“Was not the body of this rebel king already decayed?” the Empress Mother inquired.
“It was strangely clean,” Tseng Kuo-fan replied. “The silk which wrapped the whole body, even the feet, was of fine heavy quality, and protected the flesh.”
“What sort of man was this rebel king in his looks?” the Empress Mother inquired again.
“He was very large and tall,” Tseng Kuo-fan replied. “His head was round, his face massive, and he was bald. He wore a beard, streaked with gray. The head was cut off according to imperial command to be taken from province to province. As for the body, I ordered it to be burned and I myself saw it in ashes. The two elder brothers of the Heavenly King were captured alive, but they had lost their wits, too, and they could only mutter unceasingly, ‘God the Father—God the Father’—and so I ordered them both beheaded.”
Then before this rebel’s head was sent to the provinces for the people to see, the Empress Mother announced that she wanted to look upon it with her own eyes.
“These many years,” she declared, “I have carried on war against the rebel king, and now I am victor. Let me set my eyes upon my enemy who is vanquished.”
The head was brought to her then by a horseman who carried it in a basket slung from his saddle, and Li Lien-ying received it, wrapped in yellow satin, stained and soiled, and he brought it with his own hands into the private throne room of the Empress Mother.
There she sat upon her throne, and she commanded Li Lien-ying to put the head down upon the floor before her and unwrap it. This Li Lien-ying did, the Empress Mother steadfastly gazing while he did so, until the satin fell away, and the ghastly face was revealed. The Empress Mother sat transfixed, her eyes held by the staring eyes of the dead, which none had taken time to close. These dead eyes stared back at her, black and bitter in the bloodless face. The mouth was pale and made more pale by the sparse black beard around it, streaked with gray, and the lips were drawn back from strong white teeth.
The ladies who stood about the throne shielded their eyes with their sleeves from the fearful sight, and one lady, always timid and shy, retched to vomit and cried out that she was faint. Even Li Lien-ying could not forbear a groan.
“A villain,” he muttered, “and villainous even in death.”
But the Empress Mother put up her hand for silence. “A strange wild face,” she observed. “A desperate face, too sad to look upon. But it is not a villain’s face. You have no feeling, you eunuch! This is not a criminal face. It is the face of a poet, gone mad because his faith was vain. Ah me, it is the face of a man who knew himself lost when he was born.”
She sighed and leaned her head down and covered her eyes with her hand for a moment. Then her hands fell and she lifted her head.
“Take away the head of my enemy,” she commanded Li Lien-ying, “and let it be shown everywhere to my people.”
Li Lien-ying took the head away again, the horseman put it into the basket and he began the long journey. In every city of every province the head was set high upon a pole for the people to see, until at last its flesh dried and peeled away, and only the skull was left. And wherever the head was shown peace followed.
So ended the T’ai Ping Rebellion in the solar year 1865. For fifteen years this cruel war had been waged back and forth across nine provinces of the realm and twenty million people died or starved to death. Nowhere had the Heavenly King stayed to build his kingdom, but he went everywhere with his followers, first killing and then looting, and among those followers were also many rootless white men, drifters, lost to their own peoples. But some, a few, believed in the Heavenly King because they were Christians and he used the name of Christ. These, too, were killed.
When this great rebellion was put down, the Imperial Armies, encouraged by what Gordon had taught them concerning warfare, put an end also to two lesser rebellions, one in the southern province of Yünnan, whence came the landscaped marble as tribute to the Dragon Throne, and the other a rebellion of Muslim in the province of Shensi. These were small frays compared to the great rebellion, and were soon ended. The Empress Mother, surveying the realm, saw only peace and in peace and prosperity, and the people praised her for that under her advice all rebels were defeated. Her power rose high, she knew it, and she moved swiftly at last to establish her power inside the Court as well and so make the dynasty secure.
Meanwhile she did not forget the Englishman Gordon. While Tseng Kuo-fan had led the Imperial Army against Nanking, Gordon led the Ever-Victorious Army against the same rebels in the region of the lower Yangtse where Li Hung-chang led the imperial soldiers. Had it not been for Gordon’s victories, Nanking could not have fallen so easily, and Tseng Kuo-fan was great enough to say so before the Throne.
Now the Empress Mother desired exceedingly to see this Englishman, but she could not yield to her personal wish, for never had a foreigner been received at the Imperial Court. She read every report of him, however, and listened to all that was said concerning him by those who had seen him.
“The strength of Gordon,” Li Hung-chang wrote in a memorial, “lies in his rectitude. He declares that he believes it his duty to put down the rebels for the sake of our people. Truly I have never seen a man like Gordon. He spends his own money to give comfort to his men and to the people who have been robbed and wounded by the rebels. Even our enemies call him ‘great soul,’ and declare that they are honored in defeat by such a one.”
When the Empress Mother received this memorial she commanded that the Order of Merit of the First Rank be awarded Gordon, and that he be given a gift of ten thousand taels for his share in the honors of victory. But when the imperial treasure bearers came into his presence bearing the bullion upon their heads in great bowls, Gordon refused the gift and when the bearers, unbelieving, did not retire, he raised his cane and drove them away.
The news of this refusal went over the whole nation and yet not one citizen could believe that a man would refuse such treasure. Then Gordon made known why he would receive no gifts. Here was his reason. Li Hung-chang, in excess of triumph when the great city of Soochow was captured, had ordered the murder of many of the enemy leaders who had already surrendered. Now Gordon had promised these leaders that their lives would be saved if they surrendered, and when he found that he had been betrayed, his promise voided by Li Hung-chang, he fell into such a frenzy of temper that even Li was frightened and withdrew for a while into his own house in Shanghai.
“I will not forgive you so long as I live,” Gordon had howled, and Li, staring at that white set face, indeed saw no forgiveness in the frost-blue eyes.
And Gordon, forever unforgiving, sent this proud letter to the Dragon Throne:
“Major Gordon received the approbation of His Majesty with every gratification, but regrets most sincerely that, owing to the circumstances which occurred after the capture of Soochow, he is unable to accept any mark of His Majesty the Emperor’s recognition, and therefore respectfully begs His Majesty to receive his thanks for the intended kindness and to allow him to decline the same.”
The Empress Mother read this document a few days later as she sat in the winter garden of the Middle Sea Palace. She read it twice. Then most thoughtfully she considered what man this Gordon was, who could for so high a reason refuse vast treasure and great honor. For the first time it came into her mind that even among the Western barbarians there were men not savage, not cruel, not venal. There in the quiet garden, this thought shook her to the soul. If it were true that there could be good men among the enemy, then indeed she must still be afraid. If righteous, the white men were stronger than she reckoned, and she kept this fear hidden in her so long as she lived thereafter.
The Empress Mother held Tseng Kuo-fan in the city for many days while she pondered what reward he should have for his bravery and successes, for by now this imperious woman asked no advice of prince or minister, and at last she commanded that he be made Viceroy of the great northern province of Chihli, and that he live thereafter in th
e city of Tientsin. On the sixteenth day of the first moon of the new year, she presided at a Court banquet whose dishes were beyond reckoning, and while all feasted, Tseng Kuo-fan sat in the highest seat of honor and the court actors presented six famous plays. Only after all this merrymaking did the Empress Mother bid Tseng Kuo-fan to depart for Tientsin and there find peace.
Yet he had no peace, for sudden rioting burst out in that city against some French nuns. These nuns, who kept an orphanage, offered a reward of money to any who would bring them a child, and trouble then followed, for evildoers began to kidnap children to sell them to the nuns who received them without asking to whom they belonged, and would not give them up again when their parents came to claim them, since they were paid for.
The Empress Mother sent for Tseng Kuo-fan again.
“And why,” she inquired of him, “do these foreigners want Chinese children?”
“Majesty,” the learned man replied, “I believe, for myself, that they wish to make converts to their religion, but alas, the ignorant people of the streets are full of superstitions and they declare that the magic medicines of the foreigners are made from the eyes and hearts and livers of human beings, and it is for this that the nuns want the children.”
She had cried out in horror. “Can it be so!”
But he assured her, “I think it is not so. The nuns do often take the children of beggars already half dead on the streets, or they search for the newborn female infants of the very poor, whose parents expose them on the roadsides to die, and it is sure that most of such children cannot be saved, and yet the nuns take them and baptize them and count them as converts. Then such as die are buried in their Christian graveyards and it is considered to the merit of the nuns to baptize so many.”
Whether Tseng Kuo-fan was right or wrong, she did not know, for he was a man of tolerance, believing no ill even of his enemy. Nevertheless, in the fifth month of that same year, a curse of the gods had fallen upon the nuns in the city of Tientsin, so that many children in the French orphanage had died and a horde of rabble-rousers and ne’er-do-wells, who called themselves the Turgid Stars, went everywhere saying that the foreign nuns were killing the children left in their care. The people were angered, and the nuns, in fear, agreed that certain chosen men should be allowed to come in and see for themselves that the orphanage was a place of mercy and not of death. Alas, the French Consul was angered in his turn at such inspection and he came and drove out those chosen, and although Chung Hou, the Superintendent of Customs in Tientsin, warned him that this was dangerous indeed, yet that foreigner was too proud to deal with him and demanded that an officer of high rank be sent to the Consulate. Then, although the city magistrate did his best to placate his people, they continued in their rage, and they went to the church and the orphanage of the foreign nuns, threatening them with fire and weapons, whereupon that foolish French Consul ran into the street with his pistol in his hand to succor the nuns. But he was seized by the people and put to death in some unknown manner, for none ever saw him again.
Prince Kung then came to the aid of Tseng Kuo-fan and he negotiated with all his skill, and by luck and by chance at this moment France itself went to war with Prussia, and in such trouble was more willing to close the negotiation. Nevertheless, the Empress Mother had been compelled to agree to pay to France four thousand silver taels from the Imperial Treasury as the price for the dead Frenchman’s life and the fright caused the nuns, and Chung Hou, the Superintendent of Customs in Tientsin, was ordered to go to France in person to make apology for the Throne.
Before Tseng Kuo-fan could bring this trouble to an end, the Empress Mother sent for him again, for she had received a memorial from the south that brought grave news. Though the Heavenly King was dead, the city of Nanking and the four provinces were still not peaceful, the people so unruly and restless after the many years of rebellion that they had assassinated her Viceroy. For this reason she sent in haste for Tseng Kuo-fan and commanded him to take the dead man’s place in Nanking. The weary, aging general was compelled to leave his post and come to the capital and once more in the Imperial Audience Hall at dawn he knelt upon the cushion before the Throne, whereon sat the young Emperor. Behind the yellow silk curtain the two Empresses sat on their thrones, the Empress Mother to the right and her co-Regent to the left.
When the kneeling general heard the voice of the Empress Mother commanding him to return to the south and take up new duties in Nanking as Viceroy, he begged her patience while he told her that indeed he was not well, that his eyesight was failing, and therefore he prayed to be excused from such a task.
She interrupted him from behind the curtain. “Though your eyes fail you,” she declared, “yet you are able to supervise those under your command.” And she would not hear his plea.
He reminded her then that he had not yet settled the troubles in his present province of Chihli, where a French officer in Tientsin had been murdered by Chinese rowdies while he tried to protect the nuns who were his countrywomen.
“Have you not executed those miscreants?” she demanded.
“Majesty,” Tseng Kuo-fan replied, “the French Minister and his friend the Russian Minister insist upon sending deputies to watch the beheadings, and they have not yet arrived. I have left my supporting general, Li Hung-chang, to finish the task. The beheadings were to have taken place yesterday.”
“Oh, these foreign missionaries and priests!” the Empress Mother exclaimed. “I wish we could forbid them our realm! When you take up your duties in Nanking, you must maintain a large and disciplined army to control the people, who hate all foreigners.”
“Majesty, I purpose to build forts along the entire Yangtse River,” Tseng Kuo-fan replied.
“These treaties Prince Kung has made with the foreigners are too irksome,” the Empress Mother went on. “Especially irksome are the Christians, who come and go everywhere as though theirs were the country.”
“Majesty, it is true,” Tseng Kuo-fan replied. He was still on his knees, and since Court custom compelled him to kneel without his hat on his head, he felt the chill of the wintry dawn creeping into his bones. Nevertheless he continued with courtesy to agree with the Empress. “It is true,” he said, “that missionaries cause trouble everywhere. Their converts oppress those who do not wish to eat the foreign religion and the missionaries always protect the converts and the consuls protect the missionaries. Next year when the time comes to revise the treaty with France, we must reconsider carefully the whole matter of allowing religious propaganda to be spread among the people.”
The Empress Mother said with still more irritation, “I cannot understand why we must have a foreign religion here when we have three good religions of our own.”
“Nor I, Majesty,” the old general replied.
After silence the audience ended, and since this was the year of Tseng Kuo-fan’s sixtieth birthday, the Empress Mother again made a great feast for him and gave him many rich gifts. She composed a poem in her own vigorous handwriting in which she praised him for his age and accomplishments, and with it she sent a carved tablet upon which were the words “To One Who Is Our Lofty Pillar and Our Rock of Defense.” She sent also a gold image of Buddha, a scepter made of sandalwood inlaid with jade, a robe embroidered with gold dragons, ten rolls of imperial silk and ten other rolls of silk crêpe.
So powerful was the influence of Tseng Kuo-fan that the restlessness of the people subsided when he entered the Viceregal palace in Nanking. His first duty was to discover the assassin of the former Viceroy and condemn him to death by slicing. He made this death public, deeming it well that the people watch with their own eyes what befell such a criminal, and they watched in silence while the thin strong blade of the headsman’s knife cut the man’s living body into strips of meat and fragments of bone.
Thereafter the people returned to their daily work and to their usual amusements. Once more the flower boats plied their way upon Lotus Lake and lovely courtesans sang their songs, playing u
pon lutes while their clients listened and feasted. Tseng Kuo-fan was pleased to see the old peaceful life return, and he reported to the Throne that the south was now as it had been before the great T’ai P’ing Rebellion.
Yet in spite of his honors and his high place and his rectitude, Tseng Kuo-fan had not long to live. In early spring of the next year he was struck down by the gods while he sat in his sedan chair on the way to meet a minister whom the Empress Mother had sent with messages from Peking. As was his habit when alone, he was reciting to himself certain passages from the Confucian classics when suddenly he felt his tongue grow numb. He motioned to his attendants to take him back to the palace. He felt dazed and confused, spots floated before his eyes, and he lay silent upon his bed three days.
Twice again he was struck, and then he summoned his son to his side and with difficulty he gave him these commands:
“I am about to cross over to the Yellow Springs. Alas, I am useless, for I leave behind me many unfinished tasks and problems. I command you to recommend to the Empress Mother my colleague, Li Hung-chang. As for me, I am like the morning dew which passes swiftly away. When the end comes and I am encoffined, let my funeral services be performed with the old rites and Buddhist chants.”
“Father, do not speak of death,” his son exclaimed, and the tears overran his eyelids and rolled down his cheeks.
At this Tseng Kuo-fan seemed to rally, and he asked to be taken into the garden to see the blossoming plum trees. There he was stricken once more, but this time he would not be taken to his bed. Instead, he motioned that he was to be carried into the Viceregal Audience Hall, and they carried him in and put him upon the Viceroy’s throne, and there he sat as though he conducted an audience and so he died.
At the moment of his death a great cry went up from the city, for a shooting star fell from the sky and all saw it and feared catastrophe. When he heard that the Viceroy was dead, every man felt that he had lost a parent.