951.054 m885 002094 IN THE DAYS OF THE TAIPINGS Being the Recollections of Ting Kienchang,otherwise Meisun, sometime Scoutmaster and Captain in the Ever-Victorious Army and Interpreter-in-Chief to General Ward and General Gordon An Historical Retrospect By B MORSE 一 60于托 GENERAL FREDERICK TOWNSEND WARD tEa 中研院近史圖書館 THE ESSEX INSTITUTE *MHE0002094* Salem,Massachusetts
TABLE OF CONTENTS. IN THE DAYS OF THE TAIPINGS. BOOK I. THE.TRIADS AT SHANGHAI. 1853-1855. CHAPTER PAGE I.My Forbears and My Upbringing II.My Career is Determined....·· 7 III.I am Launched at Shanghai,....…… 12 IV.I am Married....… 20 V.The Calm before the Storm ............. 26 VI.The Rebels seize Shanghai City.·· 31 VII.We Rescue the Taotai.................... 40 VIII.I am Introduced to Good Society ,… 49 IX.I Revisit my Home ..................... 58 X.The Customs Authorities are in Difficulties.. 66 XI.Our Encounter with.the Soldiers ......... 76 XII.I meet Mr.Alcock ..................... 86 XIII.The Assault on the City ................ 93 XIV.The Governor.receives Me................ 100 XV.A Country-house Visit................... 108 XVI.Mr.Murphy Enters on the Scene..........118 XVII.The Battle of Muddy Flat.................128 XVIII.Probity and Vigilance in the Customs.......137 XIX.The French Intervene ................... 147 XX.The Triads evacuate Shanghai ............156 ()
BOOK III. VICTORY WITH GORDON. BOOK II. 1862-1864. CAMPAIGNING WITH WARD. CHAPTER PAGE 1860-1862. I.Burgevine in Command ·.299 CHAPTER PAGE II.Holland in Command.................... 308 I.My First Meeting with Mr.Ward..........165 III.Gordon takes Command.................. 314 II.My Home is Desolate ....................174 IV. Mutiny of the Force… 322 III.Mr.Ward is Launched .................. 186 V.The Hyson at Kunshan ................. 328 IV.The Signal Success of Sungkiang ......... 193 VI.Capture of Wukiang .....................336 V.Mr.Ward is Wounded and Defeated ....... 203 VII.I enter Soochow .........................345 VI.Mr.Ward is Invalided ..................215 VIII.I begin my spying ...................... 353 VII.Mr.Ward a Prisoner ...................223 IX.The Foreigners abandon Soochow 364 VIII.Ward's Chinese Force ....................232 X.The Princes are faint-hearted.............370 IX.Kwangfuling and Its Results 244 XI.The closing of the net ................... 3Y7 X.Ward's Victorious Career .................254 XII.Surrender and execution of the Princes.....384 XI.Laurels and Orange Wreaths..............264 XIII.Achilles in his tent…· 392 XII.The Thirty-mile Zone is Cleared ..........272 XIV.The end of our campaigning .............402 XIII.Li Hungchang Takes the Reins ...........282 XV.The Ever-Victorious Army is disbanded.:..409 XIV.The Death of a Hero ...................291 XVI.A visit to Tseng Kwofan ................414 XVII.The Lost is found-and lost again .423 Epil0gue…………………… 431 (i) (i)
ILLUSTRATIONS. General Frederick T.Ward .................Frontispiece Li Hungchang..........................facing page 32 Taiping8……………… 33 West Gate and Wall,Shanghai 96 Walls and Moat of Sungkiang..................... 97 Battle of Muddy Flat ...........................128 Fields of Campaigns of the Ever-Victorious Army....165 Birthplace of General Ward in Salem.............. 192 Parents of General Ward ......................... 193 Changmei,wife of General Ward................... 25Y General Charles G.Gordon ....................... 299 Personal Effects of General Ward and his wife .....258 Tumulus or Mound,Raised over the Remains of General Ward ...............................320 Monument at the Bund,Shanghai,erected to the Memory of General Ward and other Foreigners....321 Shrine in the Temple erected at Sungkiang to the Manes of General Ward .....................384 View inside of Sungkiang…· 385 (ix)
PREFACE THE writer of these pages pleads guilty,and throws him- self on the mercy of the court.In extenuation of his offence he alleges that the events recorded are true to his- tory;that the racial characteristics and customs are correct ethnographically;and that,of the persons portrayed,some, the fictitious,are true to type,and with others,the real, he was well acquainted,either in person or by repute,with only one link in the chain connecting him with them. A romance should have a purpose other than that of filling an idle hour.The purpose of this work is to show how European qualities were called in to aid the Imperial government of China in suppressing the great Taiping re- bellion.Book I gives the history of a picturesque incident at Shanghai,which demonstrates the incapacity of the Im- perial government,in its then state of disorganisation and inefficiency,to suppress the armed resistance to its authority; but the writer has grasped the opportunity to describe some further aspects of the period.He has given an outline sketeh of old Shanghai and of the handful of English and American merchants who created the port and established the foundations of its prosperity;he has described the con- ditions which led to the creation of tho Inspectorate of Customs;and he has tried to make the reader understand the personality of some of the notabilities of the place.Of Rutherford Alcock,who was the untitled Governor of Shanghai in that critical time;of Robert C.Murphy,who averted a war which might have arisen from the same causes which two years later precipitated the struggle between Eng- land and China;of Yang Tzetang,the Banker Taki,who created and provided for the force which was the principal instrument in suppressing the rebellion.But above all he has tried to show the possibilities in the mental development of a timid young scholar of the Chinese gentry,who had been (xi)
xii PREFACE brought up to detest war and violence,and was then sub- jected to the more virile influence of European thought and action. In Books II and III he has presented the obstacles which first Ward,and then Gordon,had to encounter in their allotted task,and has shown how each overcame his peculiar difficulties-the one by his buoyancy and steadfast faith in his star,the other by his sense of duty and by loyalty to his high ideals-both ultimately attaining their aim;while across the scene passes Li Hungchang,Chen Siaoki,the Taiping Prince the NaWang,Admiral Sir James Hope,and others who played leading parts in the drama. The Menu at the end of Book I,chap.XV,is actually that of a dinner given in 1879 by the Viceroy at Canton in honour of General U.S.Grant. The tael of silver was,at the period of the story,worth 6s.8d.(f1 3 taels).The dollar was intrinsically worth 4s.2d.(f100 480 dollars),but from 1853 to 1857 BOOK I its exchange value at Shanghai was artificially inflated,ris- ing as high as 7s.9d.(100 =258 dollars). THE TRIADS AT SHANGHAI 1853-1855
CHAPTER I. MY FORBEARS AND MY UPBRINGING. OU are foreigners,not knowing our land of China or its customs,and I do not know how to set about my task.That task is to tell the story of ten years of my life,during which sons of Han were slaughtered by sons of Han,whole provinces were devastated,and thousands of myriads of human beings perished by the sword,by famine, and by disease.I cannot tell the whole tale.I saw but little of it.And even in telling what fell under my own eyes looking over the skirts of the misery,I am confronted by a difficulty.I have learned something of your Western outlook,and I know that many customs which are a matter of course to us,require much explanation to make them intelligible to you,even as many of your customs seem to our people strange and void of reason.Should I then ex- plain as I go along?You would quickly cast the book aside, and never look at its later pages.Should I let our ways speak for themselves?I must then crave your indulgence, and beg you to believe that we follow our customs,handed down through four thousand years of history,because we believe them to be the best.So now to my tale. My ancestral home was in the village of Tungli,hien of Wukiang,fu of Soochow,province of Kiangsu.The greater portion of the village was part of our estate,which had been formed by the founder of the importance of our family,my great-grandfather,Ting Maochang.He was born in the kiatze year,the ninth of Kienlung (1744),was a brilliant scholar,and had a highly successful official career.This led up to his appointment as Viceroy of the Liang Kwang,at a time when the absolute prohibition of the opium trade provided opportunities for great profit to all the higher officials connected with Canton;and it culminated in his being transferred to Peking as Grand Secretary,in which capacity he levied contribution on all the high officials of the (1)
IN THE DAYS OF THE TAIPINGS THE TRIADS AT SHANGHAI 3 empire.By an exceptional act of Grace,he was allowed to retire into private life while still having six years of life years of his life was my grandfather,his second son,Ting before him,and he retired to the enjoyment of a vast for- Tunyen. tune,acquired during forty years of holding office,in the Ting Tunyen was born in the tingyu year (1777),and course of which he had not neglected the opportunities was in his forty-second year when his'father died.As a for enrichment which his'position gave him.Year by year youth he showed no aptitude for his hooks,and though,as he remitted his surplus income to his nephew,who was his one of the gentry,he entered the examinations,he failed to trusted agent;and by him it was invested in buying property take his degree.Year after year he tried without success, in and around Tungli. but finally in his forty-seventh year,he obtained his Siutsai When my great-grandfather died,in the tingchow year degree at the same examination as his own son,my father. (1817),he left an estate worth many million taels,invested Though he had no aptitude for scholarship,he was an ex- in property in the village;in rice fields around it of several cellent farmer and man of business;and his administration thousand mow,also producing a second dry crop;in large of the estate was highly approved by his brothers and their plantations of mulberry trees,of which the succulent leaves married sons. fed silk-worms producing the best of silk;in extensive fish- My father Ting Kunyi,with the to-name Minsien,was ing and reed-cutting rights on the shallow lake which bor- born in the jensui year,the seventh of Kiaking (1802).He dered the estate on the east;in a bank,a pawn-shop and'two backed his book well,and took his Siutsai degree at the first grain-shops in Wukiang;in two banks and three pawn-shops trial,in his twenty-first year.He might have gone on to the in Soochow;and in a large store of gold and silver in ingots. higher examinations and entered official life,with all its His daughters were provided for on their marriage,and be- possibilities of enrichment;but the business of the estate fore his death he arranged for the division of his estate in was so great and complicated,that he was needed to assist this way.To his eldest son he gave the family mansion with his father;and,on his father's death in the kengtze year the lands pertaining to it,and the ancestral temple,with (1840),he became the administrator. land sufficient to constitute a generous endowment.To his I have now come down to my unworthy self,the old scholar third son he gave the banks and pawn-shops in Soochow and who pens this narrative for your recreation.I was born Wukiang with half a million taels in silver.The remaining under the sign of the Serpent,in the kweisze year (1833) portion of the gold and silver he divided into three parts,one the kengwu month,the yichow day,at the jenshen hour;and each to the eldest and second sons,and the third part to be the astrologer informed my father that the heavenly aspect a fund for the benefit of the estate and to protect it from the indicated by my eight characters foretold a life of many rapacity of the minor officials. vicissitudes,but long and ending in peaceful calm.My The residue of his estate,comprising house property, father gave me the name of Kienchang,"Well-established farms,fishing and other rights,and grain shops,he left in and Luxuriant,"my official name by which I should always trust,to be held undivided for the benefit of his descendants. be inscribed in official records;but,as is customary with us Of the net annual profit,one-tenth was to be paid to the head Chinese,when I reached the age of puberty and became a of the family;one-tenth divided equally between the ances- serious student,I selected the to-name Meisun,"Beautiful tral temple,and the administrator of the estate;and the Gentleness",by which I would thenceforth,for the rest of remaining eight-tenths divided equally between his living my life,be addressed familiarly by all my kinsfolk and my male descendants who had married,were householders,and friends. were either resident on the estate or were engaged in busi- I took to learning as a duck takes to water.My first ness for it.The administrator of the estate during the later lesson-book,the "Three-Word Classic",was soon mastered, and it was for me a proud moment when,the noisy din of
THE TRIADS AT SHANGHAI 5 4 IN THE DAYS OF THE TAIPINGS rant or with hand net in the numerous canals intersecting the class-room stilled for a time,I stood up backing the the country.Besides this he incubated ducks and had at all book and repeated the whole from beginning to end without times a flock of a thousand or more,feeding noisily all day an error in word or tone.My next lesson-book was the around the sedgy shores of the lake,and racing home more "Patronymics",and this,in its turn,I mastered in a short noisily still at the sunset call of their keeper.Often did we time;so with the next,the "Thousand Word Essay",though children make merry at the eagerness of the ducks racing this was difficult,because disconnected;and when I was madly homeward,scrambling over each other's shoulders,all promoted to the "Childhood's Odes",my heart was filled anxious to be first,and at the quacks of distress from the with joy.My proficiency at my lessons attracted the atten- laggards in the rear,inspired as they were with full tion of my father's cousin,the head of the Soochow branch knowledge,from painful experience,of the sound whipping of our family,Ting Kienlun,his to-name Yaolien,a scholar that the last bird in would receive. of some learning and much refinement;and he proposed that To carry out his fishing duties old Cockeye kept three I should live with him and join his sons in their study of the boats,two large square scows for netting the lake,and a Classics under a tutor.My father readily assented,and so I small swift slipper-boat for canal work;and on one or the spent my youth mainly in the wealthy and cultured city of other I spent many hours.Even before I went to Soochow, Soochow,of which it is said which was in my eleventh year,he had taught me to swim; Shang yu t'ien t'ang with him I had helped to shoot wild duck on the shores of Hsia yu Soo Hang. the lake;I could cast a small hand net made to my size; Above are the halls of Heaven; and I had become expert in handling the slipper-boat.This Below.are Soo(chow)and Hang(chow). was ordinarily just large enough for one passenger lying at My childhood was not spent solely in study,and I had length under the mat cover,and one oarsman,sitting in the outdoor play which strengthened my body,while my teacher stern,pushing the two paddles with his feet and steering developed my mind.The "Great Learning"has it that with another paddle held under his arm.He now had one When the mind is broadened,the body is at ease; made a trifle longer,with room for me to sit in the bow and, but my father,scholar on his one side,but practical ad- with my legs or my arms,push another pair of paddles,and ministrator and countryman.on the other,was rather of in this one-and-a-half man-power boat we made good speed. opinion that a healthy body was the essential condition for In accepting Yaolien's offer,my father made one stipula- a healthy mind,a strange doctrine for Chinese,but one in tion,that,in addition to the month's holiday customary at which,with all due respect for the superior wisdom of the the new year,I should have another month to include the Classics,I think he was right.I had my games which I periods of the Little Heat and the Great Heat (roughly played with my cousins and the sons of the tenants on the July),and besides should spend at home the first five days of estate,but my happiest hours were spent on the water.On each month;as he put it,twenty-five days without a break the shores of the large shallow lake,forming the eastern were quite enough for head work,and the bow must then be boundary of the property,lived Cockeye as he was generally unstrung for five days.This was the plan followed during called from a cast in one eye,his name being Wang Yinshan. the next eight years.The tutors took my cousins and myself Old Coekeye-he seemed old to me,though he had not yet suecessively through the "Canons of Filial Piety,"and the reached his fortieth year when I was in my tenth- "Juvenile Learning"on to the four Books and the five performed a double function on the estate;he was foreman Classics,and so to the Sacred Edict,and in all these we over the fishing on the lake and saw to netting the coarser were well grounded;and,during the whole time,punctually fish found in it;and between-whiles he caught finer fish for on the last day of the month old Cockeye turned up shortly my father's table and the manor house,fishing with cormo-
IN THE DAYS OF THE TAIPINGS before sunset to take me home.If the weather was bad,we started the next morning at daybreak,but if it was fine we left at once.My special two-pair slipper-boat was moored outside the Lowmen Gate,and we rowed rapidly south along CHAPTER II: the Imperial Canal,passing under the stone bridges span- ning it,first the noble single-arch bridge just at the south- MY CAREER IS DETERMINED. east corner of the city-wall,then six li further south the N the middle of the Lesser Cold (Middle of January)I Patakiao with its fifty-three arches,passing through Kiapu, received an invitation from Yaolien to visit him at thirty li south of Soochow,and so on to Wukiang,fifteen li Soochow.When I entered his presence I made before further south;there we left the Imperial Canal and turned to the east and south-east through side canals about fifteen li him,not the prostration which formerly I had made,as junior to senior,and as non-literate to literate,but the further to Tungli.The distance of sixty li (twenty English miles)from Soochow was nothing to Cockeye's strong legs, simple genuflexion as one Siutsai to another;and I could but I must admit that,after five days at home,I found the see that he was pleased at the rise in my social status. "The home father sends his salutations to his honoured return journey always easier than the journey down,when my muscles were all soft from a month's sedentary occu- cousin,"I said,"through the mouth of this younger brother, pation. and begs to inquire after his rest." In my nineteenth year-I entered the preliminary examina- "His.younger brother returns the compliment,and hopes tion for Siutsai at the district city,Wukiang,one of about that his elder is able to eat his rice with pleasure,"he a thousand candidates,and I was,to my great joy,one of the replied;and then he lapsed into the unceremonious talk of nineteen who were selected;the next year the nineteen joined family intimacy. the others who had been successful in that and many previous "I have invited you here to ask about your plans for the years in the other districts of the prefecture,and entered, future.” about three hundred in all,for the second test at the pre- "I have made no definite plans,"I replied,"but,bearing fectural chief city Soochow,and again I passed,one among in mind my good fortune in obtaining my Siutsai degree the fifty-five successful candidates.Later in that same without delay from any failure,I had thought to go on to jentze year (1852)I entered for the third test,when those the Kujen,and,on obtaining that,to enter official life, who had previously passed the second test came from all With the pecuniary means at my father's disposal,and the prefectures of Kiangnan to Soochow,the provincial backed by the interest of our cousin Wenkwang,and,if I capital,for the third test;again I was successful,gaining may say so,the influence at the command of your honoured the degree of Siutsai and thereby being of the ninth civil self,I think it probable that I could obtain my first office rank,with the honorific title of Shengyuen. without undue delay.If then,with my more.limited I paid to my cousin my first visit in my official robes, capabilities,I could copy the brilliant career of our common wearing on my hat the gilt button of the ninth rank,and on ancestor,Maochang,it seemed to me that the government the breast and the back of my coat the square pusa em- administration offered the prospect of greater rewards than broidered with a jay;and when I paid my respects,similarly any other career.” attired,to my honoured father and to Ting Shihtang,his "That is quite true,"replied my uncle,"and,under normal to-name Wenkwang,the head of our clan in my native conditions,the course you propose to follow would un- village,Tungli,it was the happiest day of my life. questionably bring you a brilliant future.But the condi- tions are not normal and I see very stormy times ahead.For (Y)