in a single word, was the overbearing arrogance of an Oriental despotism, which refused to recognize any equal in the family of nations.
In the Straits settlements and in the seaports of India, Chinese merchants had been brought under sway of the bewitching narcotic. It found its way to their southern seaports, and without being recognized as an article of commerce, the trade expanded with startling rapidity. The Emperor, Tao Kwang, one of the most humane of rulers, resolved to take measures for the suppression of the vice. He had come to the throne in 1820; and there is a story that he was moved to action by the untimely fate of his eldest son, who had fallen a victim to the seductive poison.
Commissioner Lin, whom he selected to carry out his prohibitory policy, was a fit instrument for such a master, equally virtuous in his aims and equally tyrannical in his mode of proceeding. Arriving at Canton, his first object was to get possession of the forbidden drug, which was stored on ships outside the harbor. This he thought to accomplish by surrounding the whole foreign community by soldiers and threatening them with death if the opium was not promptly surrendered. While its owners or their agents hesitated, Captain Elliot, the British Superintendent of Trade, came up from Macao, and demanded to share the duress of his nationals. He then called on them to deliver up the drug to him to be used in the service of the Queen for the ransom of the lives of her subjects, assuring them that they would be reimbursed from the public treasury. No fewer than twenty-one thousand chests, valued at nine million dollars, were brought in from the opium ships and formally handed over to Commissioner Lin. The foreign community was set free, and the drug destroyed by being mixed with quicklime.
War was made to punish this outrage on the rights of the foreign community, and to exact indemnity for the seizure of their property. Canton was not captured, but held to ransom, and the haughty Viceroy sent into exile. Other cities were taken and held; and, in 1842, a treaty of peace was signed at Nanking by which five ports were opened to foreign trade. The embargo on opium was not withdrawn; but the defeat of the Chinese resulted in a virtual immunity from seizure together with a growth of the traffic, such as to justify the ill-odored name which that war still bears in history.
Treaties with other powers followed in quick succession. On demand of the French Minister, the Emperor recalled his prohibitory decrees against Christianity and issued an Edict of Toleration. If the opening of the ports gave a stimulus to trade, the decree of toleration opened a door for missionary enterprise. As yet, however, neither merchant nor missionary was allowed to penetrate into the interior; while the capital and the whole of the northern seacoast remained inaccessible. This was obviously a state of things that could not be permanent; yet fifteen years were to pass before another war came to settle the terms of intercourse on a broader basis.
When the war broke out, Li Hung Chang was seventeen years of age, living at Hofei in Anhui. As there were then no newspapers in China it may be doubted whether he heard of it until a British squadron sailed up to Nanking and extorted a treaty at the cannon's mouth. Li was rudely startled by the appearance of a new force, to which there was no allusion in any of his ancient books. Along with the sailing-ships there were two or three small steamers. It struck the Chinese with astonishment to see them make head against wind and tide. Shin Chuan, "ships of the gods," is the name they gave those mysterious vessels. Little could Li foresee the part he was destined to take in creating a steam navy for China.
Descended from a long line of scholars, he was supposed to be born to the pursuit of letters. He did, in fact, devote himself to study with unflagging zeal, because he had as yet no temptation to turn aside. Was there not, moreover, an open door before his face inviting him to win for himself the honors of a mandarinate? In his native town he placed his foot on the first step of the ladder by gaining the degree of A.B., or, in Chinese, "Budding Genius." At the provincial capital he next carried off the laurel of the second degree, which is worth more than our A.M., not merely because it is not conferred in course, but because it falls to the lot of only one in a hundred among some thousands of competitors. These provincial tournaments occur but once in three years; and the successful candidates proceed to Peking to compete for the third degree, or D.C.L.,--Tsin-shi, or, "Fit for Office." Here the chances amount to three per cent.
Li's fortunes were again propitious, and in company with two or three hundred new-made doctors, he was summoned to the palace to contend in presence of the emperor for the honor of a seat in the Imperial Academy,--the Hanlin, or "Forest of Pencils." Here also he met with success, but he was not among the first three whose names are marked by the vermilion pen of majesty, each of whom sheds lustre on his native province. The highest of the three is called Chuang Yuen, "Head of the List" or "Prince of Letters." In the 'fifties it fell to a native of Ningpo, where I then lived. His good luck was announced to his wife by the magistrate in person, who conducted her to the six gates, at each of which she scattered a handful of rice, as an omen of good fortune. In the 'sixties, when I had removed to Peking, this honor was for the first time conferred on a Manchu, a son of the General Saishanga. His daughter was deemed a fit consort for the heir to the throne, wearing for a short time the tiara of empress, and committing suicide on the death of her lord.