1. Flashman is usually vague about dates, but from internal evidence (see p. 35) it is clear that the ten days were March 1–11, 1860. It is not known why he was on transit through Hong Kong at this time; approximately eighteen months earlier, in the autumn of 1858, he was definitely in India, preparing to return to England at the end of his service in the Indian Mutiny, which earned him a V.C. and knighthood (see Flashman in the Great Game), but the present narrative makes it plain that this return did not take place, and that during 1859 he was engaged in further foreign service. What this was a later packet of the Papers may explain, but there is some reason to suppose that it was connected with China, since up to the end of 1858 he had never visited that country, yet at the beginning of the present memoir he writes of it with apparent familiarity, and displays some fluency in Chinese, a language not mentioned in his earlier reminiscences. There is a possible alternative for 1859, far-fetched though it may seem: one reference in his earlier writings suggests an acquaintance with John Brown, the American abolitionist, whose celebrated raid on Harper’s Ferry took place in October, 1859, and since Flashman had been at one time an agent (albeit an unwilling one) of the Underground Railroad, it is not impossible that the missing eighteen months were partly spent in the United States – although in what capacity it would be rash to speculate.
2. A reasonable summary of Anglo-Chinese relations up to 1860, including the Arrow War of 1856. For details of the Palmerston – Cobden debate (February 26, 1857), see Division IV of J. Ewing Ritchie’s Life and Times of Viscount Palmerston.
3. Flashman, of course, had no scruples about the opium trade, but the mere fact that he mentioned morality to Mrs Carpenter is some reflection of the opposition that was growing against the opium interests. China had legalised the traffic for the first time under the 1858 Treaty of Tientsin; the opium lobby brazenly claimed that this was voluntary; Sir Thomas Wade, a leading China expert, said the concession had been “extorted”, and Lord Elgin postponed the relevant clause rather than force China’s hand. In fact, the Chinese recognised that there was nothing they could do about it; “the present generation of smokers must and will have opium,” their commissioner told Elgin, a fact recognised by such experienced observers as the missionary Alexander Williamson, who called for abolition by Britain, but admitted that it would make little difference to the Chinese, who would get their drug anyway (Williamson knew the figures, and that it was not uncommon for a labourer to smoke 80 cash worth of opium a day out of his wage of 120 cash (2½p.)). This argument was fastened on by the opium lobby, whose line is echoed by Mrs Carpenter; what is surprising is that even old China hands like John Scarth could assert that the drug was smoked as a sedative rather than as a narcotic. An excellent summary of the subject is J. Spencer Hill’s Maitland Prize-winning essay of 1882, The Indo-Chinese Opium Trade (1884); Hill came to the subject strongly prejudiced against the anti-opium lobby, but his investigations changed his mind. (See also John Scarth, Twelve Years in China (1860); Alexander Williamson, Travels in North China (1870); H. B. Morse, The Trade and Administration of the Chinese Empire, 1908.)
4. Unless there were two Jack Fishers, midshipmen on the China Station in 1860, Flashman’s young acquaintance can only have been John Arbuthnot (“Jackie”) Fisher, later admiral of the fleet, Baron Fisher of Kilverstone, godfather of the Dreadnought battleship, and the foremost name in the Royal Navy since Nelson. Just as Wolseley (see Note 6) may be called the architect of the modern British Army, so Fisher with his “big-gun” turbine ships gave the Royal Navy command of the seas in the first half of the present century. He entered the navy when he was thirteen, and served during the Crimea before going to the China Station in 1859, where he took part in the capture of Canton and the attack on Taku Forts. He was in Chinese waters in the spring of 1860, and still a midshipman although acting-lieutenant, a rank not confirmed until the end of the year. Since Flashman certainly knew Fisher in later life, it is surprising that he does not identify him at their first meeting; on the other hand, his brief description sounds very like the young “Bulldog Jackie”.
5. Chinese secret societies, tongs and triads (the Heaven and Earth Association, the Dagger Men, and others) had various recognition signals; three fingers round a cup was that of the White Lilies. (See Scarth.)
6. Garnet Joseph Wolseley (1833–1913), “the model of a modern major-general”, was one of Britain’s most important soldiers. He won no distinction as a commander in a great war, but his record in the so-called “little wars” – indeed, the variety and success of his service generally – is probably unique in the history of arms. An Anglo-Irishman, he followed his own maxim that if a young officer wants to do well he should try to get himself killed; Wolseley tried really hard, first in the Burma War, when he was badly wounded leading the attack on an enemy stockade; in the Crimea, where he was twice wounded, losing an eye; in the Indian Mutiny, where he served in the relief and siege of Lucknow, being five times mentioned in despatches; in the China War of 1860; in Canada, where in his first independent command he put down the Red River Rebellion without a casualty; in Africa, where he won a lightning campaign against King Koffee of Ashanti, and captured Cetewayo, the Zulu leader; in Egypt, where he beat Arabi Pasha at Tel-el-Kebir and took Cairo; in the Sudan, where he reached Khartoum just too late to rescue Gordon, his old friend of the Crimea and China. He was made a viscount, and later field marshal.
But Wolseley’s real importance was as a military reformer and creator of the modern British Army; having seen and suffered under a traditional regime which, while largely successful, had hardly changed in centuries, and being a confirmed champion of the private soldier, he foresaw the need for change in a rapidly changing military world. He had seen the first “modern war” in the struggle between the American States (where he met Lee and Stonewall Jackson), and his reforms and reorganisations, bitterly opposed at the time, prepared the British Army for a new era of warfare; his influence, largely forgotten, is on the Army still. He was (as Gilbert and Grossmith recognised when they caricatured him in “The Pirates of Penzance”) a man of many talents; a trained draughtsman and surveyor, he sketched and painted well, and wrote several books, including most notably The Soldier’s Pocket Book, a life of Marlborough, a novel, and his reminiscences of the China campaign.
Flashman shows him briefly as a young staff-officer, before the full flowering of the quick temper and impatient efficiency which were to make the expression “All Sir Garnet” synonymous with the modern “Right on!” Wolseley always wanted the best; typically, he chose for one campaign a man who had beaten him in competition. Disraeli passed an illuminating judgment on him: “Wolseley is an egotist and a braggart. So was Nelson.” (See his Narrative of the War with China in 1860 (1862), and Story of a Soldier’s Life (1903); Sir John Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol XIII, (1930); Dictionary of National Biography.
7. Since Flashman probably knew more eminent fighting men – including the great names of the Crimea, Mutiny, U.S. Civil War, and Afghan and American frontiers, to say nothing of his various native foemen – than any other observer of his day, his opinion of James Hope Grant (1808–75) has to be taken seriously. The record seems to bear him out; Grant’s active service in India and China is chiefly remarkable for the amount of time he spent in hand-to-hand combat, to which he brought an iron constitution and an apparently total disregard for his own safety. “To die is nothing,” he once explained, “it’s only going from one room to another.” It was in outpost work and the leadership of flying cavalry columns that his talent lay, although his one major command (China, 1860) was conducted with efficiency, despite his being to some extent at the mercy of his diplomats (Fortescue is scathing on this). Flashman’s character sketch and physical description are sound; he makes the important point that the terrible fighter and stern disciplinarian was an unusually gentle and kindly man, whose consuming interest was music – Grant was a gifted ’cellist and composer, and indeed owed an early advancement to the fact that his commanding general was a keen violinist who wanted a ’cello player as brigade-major. Despite his sketchy education, Grant was something of a military innovator; he is credited with introducing regular manoeuvres and the war game, and it is interesting that Wolseley, the most intellectual of soldiers, should say: “If I have attained any measure of military prosperity, my gratitude is due to one man, and that man is Sir Hope Grant.” (See Sir Hope Grant and Major Knollys, Incidents in the China War; Fortescue; D.N.B.)
8. The Hon. F. W. A. Bruce was at 46 a diplomat of considerable experience, having served in South America, Egypt, Hong Kong (as colonial secretary), Newfoundland (as governor), and in China, first as secretary to his brother, and from 1858 as superintendent of trade and envoy extraordinary to the Chinese Empire.
9. The Inn of Mutual Prosperity was fairly typical, to judge from the experience of that sturdy missionary, the Rev. Alexander Williamson, who stayed in similar establishments while ranging North China on behalf of the National Bible Society of Scotland. He and John Scarth (their works are cited in Note 3) are lively and informative sources for China at this time, and their observations of the social scene, customs, manners, recreations, costume, food, crime, punishment, etc., accord closely with Flashman’s. Mr Williamson has a keen eye for detail and a fine sweeping style; thus the Chinese are “ignorant, conceited and supercilious” and regard Europeans as a fierce, mentally deficient, semi-tamed breed “to be placated like dogs, or as wilful children.” He is scathing on Chinese morals: “Secret dens of hideous licentiousness exist in every city”, and on the great roads “all disguise is thrown off.” Scarth takes a particular delight in minutiae, and is good with the telling phrase: professional mourners he describes as “howling for hire”. They and many foreign writers confirm Flashman’s strong impression of the Chinese conviction of superiority over all other races, whom they regarded as having tributary status.
10. Professional bandits, pirates, and members of the triad secret societies occasionally joined the Taipings, as did other rebels against the Manchu regime, only to fall away because of the revolutionaries’ strict social and religious discipline, and because regular crime paid better. Some of the bandits continued as auxiliaries, among them at least two female brigand leaders, one of whom was called Szu-Zhan.
It was an offshoot of the triads, the Small Sword Society, which took Shanghai in 1853, a conquest which Flashman mistakenly attributes to the Taipings (see p. 50). In fact, the Small Swords claimed association with the rebels, but the Taipings repudiated them “because of their immoral habits and vicious propensities”, and so missed the opportunity of gaining a major port. (See H. B. Morse, The International Relations of the Chinese Empire, vol i, 1910.)
11. Flashman’s account of the formidable Taiping army is in accord with other contemporary descriptions, so far as armaments, uniforms, organisation, battle tactics, black flags, etc., are concerned. (See especially Augustus Lindley, and the other sources listed in Appendix I). But one eminent military man disagreed with him about the rebels’ discipline: Wolseley, who visited Nanking a year later, thought the Taipings “an undrilled, undisciplined rabble” whose strength lay in the fact that the Imperial army was even worse. Even so, Wolseley had a deep admiration for the Chinese, whom he saw as “the coming rulers of the world.” His vision of Armageddon was China versus the United States – “fast becoming the greatest power of the world. Thank heaven, they speak English.” (Wolseley, The Story of a Soldier’s Life, 1903).
12. One revolution is probably very much like another, and readers of Flashman’s narrative will no doubt detect resemblances between Taipingdom and Communist China a few decades ago. The Taipings were, of course, a socialist movement (at the risk of attracting thunderous denunciation, it may be said that certain aspects of Soviet life today awake more echoes of Tsarist Russia than a modern Russian might care to admit). This is not the place to labour the point; sufficient to say that the pronouncements of the Heavenly King seem to have been received with the same kind of reverence later accorded to the thoughts of Chairman Mao. (Dr Sun-yat-sen, the father of the Chinese Republic, may be seen as an interesting link between the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace and modern China; he was the nephew (one historian says the son) of a Taiping rebel, and in his early days described himself as “the new Hung Hsiu-chuan” who would expel the Manchus.)
13. Flashman’s description of Loyal Prince Lee (Li-Hsiu-ch’eng), Chung Wang and Taiping commander-in-chief, requires some qualification. Whatever Flashman may have thought (and he seems to have been in some doubt), Lee was certainly not mad. A former charcoal burner who had joined the Taipings as a private soldier, the Chung Wang was the best of the rebel generals, and many authorities believe that had he had sole control of the movement, the revolution would have succeeded. An intelligent, enlightened, and (at least by Taiping standards) humane soldier, Lee had a sincere belief in the Taiping mission, and in the bond of Christianity which he supposed should exist between the Taipings and the foreign powers; in the latter he was to be bitterly disappointed. He was said to be egotistical and jealous (particularly of Hung Jen-kan, the Taiping Prime Minister), but the impression left by Lindley is of a courteous, capable, and thoroughly rational man. He also seems to have been a good administrator, unlike most of his fellow-generals. Flashman’s physical description is close to Lindley’s. (See Lindley and Appendix I.)
14. Flashman’s description of Nanking and what he saw there is so detailed that it really requires foot-noting throughout. To save space, it should be said that everything which he saw and heard in the city can be verified from other sources, principally Thomas W. Blakiston’s Five Months on the Yangtze, 1862, which contains, among much other information, R. J. Forrest’s account of a progress through the city almost identical to Flashman’s. Forrest corroborates virtually everything, from the street scenes, the ante-rooms of the Heavenly King’s palace, and social conditions, to the furnishings and life-style in the homes of the Taiping leaders. Flashman’s personal adventures are, of course, another matter, but for the rest, from the Taiping soldier with his attendant urchins to the bottles of Coward’s mixed pickles in Jen-kan’s living-room, the author can be accepted as an accurate reporter. (See also Wolseley, Story of a Soldier’s Life, and other works cited in these notes.)
15. The character and personality of Hung Hsiu-chuan, inspirer and leader of the Taiping Rebellion, remain a mystery which Chinese scholars are still working hard to solve, chiefly by examination of the writings attributed to him. Obviously he was one of these rare, unfathomable folk with the gift of communicating religious zeal and inspiring devotion in a way which is hardly understood even by those who know them intimately. Hung’s case is complicated by the fact that he was, by any normal standards, quite mad, and his condition seems to have deteriorated with time. Although almost a recluse at Nanking, he was seen by visitors on occasion; he is described as being about five feet five inches tall, well-built and inclining to stoutness, with a handsome, rather round face, sandy beard, black hair, and piercing dark eyes. He was said to be physically very strong, with a forceful personality. At the time of his meeting with Flashman he was 47 years old.
The details of that meeting, while obviously uncorroborated, are by no means inconsistent with other evidence. Hung’s time seems to have been devoted entirely to mystical speculation, writing pronouncements and decrees, and his numerous harem. The vision he described to Flashman is the one which he proclaimed after waking from his original trance; the recitation of his concubine tallies closely with an exhortation which is to be found in Taiping literature. (See Appendix I.)
16. Hung Jen-kan (1822–64), Kan Wang (Shield King), Prime Minister and Genēralissimo of the Taipings, is the most interesting and enigmatic of the revolutionary leaders. A cousin of the Heavenly King’s, he studied with him at a Baptist mission in Canton (where he, too, failed his civil service exams), and became one of his first disciples, but was thought too young to join the revolution at its outset. In 1854, after working at a Protestant mission in Hong Kong, he tried to reach Nanking, but failed, and spent another four years in the colony with the London Missionary Society. In 1859 he succeeded in reaching Nanking, and within a year had become second only to his cousin in the revolutionary hierarchy. Favouritism aside, this meteoric rise can be attributed only to Jen-kan’s native talent, and the advantage which worldly education had given him over the largely uneducated Taiping Wangs. With the deterioration of the Heavenly King, Jen-kan, with Lee, became the real head of the movement, and one can only speculate why they did not combine more effectively. Jen-kan was a strong man of vision and faith, and one of the few Taiping leaders with a real knowledge of affairs and the world outside China; he spoke English fluently, and like Lee wanted to improve Taiping relations with the European powers; he also wished to inculcate orthodox Protestant Christianity.
Jen-kan was a stout, genial, outgoing personality, and from all accounts as pleasant as Flashman makes him sound. He seems to have been alone among the Taipings in genuinely detesting war (the quotation about a war of extermination is authentic), had a deep admiration of British education and institutions, and in his personal behaviour and tastes was perhaps closer to the West than the East; he certainly appears to have had a realistic grasp of foreign attitudes to China, particularly where trade was concerned. Flashman and Forrest agree on his manner and lifestyle; unlike the luxurious generals, he enjoyed a simple, rather untidy existence in his cluttered study, kept no harem, often ate European food, and ignored (as did many of the Wangs) the Taiping prejudice against alcohol. (See Blakiston, Forrest, and Appendix I.)
17. That there was rivalry between Lee and Jen-kan is not only possible but likely, in view of the latter’s sudden ascendancy, but only Flashman suggests that it was carried as far as this. There must always be doubt about what was happening behind the scenes at this critical stage in Taiping fortunes, but while Flashman’s story is plausible, and not inconsistent with later events, and while some mystery attaches to Jen-kan’s role within the movement, it is only right to say that no other writer has suggested that the prime minister was actively plotting the general’s downfall.
18. The expression “the almighty dollar”, which now refers to American currency, was applied to the Chinese dollar in the last century.
19. Flashman does more justice than is usually shown to Frederick Townsend Ward (1831–1862). The American soldier of fortune was unlucky in being succeeded in command of the Ever-Victorious Army of mercenaries by one of the great heroes of the Victorian age, Major-General Charles George (“Chinese”) Gordon, who not only crushed the Taiping Rebellion but achieved immortality by his defence of Khartoum two decades later; it was the kind of fame that overshadowed all but his most eminent contemporaries, and Ward’s part in the China wars was quite eclipsed. It remains that Ward did found the Ever-Victorious Army, and after initial reverses, won several victories, in the course of which he forged the weapon which Gordon was to wield so brilliantly. No doubt Ward’s reputation suffered from his unpopularity with the foreign consulates in China, particularly the British, who resented his recruitment of the soldiers and sailors who were at one time the backbone of his force; it was also feared that his activities might endanger British neutrality. Ward’s biographer, Cahill, is reasonably indignant at the scant credit which the American has received in comparison to Gordon, but seems to spoil his case by overstatement; to say that Ward was “a military genius who helped change the history of China” may be defensible, but to call him Gordon’s superior as an organiser, strategist, and diplomat, and “unquestionably the greatest foreign soldier who fought in the Taiping Rebellion”, is perhaps to exaggerate.
Flashman’s account of Ward seems fairly accurate as far as the facts of his career go. A native of Salem, Mass., he was a mate on merchant ships when he was only 16, and had military experience in Central America, Mexico, and the Crimea with the French forces (he spoke French, but not Chinese). He came to China, apparently with romantic notions of joining the Taipings; there is no record of his ever having run guns or opium, but in the spring of 1860 he was mate of a Yangtse steamship, and fought a successful action against pirates when his vessel grounded. He was later mate of an Imperial gunboat in Gough’s flotilla, before forming his own private army to defend Shanghai for the Manchus; in this he was financed by China merchants including Yang (“Takee”) Fang, whose daughter he married. Flashman’s account of Ward’s initial battles is entirely accurate; after his second defeat at Chingpu, and the loss of Sungkiang which followed, he went to France to recuperate, returning to China and fighting with growing success (but not without controversy) until his death: he was killed leading an attack on Tse-kee, on September 21, 1862. Then came Gordon, to inherit his army, and at least one of his gestures: it is a small thing, but while it is Gordon who is remembered as the general who led his men into battle carrying only a cane, the practice seems to have originated with Ward.
He was a small man, active and wiry, with intense dark eyes and a mild, pleasant manner. Little is known of his personality except that he was cheerful and amiable, but he must have had a remarkable gift of leadership, if only to hold his little army together through its early reverses, especially the first assault on Sungkiang, when his entire force arrived in action in an advanced state of intoxication. It may well be that he was as genially eccentric as Flashman suggests; by his own account, he did once fall overboard while pursuing a butterfly, and it is a matter of record that he was carried to the second attack on Chingpu, with his five wounds heavily bandaged, in a sedan chair. (See Yankee Adventurer, by Holger Cahill, 1930; The Ever-Victorious Army, by Andrew Wilson, 1868; With Gordon in China, by Thomas Lyster, 1891; History of China, vol iii, by D. C. Boulger, 1884; Gordon in China, by S. Mossman, 1875.
The man in the Norfolk jacket, described by Flashman, was probably Henry Burgevine (1836–65), Ward’s lieutenant, who briefly commanded the Ever-Victorious Army in the interval between Ward’s death and Gordon’s appointment. An explosive eccentric from the American South, Burgevine had served in the Crimea, and changed sides several times during the Taiping Rebellion. He lost the command of the E.V.A. after assaulting an official for withholding his troops’ pay, went over to the rebels, subsequently deserted and rejoined Gordon (with whom he seems to have been on good terms), tried to change sides again, but was arrested and subsequently met his death by drowning in mysterious circumstances.
20. French travellers to Soochow, including priests and missionaries, had assured Lee of a warm welcome in Shanghai, and since he set great store by the Christian bond between Taipings and Europeans, he advanced on the city in high hopes of a peaceful occupation, only to be thunderstruck when he was opposed. A rumour later arose that Roman Catholic priests, who detested the Taiping religion, had encouraged his advance in the hope that he and his army would be destroyed.
21. Admiral Hope’s failure to force a passage at the Taku Forts on June 25, 1859, is a forgotten imperial incident; it was also probably the first occasion on which British and American servicemen fought side by side, if unofficially. Hope’s gunboats came under heavy bombardment from the Chinese batteries, and one, the Plover, lost thirty-one out of her crew of forty, her commander was killed, the admiral was wounded, and the remaining nine seamen were fighting their guns against hopeless odds. It was too much for the elderly Commodore Josiah Tattnall, watching from the neutral deck of his U.S. Navy steamer Toeywhan; as a young midshipman he had fought against the British in the War of 1812; now, disregarding his country’s non-belligerent status, he took a boat in under fire and offered Hope his help. Hope accepted, and Tattnall’s launch brought out the British wounded; only later did he discover several of his men black with powder smoke. “What have you been doing, you rascals?” he asked, and received the reply: “Beg pardon, sir, but they were a bit short-handed with the bow gun.” The old commodore made no excuses, for himself or his men, in reporting the incident to Washington. “Blood,” he wrote, “is thicker than water.” (See A. Hilliard Armitage, The Storming of the Taku Forts, 1896.)
Hope’s failure at Taku met with less sympathy from the London correspondent of the New York Daily News, Karl Marx. Reporting the subsequent debate in Parliament, he wrote: “The whole debate in both Houses on the China war evaporated in grotesque compliments showered … on the head of Admiral Hope for having so gloriously buried the British forces in the mud.” (see Edgar Holt, The Opium Wars in China, 1964). Marx was a trenchant commentator on Chinese affairs; he it was who likened the dissolution of the Manchu Empire to that of a mummy in a hermetically-sealed coffin brought into contact with the open air.
| 22. | Last night among his fellow roughs, | |
| He jested, quaff’d and swore; | ||
| A drunken private of the Buffs, | ||
| Who never look’d before. | ||
| Today, beneath his foeman’s frown, | ||
| He stands in Elgin’s place, | ||
| Ambassador from Britain’s crown | ||
| And type of all her race. |
Flashman had witnessed one of the most dramatic moments of the China War, and its most famous heroism, when Moyes, “the drunken private of the Buffs”, who had been captured along with an Irish sergeant of the 44th and some coolies (one version says Sikhs), flatly refused to kow-tow to his Chinese captors, and was cut down in cold blood. Yet but for Sir Francis Doyle’s poem the incident might hardly have been heard of; today it is largely forgotten, and the facts behind it are difficult to trace. The story rests on the sergeant’s authority, and there seems no reason to doubt him, or Flashman – or for that matter, Doyle’s poem, which only errs (possibly deliberately) in presenting Moyes as a young Kentish country boy, when in fact he was a fairly disreputable Scot, old enough, it is said, to have been broken from the rank of colour sergeant for insubordination – which seems characteristic. Not much more is known of Moyes, whose presence in the Buffs (the East Kent Regiment) was presumably a matter of chance. A rumour that he died of drink in captivity seems to have no foundation; he was in the hands of the Chinese for barely one day, and the sergeant’s account, which Doyle obviously accepted, is consistent with the experience of later prisoners.
It is just possible that Doyle, who was Matthew Arnold’s successor as Professor of Poetry at Oxford, had the Moyes story from a most authoritative source – Lord Elgin himself. They had been contemporaries at Eton and Christ Church, where both took Firsts in Classics in 1832, belonged to the small circle of Gladstone’s intimates (Doyle was his best man), and may have met again after Elgin’s return to Britain in 1861.
23. The hoot of the tawny owl, the chat huant, was a recognition signal among the peasant guerrilla fighters of Britanny (“les Chouans”) who remained loyal to the crown in the French Revolution. Probably only Flashman, hearing the words at such a critical moment, would have known (or bothered to note) that the speaker was presumably a Breton.
24. According to British Army custom, the most smartly turned out member of a guard was (and possibly still is) excused guard duty, and given the light task of orderly to the guard. This is known as “taking the stick”, possibly because the orderly would carry a cane rather than a weapon. The practice of carrying the guard on to parade was still occasionally seen in India in the editor’s time, forty years ago.
25. It is fairly rare for Flashman to show much regard for “politicals”, but the three with whom he was to work on the Pekin expedition seem to have been exceptions. They were, in fact, an impressive trio. James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin (1811–63) was Britain’s most accomplished foreign envoy in the middle years of the century, and served with distinction as governor of Jamaica, governor-general of both Canada and India, and on missions to China and Japan. His great diplomatic service was to prevent annexation of Canada to the U.S., and negotiate the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854, which he was accused of floating through the American Senate on “oceans of champagne”. Harry Parkes, former Canton commissioner and Elgin’s interpreter, was to spend his life in the Orient, and make a name in both China and Japan; small, wiry, tenacious, and a glutton both for work and punishment, he had an adventurous career, distinguished by his ability to survive attempts on his life. He was the first foreigner ever received in private audience by the Mikado. Henry Loch (1827–1900), as Flashman indicates, already had a highly active service career behind him, belied by his gentle disposition and scholarly appearance; he was to write the standard work on the Pekin expedition, and was subsequently governor of the Cape, of Victoria, Australia, and of the Isle of Man, where he had the unusual distinction of having part of the sea-front named after him. (See James Bruce, Extracts from the Letters of James, Earl of Elgin … 1847–62 (1864); G. Wrong, The Earl of Elgin (1905); Theodore Waldron, editor, Letters and Journals of James, 8th Earl of Elgin (1872); Henry (Lord) Loch, Personal Narrative of … Lord Elgin’s Second Embassy to China, 1860 (1869); S. Lane-Poole, Sir Harry Parkes in China, (1901); Samuel Eliot Morison, Oxford History of the American People, vol ii, 1972).
26. An opinion Elgin was to revise before the campaign was over. British opinion of the French was, as usual, highly critical, but on the march Elgin noted that the French soldiers were better improvisers than the British, and adapted well to the conditions. “Our soldiers do little for themselves, and their necessities are so great, that we move but slowly. The French work in all sorts of ways for the army. The contrast is, I must say, very striking.” (Elgin, Letters and Journals.)
27. The fight between Tom Sayers, the Pimlico bricklayer, and John Camel Heenan, U.S.A., for the equivalent of the modern world heavy-weight title, had taken place at Farnborough in April and ended in a draw after 60 rounds, by which time neither man was fit to continue. The exchanges had been so brutal that there was an outcry, and the new Marquess of Queensberry rules were introduced a few years later. This was the last bare-knuckle prize fight in England.
28. Flashman is right in supposing that the regimental march of the Buffs is attributed to Handel, but almost certainly wrong in saying that it was played on the march to Pekin: the Buffs had been left behind to guard the Taku Forts, while the 60th were left at Sinho, and the 44th sent as reinforcements to Shanghai, thus reducing the army to a more manageable size. As to the Handel attribution, there is no conclusive proof that he wrote the march, although the Buffs’ tradition is strong on the point; the suggestion is that the composer had an affection for the regiment, with its distinguished record of Continental service, and perhaps also because it had its origins in the old trained bands of London, his adopted home. (See Fortescue, vol. XIII; Walter Wood, The Romance of Regimental Marches.)
29. Flashman gives a condensed but accurate account of the march to Pekin, which finally took 44 days to complete. For fuller accounts see Loch; Wolseley; Grant and Knollys; Rev. R. J. L. McGhee, How We Got to Pekin (1862); R. Swinhoe (Hope Grant’s interpreter), Narrative of the North China Campaign (1861); D. Bonner-Smith and E. W. R. Lumley (Navy Records Society), The Second China War, 1944; Robert Fortune, Yedo to Pekin (1863).
30. It is not often that the editor finds it necessary to supplement Flashman’s narrative with any important matter, but the present glaring omission has to be filled. Having devoted almost half his narrative to his mission to Nanking, and his efforts to prevent the Taipings taking Shanghai, the author now blandly forgets all about the matter; of course, it is quite characteristic that he should no longer have cared whether Shanghai fell or not, since he was safely away from it, but one would have expected at least a line about the outcome, especially since Elgin had just drawn it to his attention. For the Manchu request for British help against the Taipings was prompted by the news from Shanghai, where Loyal Prince Lee’s forces had been repulsed by British marines and Sikhs on August 18–21. It was not a major action, although the Taipings suffered some casualties; Lee’s reaction appears to have been one of bewildered disappointment at being rejected by fellow-Christians. His failure seemed to do him no harm in the Taiping hierarchy.
31. Flashman may not have persuaded General Sir John Michel to part immediately with Dr Thorne, the new best-seller by Anthony Trollope, since it is known that Lord Elgin was reading it some months later. It and Darwin’s Origin of Species, published the previous year, were his lordship’s relaxation during his China mission.
32. Flashman was remembering the murder in 1841, in similar circumstances, of Sir William McNaghten, British Envoy to Kabul, at the hands of the followers of Akbar Khan. (See Flashman.)
33. The events of September 18, when the Chinese tried to ambush the allied force at Five-li Point, and took several prisoners in violation of the truce, are corroborated by the authorities cited in Note 29, especially Loch, who with Parkes was captured by Sang-kol-in-sen himself. Loch, like Flashman, paints a most unpleasant picture of the warlord, who worked himself into a fury, storming and yelling abuse at his prisoners while his guards beat them, forced them to kneel, and rubbed Loch’s face in the dirt; he called Parkes a liar, accused him of trying to humiliate the Emperor and of preparing a treacherous attack on the Chinese forces, and added “that he would teach us what it was to speak to high officers of the Celestial Empire in the manner in which they had been addressed yesterday” (i.e. at the Tang-chao meeting with Prince I). It was after this that Loch and the others were taken to the Board of Punishments. (See Loch.) Screaming at barbarians seems to have been common among the mandarins when their superiority was in question; Sang flew into a passion at the suggestion that Queen Victoria was the equal of the Emperor. Incidentally, Flashman is the only authority that Sang was responsible for Private Moyes’ murder, but it is interesting that the tirade directed at the Tang-ku prisoners is identical with one delivered by Sang on another occasion.
Sam Collinson” was something of a mascot to the British troops, probably because of his name. He was certainly a resolute if unskilful opponent. Physically, he was powerful, with a face described as “broad, humorous, savage, strong, and crafty.” (See the portrait by Beato, Illustrated London News, vol. xxxviii, p. 357).
34. Flashman’s account of events at Pah-li-chao Bridge might seem incredible if it did not conform so closely to known facts. The mandarin commanding the bridge was twice wounded during the battle, and ordered the execution of Brabazon and the Abbé de Luc in revenge; both were beheaded on the parapet of the bridge, although there is no record, outside Flashman, of the death of Nolan. The Chinese authorities later said that the two had died from natural causes, but unofficial Chinese sources agreed that the mandarin beheaded them in reprisal; this was confirmed by the Russian Mission, whose intelligence service was excellent. Months later, the graves were identified by Chinese, and two headless skeletons were found, along with scraps of cloth from artillery trousers and a piece of silk consistent with French ecclesiastical clothing. (See Loch.)
The battle, in which the French suffered the heavier casualties among the allies, followed the course briefly described by Flashman: the Chinese forces were routed, and driven to within six miles of Pekin. It was the last action of the campaign. Montauban, the French commander, was ennobled as Count Palikao.
35. Shaw’s only “Western”, The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet, was first staged in 1909.
36. Such is the power of propaganda, that at Sinho the Imperial troops thought the British infantry were kow-towing when their front rank assumed the kneeling firing position.
37. The Emperor Hsien Feng, Son of Heaven, Complete Abundance, Solitary Prince, Celestial Emperor, Lord of the Middle Kingdom, etc., was 29 at this time, and dying of dropsy and debauchery. As with many other oriental princes, care had been taken to deprave him early in life; his tutor in vice had been his assistant secretary Sushun, and he appears to have been completely in thrall to his favourite concubine, Yehonala. At one time he had been a fine gymnast, and even when his health was breaking down he retained a stately, dignified bearing. He was “simple of face”, with a small mouth, and wore a little moustache.
Flashman’s observation of the Imperial throne room in the Forbidden City is accurate, as are his later descriptions of the Emperor’s private apartments in the Summer Palace.
It was customary to address his majesty with the words: “Your slave, kneeling …” His decrees, written in vermilion ink, began: “Swaying the wide world, we …” Protocol demanded that he should always face south, and nobles invariably stood in his presence, even when eating. (See Appendix II.)
38. Many travellers visited the old Summer Palace and marvelled; it has been described by several of Flashman’s army comrades, although none of them had the opportunity to study it as closely as he did, but it was obviously a place that had to be seen to be believed. It was a wonder on two counts: for the priceless treasures it contained, and as the supreme example of landscape gardening – for every inch of its extensive grounds, its lakes, and woods, and hills, was said to have been built by craftsmen to the most careful design, some of it over centuries. (See McGhee, Wolseley, Loch, Swinhoe, and volumes xxxvii and xxxviii, Illustrated London News, 1860, 1861.)
39. One of Yehonala’s six-inch block shoes, fringed with pearls, is said to have fetched £25,000 after being looted in the Boxer Rising.
40. Flashman is clear about the date of Yehonala’s departure: the night of October 6–7. At first sight there is an inconsistency here, since other records established that the Emperor and his suite, including Yehonala, left for Jehol on September 22, the day after Flashman’s audience with the Emperor. The explanation is provided in Flashman’s narrative: Yehonala did leave on the 22nd, and returned two days later (Flashman states that he did not see her for two days after their first meeting, and writes elsewhere that she made a flying visit to Jehol “early in my captivity”). Others of the court also remained at Pekin until the last minute; the Empress Dowager and Prince Kung narrowly escaped the French advance on the Ewen-ming-ewen.
41. About twenty badly-armed eunuchs made a valiant effort to stop the French vanguard, and were shot down. (See Wolseley.)
42. The looting of the Ewen-ming-ewen by the French, the subsequent visit by Elgin (whose reaction Flashman reports correctly), the generals’ conference about dividing the spoil, the participation of British troops and Chinese villagers, the wanton destruction of anything too big to carry, etc., are all confirmed in other accounts; most of the eye-witnesses express sadness, disgust, or horror, but (with the exception of a few, notably Elgin and Grant) seem to have taken their share. Wolseley, who watched the proceedings with an artist’s eye, has interesting reflections on the psychology of looting – which, incidentally, is not a subject to be pronounced on by those who have never had the opportunity. (See Wolseley, Swinhoe, Wrong, McGhee.)
Flashman’s black jade chess set may well have been a priceless rarity, even if it was probably a black variety of jadeite rather than nephrite. The very existence of “black jade” has been denied (see Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition), but there are references to it in Chinese literature, and some black jade carvings are said to be extant, including a knife of the Early Chou Dynasty (1122–722 B.C.) illustrated in S. C. Nott’s Chinese Jade (1936).
43. On the treatment of the prisoners and the return of the bodies, Flashman is scrupulously exact. (See Loch and others, with the depositions of Daffadar Jawalla Singh and Sowars Khan Singh and Bugel Singh, all of Fane’s Horse.)
44. Whether Flashman is right in his examination of Elgin’s motives, he has at least set out clearly the chain of events which led to the decision to burn the Summer Palace, and the arguments which were advanced for and against at the time. And he has done this so fully that there is little to add. Whether Elgin was justified of his act of calculated vandalism is a question which may be set as an interesting historical exercise, but not in the hope of receiving a satisfactory answer. Such matters are simply not to be judged at a distance. It is abominable to destroy priceless works of art; against that, Elgin was faced with the necessity of making a gesture which would not only have the effect of punishment but of inculcating a lesson, and of securing future peace and security so far as he could see; his time and means were limited. His critics cannot merely say he was wrong; they must say what else he could have done, and they must show that it would have been equally effective.
It is also necessary to bear in mind the personality of the man himself, and to put aside the idea that the burning was an act of mindless imperial barbarism (of course, it can be cited as a splendid example of just that, for the purpose of debate, provided all the facts of the case are not deployed). Mindless, it certainly was not. James Bruce was no unthinking vandal; far from it, he was almost the last man to do such a thing. It is not possible to say that he felt no primitive desire for revenge; if he did, he had cause, but not enough to cloud the judgment of an experienced and responsible statesman who was also a sensitive and decent man. Elgin was enlightened beyond his day (his words on imperialism, treatment of foreign races, and his country’s high-handedness, spoken at his first interview with Flashman, are to be found in his writings); to some of his contemporaries (though to fewer than modern revisionists seem to realise) he may have seemed almost heretical. He knew, too, that in judging his act, the world would not forget the Elgin Marbles acquired by his father. It took a brave man to burn the Summer Palace. He hated doing it; he does not mention it in letters to his wife, and there is a gap in his correspondence from October 14 to 26, when he notes that he has not been keeping his journal lately. But, knowing the circumstances as only he could know them, he did at Pekin what he thought best, and it worked. Whether the end justified the means is a matter of opinion. Barbaric is a fair word to apply to the deed; it is not, paradoxically, a fair word to apply to the Big Barbarian.
The reactions of his subordinates are interesting. Loch plainly felt guilty about it. McGhee regretted it, but thought it necessary. Wolseley, the artist and art collector, was saddened by it; he had strong views on looting, and paid for his share, although he is said to have been given a Petitot picture by a French officer. The impenetrable Hope Grant refused any share of loot, but insisted that his troops should receive their proper entitlement (which came to about £4 a head). Gordon wrote of pillaging and destroying “in a vandal-like manner”; it was “wretchedly demoralising work”. But he noted succinctly: “Although I have not as much as many, I have done well.” Since his loot included furs, jade, enamel, and part of a throne, he obviously had. But whatever their opinion of the burning, most of the British felt that the French had got the best of the loot, although Wolseley may have been nearer the truth when he estimated that the Chinese villagers had plundered more than the British and French combined.
45. Flashman disagrees here with Loch, who says that this incident, when Parkes unexpectedly came face to face with his tormentor, the President of the Board of Punishments, took place three days earlier, on October 21.