The Devil Soldier

  Hsüeh Huan later informed Peking that Ward—as always at the head of his troops, urging them on with his rattan cane—“was wounded at seven points on his body” as he fought his way through the rows of rebel trenches and stakes. Despite superior numbers, a strong defensive position, and unquestioned bravery, the rebels could not match the Allied force in discipline, quality of arms, or mastery of modern skirmishing tactics. The British naval guns eventually opened a serious breach in the Taiping lines, and at this, said Alabaster, the “place was taken by assault; Ward’s men getting in at one corner immediately after we got in at another, and the rebels getting jammed in a street, there was immense slaughter.” The Taipings attempted to flee, but, as the Herald recorded, “Some of Colonel Ward’s men had got round on the other side, and were in hot pursuit.” Hsüeh Huan recorded that meanwhile, inside the town, “Ward continued to lead his army in the fight, burning the rebels’ barracks, demolishing the rebels’ fortifications and killing countless rebels.… [E]ven when he was wounded, he did not retreat, and eventually wiped out the rebels’ camp.” British and French troops poured into the town along with the balance of the Ward Corps, and after some bitter hand-to-hand fighting the battle came to an end.

  Nearly a thousand Taipings had fallen, along with three or four Europeans serving alongside them. Several hundred more rebels were taken prisoner. The British and French had lost one man killed and some twenty wounded, and Ward’s losses were similarly light. One of his fifty wounded, however, was a heavy blow. Burgevine, like Ward, had been consistently forward in the fight, inspiring his Chinese soldiers to impressive acts of courage. The Herald wrote that “[a]s for the Chinese organized under Colonel Ward, they seemed to know no fear, and, perhaps, exposed themselves too much.” Certainly Burgevine did: Hsüeh Huan noted in his memorial to the throne that during the street fighting “some rebels hid in a house, and when Burgevine broke in, he was wounded, a bullet hitting him on his right leg, penetrating his belly and coming out his left leg. He was rescued and sent back.” In fact, the Taiping musket ball that struck Burgevine made a clean hole about half an inch in diameter through his pelvis. Burgevine at first insisted on continuing his military duties and thus aggravated what was already a very serious wound. He would never fully recover from the injury, although he was to spend most of the spring and summer of 1862 trying. In addition, the wound gave Burgevine what he needed least: an additional reason to drink. By attempting to ease the chronic pain that tormented him for the rest of his life with alcohol, the Carolinian heightened the erratic and volatile side of his character to an eventually tragic extent.

  Those Taiping soldiers who were able to escape Hsiao-t’ang fell back on the town of Nan-ch’iao, a few miles to the south. But when elements of the Allied expeditionary force appeared in pursuit, the rebels continued their flight by moving northwest and regrouping with the much larger Taiping army that was occupying Ch’ing-p’u. Clearly, the main rebel threat to Shanghai was now emanating from the west. During the days following Hsiao-t’ang, this threat was demonstrated when the imperialist commander Li Heng-sung—reportedly spurred on by the striking success and rising fame of the Ward Corps—martialed his Green Standard troops and attempted to check the Taiping advance at the village of Ssu-ching, on the line from Ch’ing-p’u to Shanghai. Given the quality of the Taiping army in Ch’ing-p’u, the outcome was predictable: By the second week of March, Li’s army was surrounded and cut off. Ward, despite the multiple wounds he had received at Hsiao-t’ang, immediately decided to attack in support of the beleaguered Green Standard troops.

  In his attempt to relieve Ssu-ching, Ward was unassisted by British or French troops. With between seven hundred and a thousand soldiers of the corps, as well as several pieces of his own artillery, he moved against the rebels on March 14. According to the Herald, Li Heng-sung “was on the point of giving in when this timely succour arrived.” Like the corps’s previous pair of engagements, the battle for Ssu-ching was comparatively short and very sharp, Ward’s men once again facing enormous numerical odds for which they compensated with disciplined movement, effective rifle fire, competent artillery support, and proficient use of their gunboats.

  Ward himself, Hsüeh Huan told Peking, “was the first to break into the enemy’s position,” where he “gunned down two rebel officers in yellow clothes [a mark of particularly high rank] and seized a yellow silk flag with a dragon design.” This event threw the rebels into apparent fear and confusion: Flying into a panicked retreat, during which hundreds were captured and an even greater number killed, the Taipings crowded onto a “floating” bridge over a canal, which collapsed under their weight. Many hundreds were drowned. “Ward then moved on,” said Hsüeh, “to help the battle on water, capturing twelve gunboats and burning more than a hundred other [smaller] craft.” The casualties of the Ward Corps were somewhat higher on this occasion, chiefly because a rebel magazine was ignited in their midst, producing an enormous explosion.

  The victory was important on many levels. First, the immediate goal of saving Li Heng-sung and his men had been achieved, although just what effective function these troops could serve was becoming less and less clear. Second, the imperial Chinese government now had a fighting force of proven quality in eastern Kiangsu, one which, unlike the Green Standard units, could engage much larger Taiping formations successfully. Recognizing the vital role that the corps had seized for itself, Hsüeh Huan immediately authorized Ward to enlarge it. But most important, Ward had again demonstrated, as during the battles in January and early February, that such victories did not require the cooperation or the support of Western regulars. Given enough men and proper equipment, the Ward Corps could make it unnecessary for the foreign powers to intervene with their troops, while establishing itself as the vital eastern arm for Tseng Kuo-fan’s nutcracker strategy.

  The advantages of enlarging the corps seemed clear, yet almost as soon as these several factors were recognized and appreciated by the Chinese government and the representatives of the Western powers, they became sources of suspicion and anxiety. Ward himself was responsible for this. Chinese officials, once intrigued by Ward’s desire to turn to Chinese ways, suddenly discovered the actual limitations of that desire. The best-trained, best-equipped, and best-led army in the empire was in the hands of an adventurer who, it became known, refused to wear the mandarin’s robes he had been granted or to shave his forehead according to the Manchu style. For the representatives of the West, by contrast, it was precisely Ward’s signs of devotion to China—his close association with Wu Hsü and Yang Fang, his well-known contempt for Shanghai’s Western mercantile community, and his support of Chinese political integrity—that were disturbing. Clearly, Ward was answering to a set of values of his own devising, and in mid-March his roguish behavior reached its apogee when he married, in a traditional Chinese ceremony, Yang Fang’s twenty-one-year-old daughter, Chang-mei.

  VI

  “HIS HEART IS HARD TO FATHOM”

  No single episode in Ward’s mysterious life is more difficult to assess than his marriage to Chang-mei. Indeed, the event remains the clearest symbol of just how complex and ambiguous Ward’s motivations actually were. Ambition, avarice, and affection were all factors in the young American commander’s decision to ally himself intimately with the family of his most loyal backer, Yang Fang—but in what proportions these elements were blended is a matter for conjecture. One clear conclusion can, however, be drawn from the event: By March 1862 Ward had cast his lot irreversibly with China. Fame, failure, and death were all possible ends to the course on which he had embarked. But whichever fate it was to be, Ward would meet it not as a foreign adventurer intent only on profit but as a Chinese subject whose ambitions—whether pointed at greater elevation within the Manchu hierarchy, at the overthrow of that hierarchy, or at the establishment of a private warlord domain—were to play an important role in the future of the empire that had so consistently drawn him back from escapades in other parts of the wor
ld.

  Certainly, the marriage ruled out any possibility that Ward, after years of being branded a notorious scoundrel, might capitalize on the success of his new corps to become one of the leading citizens of Shanghai’s foreign settlements and of the Western element in China generally. Hallett Abend—a New York Times correspondent in China during the 1930s who authored a somewhat fanciful biography of Ward—claimed that by March 1862 Ward had become

  one of the most desirous social catches of Asia’s then most colorful international community. Added to the fact that Ward was young and a bachelor, and Shanghai’s most exclusive hostesses, particularly those with marriageable daughters, began to compete to lure him to their dinners, their teas, their receptions, their balls.… Much sought after, he appeared briefly between his marches and his battles, and was greatly lionized during several short intervals between campaigns. And then, by his own act, he cut himself off from this charmed circle, and to this day no one knows the precise motivation for the act, publicly performed, which abruptly made him a social outcast.

  Whether Ward was ever so enthusiastically “lionized” by Shanghai’s hostesses is questionable. Many of Abend’s statements were based (or so he claimed) on an examination of records that were destroyed by the Japanese during the Second World War. But it is certainly true that the marriage to Chang-mei—coinciding as it did with Peking’s approval of Ward’s long-standing petition to become a Chinese subject—perpetuated the distance between Ward and many other Westerners just when that gap might have been narrowed. Of course, celebrity among Shanghai’s foreign residents had never held any value for Ward, and it is therefore unsurprising that he should have given so little thought to how his marriage might be interpreted in the settlements. Yet Abend was right to presume that Ward would have made some effort to explain the “shocking mésalliance” to his brother, Harry, and sister Elizabeth, who remained among his closest confidants. Any letters that might have embodied such efforts were destroyed, however, and we are once again forced to examine an important episode in Ward’s life not by studying his own words but by deducing from circumstances.

  Perhaps the easiest aspect of the affair to understand is Yang Fang’s desire to have Ward enter his family. On a purely practical level, it was unlikely that Yang would ever have found a native Chinese husband for Chang-mei: Though the child of a wealthy father, as well as a healthy and attractive woman, Chang-mei was tarred as a woman of “bad luck” because of the demise of her first fiancé. Such superstitions outweighed Yang’s position and fortune in the minds of most Chinese, and Chang-mei had little to look forward to but a life of maiden servitude in her father’s household. By 1862 this fate seemed confirmed, for Chang-mei was twenty-one: already old for a Chinese bride. The fact that during the beginning of that year a suitor did appear could only have been a relief to Yang Fang, and the additional fact that that someone was Frederick Townsend Ward transformed the merchant banker’s relief into genuine joy. For by March 1862 the celebrated “Hua” had risen to a position in the Chinese hierarchy that rivaled Yang’s own.

  Victory at Kao-ch’iao had secured for Ward a fourth-rank mandarinate with peacock feather and enrollment as a Chinese subject. Similar honors had been awarded to Burgevine. Following the battle at Hsiao-t’ang, Governor Hsüeh Huan had again memorialized to the throne, asking that both Ward and Burgevine be raised to the third rank. The request had been granted, and the spherical buttons that adorned the mandarin’s caps of the two Westerners were changed from dark to light blue. Yet Peking was uneasy about granting such high honors to men of foreign origin, and an imperial edict expressed concern over the fact that Ward and Burgevine had been supported in their operations by Admirals Hope and Protet: “China’s use of foreign troops is only an expedient measure. We should bestir ourselves, so that the foreigners will only enhance our power and prestige. It is not right to rely on foreign aid while our own armies flinch and hesitate.”

  Hsüeh Huan used the flinching and hesitation of imperial forces in Kiangsu to press for further honors for Ward, who commanded the only effective government troops in the province. Following the battle at Ssu-ching—during which, very significantly, Ward was not aided by the British or the French—Hsüeh sent another memorial to Peking. He pointed out that Hope and Protet appreciated not only Ward’s courage and skill but his status as a Chinese subject as well: “Several times they [Hope and Protet] have asked us to treat [Ward] well. American Minister Burlingame also knows that Ward has subordinated to China and that Ward has been fighting bravely; he praised Ward. So these foreign emissaries all know the matter well and they will not make objections [to our giving Ward Chinese titles].” In addition, Hsüeh believed that further honors would tie Ward more closely to the imperial cause: “When Ward was informed of the fourth rank button that had been granted to him, he was extremely pleased and inspired. On the fourteenth day of the second month [Chinese calendar], he fought at Ssu-ching and raised the siege of the base. Truly and unusually capable, this Westerner enjoys merits and is fond of winning. He has always longed for the Chinese red button [the highest mandarin rank] and would deem it a great honor to wear it.”

  Finally, Hsüeh made the unusual request that Ward be granted a commission in the imperial Army of the Green Standard. It was an unprecedented honor for a Westerner and one that heightened the general air of uncertainty that surrounded the subject of the Ward Corps in Peking. Specifically, Hsüeh asked that Ward be made a regimental colonel of provincial troops; if this were allowed, said the governor, Ward “would be pleased and would exert himself even more in attempting to repay the kindness.” Despite Peking’s nervousness, Hsüeh’s point was well taken and his latest request granted. In recognition of his valor on the battlefield, Ward was even permitted to wear a prestigious embroidered tiger on his official robes. But Peking’s worries never disappeared. “It is heard,” read an imperial edict issued just after Ward was made a Green Standard colonel, “that Ward does not wear the rank button that has been granted to him, nor has he cut his hair [to the Manchu style]. Is Hsüeh Huan’s former report that Ward wished to be a Chinese subject and change his clothes true? Hsüeh Huan should report honestly whether this foreigner will genuinely appreciate the colonelcy that has just been granted to him.”

  Prince Kung and the Empress Dowager Tz’u-hsi were consistently alive to the fact that, while Ward’s services to China were considerable and admirable, his new position as a Chinese officer in command of the empire’s most effective military unit might make him a most dangerous man should his loyalty to the Manchus ever waver or turn. As a freelance outsider whose services could easily have been dispensed with, Ward had ironically been less of a threat than as a legitimate Chinese subject and officer. For this reason, the need to tie his fate to that of the dynasty through a complex system of controls and rewards became all the more urgent.

  It is quite possible, even probable, that this was another reason why Yang Fang favored his daughter’s marriage to Ward: The more varied and personal Ward’s entanglements with the imperial establishment, the less likely his abandonment of the cause. The central paradox in this situation—one that Yang as well as his superiors in Peking either could not see or were powerless to counteract—was that in attempting to control Ward by granting him rank and favors, they all became steadily more dependent on him. This was especially true at the provincial level, where the bureaucratic fates of men such as Hsüeh Huan and Wu Hsü became directly tied to the continued success of the Ward Corps. Having started down a path in which their own success depended on Ward’s victories—victories that, in turn, depended on continued elevation and reward—Hsüeh, Wu, and their superiors had no choice but to keep the rewards and elevations coming.

  All of this made Ward a most eligible match for the daughter of a successful businessman and aspiring provincial official such as Yang Fang. And there is no evidence that the proposed union—which may actually have originated with Yang rather than Ward—inspired any negative feel
ing in Chang-mei herself. The fact that Ward was a foreigner and a soldier might have prompted condescension among the Manchus in Peking, who viewed the profession of arms with little of the romance that it enjoyed in the West. But the Kiangsu and Chekiang native elites, who daily faced the direct threat of a Taiping attack, generally saw the Ward Corps as an important, or at the very least necessary, organization. Indeed, at the same time that Hsüeh Huan requested unprecedented honors for the unit’s commander, he asked (apparently at Wu Hsü’s urging) for official recognition of the corps itself: “Because of the extreme effectiveness of the ‘Foreign Arms Corps,’ ” he memorialized, “I have selected [for them] the name of the ‘Ever Victorious Army’ [Chang-sheng-chün].” In granting this title China’s rulers further demonstrated their desire to integrate the corps into the traditional Chinese military hierarchy. As Richard J. Smith has pointed out:

  Perhaps Hsüeh chose the appellation simply because it sounded auspicious and appropriate, but the possibility also exists that the Kiangsu governor may have had in mind the precedent of Kuo Yao-shih, a barbarian (Ch’i-tan) commander who submitted to the Sung [dynasty] and who later led a military force with an identical designation. The parallel is particularly striking because Ward’s contingent, like its Sung namesake, at times received criticism for having become proud and unmanageable.

  While undoubtedly pleased that his corps should receive such recognition from Peking, Ward continued to refer to the unit in private as “my people”: Chang-sheng-chün apparently meant as little to him personally as did his mandarin dress, his fiancée’s status as a woman of “bad luck,” and the repeated desire of Chinese officials that he shave his forehead. Although Ward was solidly loyal to the empire, his interest in China’s more antiquated social customs and folk wisdom went only as far as their usefulness in impressing, manipulating, and controlling the local populace. In this connection he did find the “Ever Victorious Army” title of immense use, and for that reason the name stuck. Andrew Wilson, who witnessed the evolution of the Ward Corps, offered a singularly clear explanation of the importance of the force’s new name, which, he said