The Devil Soldier (50 page)

Such fear is understandable. Over a century after his death, with the Chinese still killing each other in the name of differing ideologies, Ward’s realism, self-styled values, and basic attention to the decent treatment of “his people” continue to stand out, and are doubtless as discomforting to China’s Communist dynasty as they were to the Manchus.

The most effective criticisms of Ward’s career came not from Communist revisionists but from two men who personally witnessed the Taiping rebellion and Ward’s campaigns: Augustus Lindley and A. A. Hayes. To Lindley, who never met Ward, the American commander “was a brave and determined man” who “left those who cherished his memory to regret that he had not fallen in a worthier cause.” Hayes was one friend of Ward’s who had just such regrets: He wrote Ward’s imperialist employers off as “sorry allies for honorable men” and summed up his own feelings about Ward with this statement:

It is difficult to withhold praise from brave deeds, even if we be not wholly in sympathy with the cause in which they are done. While dwelling upon the striking character of Ward’s achievements, and having only admiration for the many excellent traits of his character, a conscientious historian must guard himself from approval, actual or implied, of the entry of any right-minded and self-respecting foreigner into the Chinese naval or military service.

But to defend Ward against the charge of working for nefarious masters is unnecessary: He himself knew the nature of the “Rascally officials” who paid his troops and his bonuses and on at least one occasion acknowledged a temptation to “throw them all overboard.” In fact, if many observers are to be believed, Ward grew so dissatisfied with Manchu corruption, brutality, and ineptitude that he gave much thought to turning his army against the dynasty once the Taipings had been defeated and then reforming not only China’s military but its political system. Hayes stated that

[h]ad the operations in which [Ward] was engaged been completed, he would have been made a Prince of the Blood Royal, and Commander-in-Chief of the armies in China. There is no doubt that he had a well-defined and consuming ambition to bring this great empire into line with Eastern nations; and an officer of his staff, with whom I was well-acquainted, told me that if he had never before believed in the Divine direction of earthly affairs, he would have done so after he had seen in Ward’s death a direct interference from on high with a purpose carried on, and to be carried out, with fire and sword.

Ward’s methods were, however, more complicated than fire and sword, and more unique than the kind of religious and political zealotry that drove the Taiping rebellion. Ward succeeded on the battlefield, spread fear among his enemies, antagonized his superiors, and finally achieved some measure of lasting importance not because he was a committed idealist or a simple adventurer but because he was in every sense a free-lance—perhaps the purest example of that breed the modern world has produced. In Ward’s relatively untrained but keen
mind everything was up for questioning: family and religion, the authority of superiors, military doctrines, governmental policies, even national loyalty itself. (It is well to remember that his transfer to Chinese citizenship was made without apparent philosophical difficulty, and, while he habitually signed himself “an honest American,” he also criticized his brother for becoming “excessively patriotic” during the American Civil War.) In every endeavor he undertook, Ward displayed this questioning, indeed challenging, attitude, which is such an essential component of the true free-lance. To his own father, to the pompous filibuster William Walker, to the president of Mexico, to his senior officers in the French army in the Crimea, to the Western authorities in Shanghai, and finally to his imperial Chinese superiors he was consistently, irrepressibly forthright and troublesome. The perceptive Prince Kung had indeed been right when he wrote of Ward: “His nature is basically unrestrained and his heart is even harder to fathom.” Ward was an aggressive realist, so determined to hold himself aloof from any person, group, cause, or nation that did not embody or share his own values and goals that it often seemed he would never cease his global wandering or form personal attachments of any real significance.

Yet in his attitude toward his wife, Chang-mei, toward China (as distinct from the Manchus), and toward the men of the Ever Victorious Army there is the distinct suggestion that something had finally touched Ward. Whether or not he actually intended to carve out a warlord domain or replace the Manchus with a native dynasty, there is about his actions and life in Sung-chiang the unmistakable sense that he was building toward a greater achievement than mere profit. Certainly his naive and even foolish management of his own business affairs prevents Ward’s dismissal as a mere mercenary. Rather, his Chinese career suggests a systematic attempt to construct an order in Sung-chiang and around the Ever Victorious Army that would finally embody a military and political style of which he himself would have approved. That style was based on a simple notion: decent treatment of “his people.” If his attempts to achieve this—and, on a larger scale, to propel China toward new methods of fighting and perhaps even governing—were piecemeal,
ingenuous, and ultimately ill-fated, they were nonetheless worthy of greater tribute than an empty grave in America, a ransacked grave in China, and the invective of ideologues, against whom Ward always fought with such brilliant determination.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

AMERICAN

Frederick Townsend Ward
, American sailing officer and soldier of fortune born in Salem, Massachusetts. In the first twenty-nine years of his life, Ward traveled the world extensively on merchant vessels (making several trips to China) and participated in military campaigns in Mexico and the Crimea before contracting with the imperial Chinese government to undertake the defense of Shanghai against the Taiping rebels in 1860. Starting with foreign mercenaries, Ward later employed Western officers to train Chinese soldiers to use the most modern weapons and tactics. The force he organized along these lines was eventually named the Ever Victorious Army by the imperialist Chinese, but his troops were known as “the devil soldiers” among the rebels.

Henry Gamaliel Ward
, called Harry, Frederick’s brother. A shipping merchant, who often acted as agent for arms purchases for his brother’s Chinese army.

Elizabeth Ward
, Frederick’s sister and principal correspondent, who kept his letters carefully preserved until her death. These invaluable documents were subsequently destroyed by a group of relatives headed by Harry Ward’s widow.

Henry Andrea Burgevine
, of North Carolina. Frederick Ward’s second-in-command. An effective officer with a weakness for alcohol, Burgevine was invaluable in many battles against the rebels, but he eventually became the tragic victim of his own emotional instability.

Edward Forester
, third in the line of command of the Ever Victorious Army. An accomplished linguist and efficient officer, Forester also played a vital role
in the army’s campaigns, although he revealed a troubling and puzzling tendency toward self-glorification and denigration of his commander’s achievements following Ward’s death.

Charles Schmidt
, an American soldier of fortune who first met Ward in South America in the early 1850s and wrote several eyewitness accounts of his service with Ward in China.

Dr. Daniel Jerome Macgowan
, an American Baptist missionary and physician who doubled as a correspondent for several English-language publications in China. Macgowan wrote the first relatively complete account of Ward’s exploits, remarkable (given the conflicting sources and reports he had to contend with) for its insight and accuracy.

Anson Burlingame
, American minister to China who arrived in Shanghai in 1862. Destined to become a trusted friend and servant of the imperial Chinese government, Burlingame quickly developed an attachment to Ward and his officers and often pleaded their case before officials in both Peking and Washington.

Augustus A. Hayes
, a junior partner for one of Shanghai’s larger Western trading firms and a fellow New Englander who knew Ward well during his years of imperial service. Hayes wrote two important magazine pieces as well as private memoranda concerning Ward.

BRITISH

Admiral James Hope
, commander of British naval forces in China. Known to his men as Fighting Jimmie, Hope was bellicose and singularly confident. After the Allied march on Peking in 1860, he became a fixture in Shanghai. He headed two missions to negotiate with the Taiping leaders in Nanking for safety of trade on the Yangtze and initially did his best to stop the activities of adventurers such as Ward. Eventually, though, Hope’s hostility toward the rebels, as well as strong similarities of character, made him and Ward friends and allies.

Frederick Bruce
, British minister to China during the period of Ward’s operations. Dedicated and capable, Bruce nonetheless embodied the contradictory commitments—to neutrality in the Chinese civil war and active protection
of British trading rights—that characterized many British officials. Bruce initially opposed Ward, but impatience with Peking and disgust with the Taipings gradually changed his attitude.

General Sir John Michel
, commander of British army forces in China until early 1862. A gifted commander with a real understanding of unconventional warfare, Michel appreciated the work Ward had undertaken, and saw in it the chance for China’s military regeneration. Before leaving China he recommended that heavy assistance be given Ward by the British government.

General Sir Charles Staveley
, Michel’s successor, a capable but arrogant officer with none of Michel’s appreciation for Ward. Staveley believed that the British should be responsible for training Chinese troops and that Ward was little more than a rogue and an outlaw.

Captain Roderick Dew
, one of Admiral Hope’s subordinates who, like Hope, initially tried to stop Ward’s activities but ended up becoming the young American’s friend. Responsible for the unauthorized seizure of Ningpo from the Taipings in 1862, Dew was acting in conjunction with Ward in the Ningpo area when Ward was killed.

Thomas Taylor Meadows
, a noted sinologist and Taiping sympathizer who was British consul in Shanghai at the time of Ward’s early operations, which he strongly opposed.

Walter Medhurst
, Meadows’s successor, who, while opposed to the activities of adventurers, gradually became less troublesome to Ward as the official position of his government regarding the Ever Victorious Army changed.

Chaloner Alabaster
, British consular official and interpreter in Shanghai. Brave and outspoken, Alabaster served as an observer at many of the battles involving joint actions between Ward’s troops and British regulars, leaving several important accounts of them.

Augustus F. Lindley
, a British sailing officer who, at the time of Ward’s arrival in Shanghai, traveled up the Yangtze to gain firsthand knowledge of the Taiping movement. Liking what he saw, and eventually marrying a Portuguese girl in a Taiping ceremony, Lindley ran guns to the rebels and trained their soldiers in tactics and the use of modern weapons. On returning to England, he wrote a bitter account of the end of the Taiping rebellion and of the part the British and Ward had played in suppressing it.

Captain Charles George Gordon
, General Staveley’s young brother-in-law and chief of engineers. Destined to become one of Victorian England’s greatest heroes, Gordon was emotionally complex but professionally brilliant, capable of absorbing important lessons from his early experiences in China (and especially from his observations of Ward in action). He put these lessons to good use during his tenure as Ward’s most illustrious successor in command of the Ever Victorious Army.

FRENCH

Vice Admiral August Leopold-Protet
, commander of French naval forces in China. Like Admiral Hope and General Michel, Protet was a personable and aggressive officer, with appreciable experience fighting unconventional wars. He played a key role in support of Ward’s troops during the early months of 1862, and his death during an action against the Taipings caused his troops to engage in deplorable acts of vengeance.

Adrien Tardif de Moidrey
, a French officer who may have originated the idea of using Western officers to train Chinese soldiers. During the winter of 1860-61 he met Ward and Burgevine, and out of these meetings came the idea not only for the Ever Victorious Army but for the Franco-Chinese Corps of Kiangsu, Tardif de Moidrey’s small but potent force of Chinese artillerymen.

Prosper Giquel
, a young French officer and the head of the Ningpo office of the Imperial Chinese Customs Service, which was operated for Peking by capable Westerners. Giquel was another careful observer of Ward’s activities, which he emulated in Chekiang province by creating what became known as the Ever Triumphant Army.

Albert Edouard Le Brethon de Caligny
, cofounder and battlefield leader of the Ever Triumphant Army, who played a vital role in countering Taiping moves in the Ningpo area in early 1862.

CHINESE

Hsien-feng
, emperor of China during the early period of Ward’s operations. A dissipated hedonist, Hsien-feng was controlled by reactionary advisers, most
of whom favored a disastrous policy of simultaneously fighting the Taiping rebels and abusing Western representatives. His death in 1861 left imperial governmental matters in immense disarray.

Yehonala (the Empress Dowager Tz’u-hsi)
, Hsien-feng’s favorite concubine and the mother of his son. Shrewd and manipulative, Yehonala initially favored berating and lying to Western representatives, but she eventually came to see that such a policy would have to take a secondary role—at least temporarily—to the defeat of the Taipings. After Hsien-feng’s death, she emerged as controlling regent for their young son, T’ung-chih.