Early in 1860 a war with China broke out, and in this also the French were our allies. More soldiers were needed, and volunteers were asked for. Gordon was one of the first to send in his name, but before he reached Pekin the Taku forts, at the mouth of the Tientsin River—forts of which in the year 1900 we were to hear so much—had been taken. However, the famous Summer Palace was still to be captured, and this, which indeed might be called the eighth wonder of the world, lay out in the country, eight miles away from Pekin. The grounds, covering more than twelve miles, were laid out with lakes, fountains, tea-houses, waterfalls, banks of trees, and beds of flowers, while scattered about were palaces belonging to different members of the royal family, all filled with beautiful things—china of the oldest and rarest sorts, silks, lacquer, cabinets, and an immense variety of clocks and watches. By order of the English envoy this gorgeous place was given over to pillage, in revenge for the ill-treatment of some French and British prisoners. One can form a little idea of the vast amount of treasures it contained from constantly seeing scattered in houses a watch or a lacquer box or a china bowl that, we are told, had once decorated the Summer Palace; they really seem to be endless. Lord Wolseley tells how he happened to be standing by the French general in the gardens while the looting was going on, and as a French soldier came out he handed to his chief something that he had brought expressly for him. Then, turning to the young English officer, he held out a beautiful miniature of a man wearing a dress of the time of Louis XIV.
'That is for you, my comrade,' he said, smiling, and Wolseley, heartily thanking him, examined the gift.
'How,' he thought, 'could a miniature of a French poet living two hundred years ago have got to Pekin?' Then he remembered that an embassy from China had arrived in France, bearing presents to the French court. Louis received them graciously, and showed them the splendours of Versailles and all the curious and artistic ornaments it contained. When the envoys left, the king gave them gifts of French manufacture as valuable as their own to take to their emperor, and among them was this miniature of Boileau, by Petitot, the greatest of French miniaturists.
The imperial throne, which stands on dragon's claws, and is covered with cushions of yellow silk, the imperial colour, was bought by Gordon himself, and presented by him to Chatham, where it may still be seen.
Till the large sum fixed for the expenses of the war was paid General Staveley was left with three thousand men in command at Tientsin, and Gordon remained with him. Tientsin is a dreary place in a salt plain, and the climate is very cold, as it is throughout North China. But Gordon minded cold far less than heat and mosquitoes, and besides his days were full from morning till night, building huts for the soldiers and stables for the horses, and in managing a fund which he had collected to help some Chinese in the neighbourhood who had been ruined by the war. Though very careless of his own money, and ready to give it away without inquiry to any beggar who asked for it, he was most particular about other people's, and the attention which he paid to small things enabled him to spend the fund in the manner that would best aid the poor creatures who had lost everything. Now and then he gave himself a day's holiday, and explored the country, as he was fond of doing; and once he rode out to the Great Wall, twenty-two feet high and sixteen wide, which runs along the north-west of China, over mountains and across plains, for fifteen hundred miles, and was built two thousand years ago by an emperor to keep out the invading hosts of the Tartars. At certain distances strong forts were placed, and these were garrisoned by Chinese soldiers. As he passed through the more remote villages the inhabitants would come out of their houses and stare. A white man! They had heard that there were such, though they had never really believed it. Well, he was a strange creature truly, with his hair cropped close and pink in his cheeks, and they did not much admire him!
Nearer Pekin he met long strings, or caravans, of camels laden with tea, making their way to Russia. Everywhere in the neighbourhood of the mountains it was frightfully cold, and raw eggs were frozen so hard that no one could eat them; but Gordon could do with as little food as any man, and did not suffer from the climate. He came back strengthened and interested, and it was as well he had the short rest to brace him, for now there lay before him a very difficult task.
For quite thirty years great discontent with government had been felt by the peasants and lower classes in some of the central provinces of the empire, and a long while before the war with England broke out a peasant emperor had been proclaimed. The insurrection—or the Taeping rebellion, as it is called—could have been easily put down in the beginning, but ministers in China are slow to move, and it soon became a real danger to the empire. The great object of the rebels was to gain possession of Shanghai, the centre of European trade, built in the midst of canals and rivers, with the great Yang-tse-kiang at hand to carry into the interior of China the goods of foreign merchants of all countries that come to its harbour across the Pacific. Pirate vessels, too, haunted its shores, ready to pounce upon the rich traders, and when their prizes were captured, they went swiftly away, and hid themselves among the islands and bogs that stretched themselves a hundred miles to the north and south of the city.
Thus Shanghai was a very important place both to Chinese, French, and English; yet for twelve years the rebellion had been allowed to go on unchecked, burning, pillaging, and murdering, till in 1853 the rebels had reached a point only a hundred miles distant from Pekin itself. Then soldiers were hastily collected, and the Taepings forced back; quarrels broke out among their leaders, and most likely the rebellion would have melted away altogether had it not been for the appearance four years later of young Chung Wang, who assumed the command, and proved himself a most skilful general. As long as he led the Taepings in battle victory was on their side; if he was needed elsewhere, they were invariably defeated.