The Devil Soldier Page 4

  To the great nineteenth-century Chinese statesman Li Hung-chang—who knew Wu Hsü in Shanghai and was himself to amass a fortune through corrupt dealings—Wu was “expert in accounting and skillful in hiding deficiencies.… [H]is hand is deft at adjusting transactions to his own convenience. He always succeeds in confusing outsiders.” Wu sharpened his skill at account juggling, bribery, and extortion—known to Westerners in China as the infamous “squeeze”—in the confines of the Shanghai customs house, which in 1854 had been transferred to an abandoned warehouse pending its move to a new, clock-towered headquarters. Through this renowned checkpoint moved massive amounts of opium (coming in) and tea and silk (going out), as well as food, textiles, and, of course, arms, to be sold at inflated prices to either the imperialists or the rebels. The extent of Wu’s wealth was hardly surprising, and while the Herald might claim that he was in reality Hsüeh Huan’s “mouthpiece and money-bag,” it is entirely possible that Wu was in a position of greater de facto power than the governor.

  But Wu Hsü needed to cover his activities bureaucratically just as much as Hsüeh Huan did, and to this end the taotai associated himself very closely with the successful banker Yang Fang. Yang was a native of Chekiang province who was also known to Westerners as Taki, because he headed a large financial house of that name. A director of the Committee of Patriotic Chinese Merchants, who came together to determine how best to apply their enormous wealth to the Taiping problem, Yang Fang’s contacts with Westerners in China had been just as extensive and far more informal than either Wu Hsü’s or Hsüeh Huan’s. Originally a native agent, or compradore, for Shanghai’s largest Western merchant firm—Jardine, Matheson and Company—Yang had made a fortune in banking that allowed him to purchase a mandarinate as well as a beautiful young girl for a wife (the sale of female children in China was still very common). Gregarious and by all accounts accommodating, Yang had taken the extra step of gaining a basic working knowledge of English, and both his yamen (office) and his home were frequented by foreigners from every walk of life.

  Together, Yang Fang and Wu Hsü were involved in a multitude of commercial activities in Shanghai, everything from a “Houseless Refugees Fund”—maintained by Western donations, only a portion of which reportedly made their way to the refugees—to fitting out armed river steamers for the suppression of pirates on the Yangtze and the Huang-pu. The two men’s experience with foreigners made them valuable to their Manchu superiors (although they were also considered somewhat tainted by their extensive dealings with the barbarians), and their mastery of every in and out of the Byzantine Chinese bureaucracy in Shanghai made them indispensable to Westerners wishing to do business there.

  Yet for all that they were the three most powerful men in Chinese Shanghai, Hsüeh Huan, Wu Hsü, and Yang Fang retained an air of nervous pragmatism. This skittish adaptability had been a large part of the reason they had come so far; and in the spring of 1860 it allowed them to see clearly that the defense of the Shanghai region and of their extensive financial and commercial empires—not to mention the recapture of Kiangsu province and the trade routes with the interior—was not an undertaking in which they could expect any help from the beleaguered central government in Peking. Attempts to reorganize the few local imperial troops that had not already deserted, moreover, held little promise of success. If a disaster greater than those that had befallen Soochow and Hangchow was to be avoided at Shanghai, a wholly new instrument of defense would have to be created.

  It was natural, given their backgrounds, that Hsüeh, Wu, and Yang looked to the foreign settlements to supply such an instrument. All three knew the Westerners well: They had seen, over the years, the power of Western weapons and the efficiency of Western troops, and they were anxious to bring that power and efficiency to bear on the rebels. This meant both the defense of Shanghai proper and offensive actions against those towns in the surrounding countryside considered vital to the maintenance of trade. The three men hoped to induce the foreigners to undertake these tasks by exploiting their concern for their property and safety.

  But Wu Hsü’s repeated personal appeals for Allied military assistance produced no greater result than a proclamation issued by the British minister to China on May 26. Declaring that “Shanghai is a port open to foreign trade, and the native dealers residing therein have large transactions with the foreigners,” the proclamation went on to promise that British troops would “take proper measures to prevent the inhabitants of Shanghai from being exposed to massacre and pillage.” And, to be sure, the foreign settlements did start to make military provisions—but almost entirely for the defense of their land and interests as separate from those of the Chinese. Such measures only aggravated the fears of Hsüeh, Wu, and Yang for the safety of their own property and people. When the North China Herald announced that it would be “humiliating” for the British to abandon the “grand national principle of nonintervention to protect some half dozen native merchants inordinately rich and covetous,… a couple of third-rate mandarins, and a beggarly indifferent hostile population,” Hsüeh, Wu, and Yang’s course became clear. They were determined to have a defensive military unit that would offer them the considerable security of Western technology. If the regular Allied armed forces would not offer it, they would seek it elsewhere.

  Or, as it happened, be sought by it. For in May an intrepid young man walked into Wu Hsü’s yamen and put forward a proposal that, even by Shanghai standards, was unusual.

  Known as “the Cinderella among the settlements,” the American section of Shanghai was a haven for adventurers of every conceivable stripe, from outright criminals to men who craftily hid their questionable activities under the veil of commerce. In addition, the settlement was a sanctuary for many Chinese: Imperial tax laws did not apply in the foreign settlements, and the Americans were not so stern as the British and the French about ejecting natives. Separated from the French and British quarters as much by social customs and values as by the waters of Soochow Creek, the American settlement grew to have a fluid character all its own, in which foreigners and Chinese engaged in joint business ventures that covered the spectrum from marginally legal to blatantly unlawful by either Western or Chinese standards.

  There was little that either the American consul in Shanghai or the American minister to China (who lived in the port, as he was not yet permitted by the emperor to reside in Peking) could do about any of this: Law in the American settlement in 1860 was confined to one marshal with no jail. Such a predicament made the American consul beholden to the British for penal space, a fact that the American minister found “humiliating.” The consul, William L. G. Smith, wrote that if the British proved unable to provide such space, his next move was generally to inquire “whether the party was able to pay a fine; if, as is almost always the case, he has no means for doing this, I refuse to entertain the complaint. I have no alternative.” In addition, Smith was a native of Buffalo, New York, who found Shanghai’s climate not at all to his liking. By 1860 he was complaining that the combination of hard work and large amounts of quinine (used to keep malaria at bay) were making it imperative that he return home. In his agitation over his health, he was even less disposed to grapple with annoying questions of law enforcement.

  Consul Smith came into contact with merchants, smugglers, sailors, drunkards, and fortune hunters every day. It is therefore understandable that when he crossed paths with a sometime sailing officer from Salem, Massachusetts, called Frederick Townsend Ward early in 1860 he saw no reason to mention it in his consular dispatches. Ward, twenty-eight years old at the time, was a handsome man, just five foot seven but, according to Augustus A. Hayes (a fellow New Englander and junior partner in one of Shanghai’s largest commercial houses), “well made and athletic.” Ward sported “a black mustache, and his black hair was worn long on his shoulders. His manners were excellent, and his voice pleasant.” The feature that provoked the most comment among those who met Ward, however, were his eyes. They were variously repor
ted as being black, deep hazel, and dark blue, in all probability because their actual color was less important than their quality of gleaming restlessness. Something of a social chameleon, Ward was capable by turns of carrying on polite conversation with diplomatic envoys and holding his own in any of Shanghai’s saloons. But to a man in Consul Smith’s position he could not have looked like very much more than another penniless American sailor scouring Shanghai for lucrative excitement. And since Ward’s search had taken him down a legal path—he had secured work as first mate on a succession of riverboats—there was even less reason to remark on his presence in the city.

  But if Consul Smith had not seen fit to notice his young countryman’s exceptional qualities, others had. A reputation for bravery and coolheaded daring soon netted Ward the post of first officer on an armed river steamer, the Confucius, which patrolled the waterways around Shanghai in search of pirates. “Pirates,” in the Shanghai of 1860, could often mean Taiping rebels (and vice versa), and Ward had soon experienced scattered run-ins with the followers of the T’ien Wang. The well-armed Confucius was captained by one of Ward’s fellow Americans, who called himself Gough and styled himself “Admiral.” Gough’s employer was Shanghai’s Pirate Suppression Bureau, yet another organization conceived and operated by Wu Hsü and Yang Fang. Early in 1860 Gough was given the additional task of organizing a small group of waterfront habitués to scout the countryside around Shanghai and give warning of any rebel approach. The admiral demonstrated his trust in Ward by putting him in charge of the project. Ward’s contacts with the rebels became more regular.

  The United States, like Great Britain and France, had officially adopted a neutral stance toward China’s internal difficulties. The activities of men like Admiral Gough and his young protégé Ward—though officially explained as police actions—came dangerously close to crossing the line of partisan military activity. Already during the Taiping rebellion, one American by the memorable name of Sandwich Drinker had accepted an advance of $20,000 from the gentry of Canton to organize a similar “antipirate” force and had seen his plans aborted by the American consul in that city. Drinker’s intentions were judged prejudicial to China’s national integrity (although American diplomats had decided that he deserved a consolation fee for his troubles, and the Chinese were thus made to pay even more money for services not rendered). No such fate befell Gough and Ward, however, quite possibly because Consul Smith in Shanghai had no interest in being so diligent. As long as the activities of the Pirate Suppression Bureau created no diplomatic incident, they were allowed to proceed.

  Admiral Gough apparently did not introduce Ward to his own paymaster, the banker Yang Fang, but the network of acquaintance among so small a foreign population as that of Shanghai ensured that the meeting eventually did take place. Its architect was one of Shanghai’s many commercial factotums, Charles E. Hill, an American whose fame rested on his being “the introducer into China of the Troy dredging machine.” Hill was an arranger of the classic mold: “an enterprising man, with a great deal on his hands, and with the hopeful side of his nature more developed than the other,” was how one American official put it. “I do not believe,” Hill later claimed, “there is one man in the world who knows what I owe, or who owes me, or what I am worth.” This sort of attitude—at once secretive and boastful—was common to many of Shanghai’s commercial freebooters, native as well as foreign, and it is not surprising that Hill should have been friends with both Ward and Yang Fang. Hill later said that for Yang he “did more … than I would for any other man in China at the time.”

  The exact date of Ward’s introduction to Yang Fang was never recorded, but the energetic young New Englander and the wily old Chinese banker apparently took to each other from the start. Yang did not, however, hold sufficient bureaucratic power to sanction projects such as the Pirate Suppression Bureau officially, and Ward’s mind was beginning to fill with plans for the protection of Shanghai that went beyond the scope of the bureau. The authority needed to pursue such goals rested with Wu Hsü. Either Ward convinced Admiral Gough to arrange an introduction or the idea was Gough’s own; at any rate, Ward and the taotai finally met, almost certainly in May, with Yang Fang also present.

  Wu’s desire to bring Western expertise to bear on the Taiping problem was well known. He could hardly fail to be interested, therefore, when Ward—who, Gough told Wu, was “well trained in the art of war”—offered to organize a small but heavily armed group of free-lance foreigners, lead them into the field, and engage the rebels. The proposed force, said its would-be commander, would prove capable of recapturing vital walled towns and in time even cities. Their pay would be according to a set scale: Ward’s enlisted men would receive approximately fifty American dollars per month (although actual payment would be made in silver Mexican dollars), his officers about two hundred, and Ward himself just over five hundred, plus a handsome bonus for each town recaptured. The amount of the bonus would vary according to the size of the town; but it would, at the very least, reach into the tens of thousands of dollars.

  These were heady sums for the place and time. And Wu, Gough’s recommendations notwithstanding, had no hard knowledge of Ward’s background or abilities. Furthermore, Peking was known to look with disapproval on the idea of using Westerners to fight the rebels. Add to this a considerable language barrier and the extent of Ward’s achievement in persuading Wu Hsü to release the vast sums necessary for the training, pay, and equipment of his force becomes clear. True, Wu continued to cover himself in the usual fashion, instructing Yang Fang to take care of the actual payments (most of which were made to Ward through the Pirate Suppression Bureau). And, because Ward was apparently the only man in Shanghai willing to take the field against the rebels, Wu was in no position to be selective. Yet it was still a risk of enormous proportions.

  Mere talk would not have persuaded a man of Wu Hsü’s position and experience to take the gamble. Shanghai was full of large talkers, and few of these had ever gained the ear, much less the confidence, of the taotai. There was a real force at work in Ward, one that was apparent to observers and that inspired immediate acceptance of his fantastic claim that he could take a small band of men against the Chung Wang’s legions and come away the victor.

  That force had been formed during some fifteen years of adventuring, and during the following two and a half years it would power the evolution of Ward’s small group of mercenaries into a full-fledged army that was crucial to the defeat of the Taipings. The achievement was a lasting one; for, although the conquering hordes of the Chung Wang seemed to represent a “new race of warriors” to some Westerners, the men Ward eventually led against the rebels were the true “new race.” His army was a synthesis of the warlike arts of China and the West, and without it the Chinese empire might not have survived. While forging this unique weapon, Ward lived one of the great adventures in the history of Chinese-Western relations: He rose to become the Chung Wang’s most talented antagonist, snatched his own measure of popularity among the peasants of Kiangsu away from the Taiping general and his cohorts, and finally died a mandarin and a general of the Chinese army—unheard-of honors for a barbarian Westerner.

  All this from a man who did not live to see his thirty-first birthday: Ward’s Chinese sponsors were not alone in wondering what could have enabled this American to achieve such heights with such speed.

  II

  “PERHAPS YOU SMILE …”

  Half a world away from the rising star of Shanghai was the fading light of Salem, Massachusetts, once America’s center of international trade but by 1860 wholly overshadowed by Boston and New York. When Frederick Townsend Ward was born here on November 29, 1831, the port was still fighting hard to maintain a share of the Africa, India, and China trades. But the glory days that had seen hundreds of Salem ships coming from and going to every corner of the globe were ending, and the vain struggle to compete only chafed at the nerves of an already cantankerous breed. The citizens of Salem—best know
n for their 1692 torture and execution of suspected witches—had built a narrow-laned town whose monotonous miles of clapboard and brick gave way to openness and a sense of physical freedom only when they ended: at the waterfront, where the wharves of great trading families such as the Crowninshields stretched out into the sea.

  No city or town was more typical of the hypocrisy of pre-Civil War New England than Salem. Preaching puritanism in their churches, Salemites had participated in the American Revolution and then in the War of 1812 by turning their seafaring talents to “privateering,” the gentleman’s euphemism for piracy. Soon thereafter it was abolitionism that became the gospel of choice in New England parlors, yet Salem continued to facilitate that greatest of American crimes, the African slave trade. In the generations before 1861, an estimated 30 percent of all slaves were brought into the United States aboard New England vessels—and Salem was synonymous with New England shipping. Massachusetts abolitionists might write laws and tracts decrying the evils of the South’s “peculiar institution,” but even at the outbreak of the Civil War masters of Salem ships were being prosecuted for slaving.

  The Salem masters were hard and immensely practical men, more than capable of crossing the line between pragmatism and amorality. Uncomfortable with this fact, and with the legacy of their ancestors’ participation in the African slave trade, subsequent generations of Salemites chose to emphasize the port’s seemingly less sordid trade with the Chinese empire. It had been a New England ship that had opened America’s China trade in 1794, and in the following year a full-rigged Salem bark of 310 tons, the Grand Turk, had been the second American vessel to reach the Middle Kingdom. At that time only the port of Canton in southern China was open to foreigners, and at first the Salem captains brought primarily goods native to their own region: furs, lead, cotton, and the New England species of the root ginseng (the Chinese belief in the root’s power to restore virility quickly exhausted the empire’s domestic supply). But during the opening decades of the nineteenth century, as American traders discovered the apparently inexhaustible appetite of the Chinese for luxury goods, U.S. ships scoured the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans from Alaska to the Falkland Islands seeking the edible bird’s nests, tortoiseshell, snails, beaver furs, and mother-of-pearl that would command large quantities of tea and silk in the burgeoning Canton markets.