Chapter VII: Front Matter (7)

“Upon the 26th February, 1850”—thus does Dr Yvan, after his brief preliminary retrospect, commence his second chapter—“at seven o’clock in the morning, the approaches to the imperial palace at Pekin were obstructed by a compact crowd of mandarins of the inferior classes, and of servants in white garments with yellow girdles, conversing in a low voice, whilst their features wore an expression of official grief. In the midst of this throng of subordinate functionaries, stood sixteen individuals, each attended by a servant holding a saddlehorse. These sixteen persons wore the satin cap fastened under the chin and surmounted by the white button; they had a girdle of bells; a tube of a yellow colour was slung over their shoulders, and they all carried whips. A great dignitary issued from the palace, and delivered, with his own hand, to each one of these men, a despatch closed with the imperial red seal; they received it with a bow, brought each the yellow tube round upon his breast, and respectfully placed within it the official despatch. Then they mounted their horses, and the grooms fastened them to the saddle with straps that passed over the thighs. When they were thus well secured, the crowd opened a passage, and the horses set off at the top of their speed. These sixteen messengers, known as _Feïma_, flying horses, were bound to get over six hundred _li_—sixty leagues—in every twenty-four hours. They bore the following despatch to the governors-general of the sixteen provinces of the Celestial Empire:—

“‘In great haste, the minister of rites informs the Governor-general that, upon the 14th of the first moon, the Supreme Emperor, mounted upon the dragon, departed for the ethereal regions. In the morning, at the hour of _mao_, his Celestial Majesty transmitted the imperial dignity to his fourth son, _Se-go-Ko_, and in the evening, at the hour of _haï_, departed for the abode of the gods.’”

Directions for mourning completed the despatch. Agreeably with the constitution of the empire, the defunct sovereign had named his successor. It was his fourth son. But he had deviated from ancient custom by a verbal nomination. The legacy of supreme power was usually transmitted, long beforehand, by a solemn act, deposited in a golden coffer, opened with great ceremony upon the emperor’s death. Even in China, however, this last will and testament has not always been respected, and of this Dr Yvan digresses to give an example, which he considers as fully illustrative of Chinese manners and civilisation. The tale he tells abounds in what Europeans would laugh at as burlesque inventions, but which are doubtless very possible occurrences amongst the Celestials. We shall give its pith in a few lines. Tsin-che-houang, the second emperor of the Tsin dynasty, was already old and infirm when he sent his son and heir, Fou-sou, to superintend the building of the great wall, at which three hundred thousand men were working. They did less to lengthen it, Dr Yvan insinuates, than modern travellers have done. Whilst Fou-sou went north, accompanied by the renowned Mong-tièn, the greatest general of his time, the emperor made a pilgrimage southwards to the tombs of his ancestors. When far upon his road, he felt death approaching, and wrote to his eldest son to hasten back to the capital. Tcha-Kao, the chief of the eunuchs, having to seal and forward the missive, audaciously substituted for it a forged command from Tsin-che-houang to the prince and general to put themselves to death, as a punishment for their offences. Next day the emperor died, and the infamous Tcha-Kao prevailed upon his second son, Hou-haï, to seize the crown. To carry out this usurpation, it was necessary to conceal for a while the emperor’s death, lest the authorities and young princes at the capital should proclaim the successor he had appointed. So the body, sumptuously attired, and in the same attitude as when alive, was placed in a litter, surrounded by a lattice, and by thick silk curtains, and which none approached but those who were in the plot. The eunuch had proclamation made that the emperor, in haste to return, would travel day and night without quitting his litter. At meal-times a short halt was made, and food was handed into the litter and eaten by a man concealed in it. Unluckily, the weather was very hot, and the smell of the dead body soon became intolerable. This would have revealed the terrible truth, had not the ingenious eunuch hit upon a device. He sent forward an ante-dated decree by which the emperor permitted oyster-carts to follow the same road as himself. This had previously been severely prohibited, on account of the intolerable stench emitted by the oysters—an enormous species known to naturalists as spondyls, of which, then as now, the Chinese made enormous consumption. The fishmongers profited by the boon; hundreds of thousands of the full-flavoured testaceans soon preceded and followed the imperial convoy; the decomposing corpse reached the capital under cover of their alkaline emanations, and was received with gongs and acclamations. Meanwhile, the forged mandate of self-destruction was received by Fou-sou and Mong-tièn. The old officer thought it bad policy to order a general in command of three hundred thousand men to commit suicide, and treated the mission as apocryphal. But Fou-sou, considering only his duty as a son and subject, stabbed himself forthwith.

The accession of the present emperor was unattended by any such untoward circumstances, notwithstanding the irregularity of his nomination, to which the formal Chinese attach much importance. He ascended the throne without opposition, quitted, according to custom, the name he had till then borne, and assumed that of Hièn-foung, which signifies _Complete Abundance_. His accession was hailed with joy by both the political parties into which China is divided, and which the authors of this volume designate as exclusionists and progressive conservatives. The former expected to find in him a stanch supporter of their principles. If they did not anticipate the rebuilding of the crumbling wall of China, they doubtless hoped that he would so fortify Canton river as to prevent the _fire-boats_ of the barbarians from ascending it to the capital of the two Kouangs. The progressive party, upon the other hand, thought that the son of Tao-Kouang, and the pupil of Ki-in, would maintain peace with the foreigner, regulate the opium trade—as the English have done in India, and the Dutch in Malaya—and would introduce into the Chinese fleets, armies, and administrations, those reforms which lapse of time had rendered necessary. MM. Yvan and Callery declare, that when they learned the emperor’s death they at once anticipated important events. It was to be feared that the new sovereign, a youth of nineteen, would sympathise with the sentiments and wishes of those of his own age. And in China, where everything seems diametrically opposed to what we observe in other countries, the young men of education and the ignorant populace compose the high conservative party. These two classes profess the same hatred of foreigners, the same instinctive repugnance for foreign institutions. “They are reactionary by nature, and by their attachment to national customs. It is the men of maturer age who, formed at the school of experience, appreciate the arts and institutions of Christian nations. When we were in China, Ki-in, before he had undergone any disgrace, frequently praised the governments of England, the United States, and France; and, at the same moment, Ki-chan, unjustly precipitated from the summit of greatness, expressed the same thoughts to MM. Huc and Gabet, in the holy city of Thibet.”

For some time the new emperor disappointed all parties. Surrounded by flatterers, eunuchs, and concubines, he remained inactive in his immense palace, which equals in size one of the large European fortified towns. He went not beyond the limits of those gardens whose walks are strewn with sparkling quartz, and seemed absorbed by voluptuous enjoyments. Politicians were wondering at this long inaction, when one day the thunder-cloud burst. The absolute monarch displayed his power; the reactionary party triumphed. The Pekin _Moniteur_ published the dismissal of Mou-tchang-ha and Ki-in, overwhelming them with abuse, and declaring them degraded to inferior ranks. The document was dated in the 30th year of the reign of Tao-Kouang—the year of an emperor’s death being always reckoned by Chinese chronologists as belonging entire to his reign. The successors of the disgraced ministers were selected from amongst the bitterest enemies of Europeans, and their chief efforts were directed to neutralise the effect which the contact of the barbarians might have produced upon certain of their countrymen. This departure from the policy of Tao-Kouang, who had placed entire confidence in Ki-in, and had loaded him with marks of esteem, brought ill-luck to the new emperor. Very soon after the victory of the reactionary party, the first news came of the revolt of Kouang-Si.

There had been precursory symptoms of this insurrection. It had been currently reported amongst the people that prophecies had fixed the re-establishment of the Ming dynasty to take place in the forty-eighth year of that cycle, which year corresponded with A.D. 1851. It was further said that a sage, who lived under the last emperor of that race, had saved his standard, and had foretold that he who displayed it in the midst of his army should mount the throne. At the beginning of the insurrection it was affirmed that the rebels marched beneath this miraculous banner, and this was implicitly believed by the people. “The vulgar are incredulous of the extinction of old royal races; it is never certain that their last representative is in his tomb: there are people in Portugal who still look for the return of Don Sebastian, killed, three centuries ago, at the battle of Alcazar-Quivir.” An uneasy feeling soon spread far and wide, with rumours of the defection of mandarins. The legitimacy of the Tartar dynasty, and the necessity of substituting for it a national one, were publicly discussed. Here Dr Yvan translates an extract from an English paper, in which great importance is attached to the insurrection, and to the cry for reform which on all sides was heard. This was in August 1850. He then paints the portraits of the emperor Hièn-foung, and of the pretender Tièn-tè. The former is twenty-two, the latter twenty-three years of age. Without entering into a minute description of the physical and mental qualities of the two personages, some of which will incidentally manifest themselves as we proceed, we extract a few leading traits of Tièn-tè, whose portrait forms the frontispiece to the volume we are examining. “Study and vigils have prematurely aged him. He is grave and melancholy, and very reserved, communicating with those around him only to give them orders. His complexion is that of the southern Chinese—a saffron tint. His impassible gaze seems to probe the depths of the human soul. He commands rather by suggestion than by direct dictation. In a word” (and this reminds us of Dr Yvan’s own sovereign), “he has the silent reserve of a man who has reflected a great deal before communicating his projects to any one.”

The Doctor then gives a Chinaman’s description of the pretender’s entrance into one of the numerous towns taken by his troops. “The new emperor and his retinue reminded me of the scenes represented at our theatres, in which we are shown the heroes of ancient days, those who lived before we came under the Tartar yoke. The persons who surrounded Tièn-tè had cut off their tails, let the whole of their hair grow, and, instead of the _chang_ buttoned at the side, they wore tunics open in front. None of the officers wore upon their right thumb the _pan-tche_, that archer’s ring which our mandarins so ostentatiously display. The emperor was in a magnificent palanquin, with yellow satin curtains, carried by sixteen officers. After Tièn-tè’s palanquin came that of his preceptor, borne upon the shoulders of eight coolies; then came his thirty wives, in gilt and painted chairs. A multitude of servants and soldiers followed in fine order.” There is a most important point to be noted in this description—the cutting off of the tail. It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to repeat that the strange style of head-dress with which porcelain and rice-paper pictures have familiarised Europeans, is of Tartar origin, and, in the case of the Chinese, a mark of subjugation. It was thus that the victors marked the vanquished—compelling them to shave their heads, with the exception of a spot upon the sinciput, the hair upon which was suffered to grow into a long tail. As a sign that they had thrown off the foreign yoke, Tièn-tè’s followers cut off their tails. This bold act—a treasonable offence in China—was equivalent to throwing away the scabbard, and caused a great and painful sensation at the court of Pekin. As a sort of counterpoise to it, the celestial _Moniteur_, the Imperial Gazette, was made to publish a supposititious act of submission on the part of the rebels, in which they were made to prostrate themselves, declare their fidelity, and submit to stripes and bondage.

The person designated by the Chinaman, in the account of the procession, as Tièn-tè’s preceptor, is his intimate friend and privy-councillor—his only one—a very mysterious individual—whether his father, his tutor, or merely a friend, none know—who accompanies him everywhere. But we are getting ahead of our subject, and must glance at the commencement of the insurrection, previously to the appearance of Tièn-tè upon the stage.

The province of Kouang-Si, where the rebellion began, and which is larger than the entire dominions of many European sovereigns, is situated in the south-western portion of the empire, is administered by a governor-general, and forms part of the vice-royalty of the two Kouangs. Its mountains are one of the curiosities of the Celestial Empire; but, since the Jesuits of Pekin, no foreigner has been suffered freely to explore them. “According to native travellers, these masses have the form of various animals, unmistakably representing a cock, an elephant, &c.; and there are rocks in which are found encrusted fantastical animals, petrified in the most singular attitudes. We have carefully examined drawings of these figures, which reminded us of the species resuscitated by Cuvier, and we have convinced ourselves that the petrified animals are merely red stains, produced by oxide of iron, and acutely defined upon the black surface of the rock. The general aspect of Kouang-Si is singularly picturesque. That vast district offers points of view which Chinese artists have frequently painted. To European eyes their collections of landscapes have a strange character. Those inaccessible mountains that seem shaped by the caprice of human imagination, those rocks representing gigantic animals, those rivers precipitating themselves into gulfs, over which are thrown impassable bridges, suggest an idea of fairyland.” A glance at the map of Kouang-Si suffices to prove the intelligence and judgment of the insurgent chiefs who chose that province for the commencement of their operations. Unproductive, by reason of its mountainous character, the misery of the inhabitants was a powerful auxiliary to the rebels. They found at once recruits for their army, and natural fortresses for their defence. The emperor needed a far larger army, and much more efficient means of attack than he possessed, to drive the insurgents from their fastnesses. If defeated in the plain, they had always the resource of mountain warfare. Dr Yvan compares the people of Kouang-Si to the guerillas who in Spain so severely harassed the French armies. Like them, he says, they are sober, intrepid, little sensible of fatigue, and animated by a spirit of independence. After centuries of occupation, the Tartars had not yet subdued the remotest districts of those mountains.

The chief vegetable products of Kouang-Si are cinnamon and aniseed. Its mountainous conformation, and the drawings of the Chinese artists, leave little doubt that it abounds in metallic deposits. Hence a seeming miracle, which took powerful hold on the imagination of the vulgar. Dr Yvan tells the tale thus:—

“At the beginning of the insurrection, the chiefs determined to mark the date of their enterprise by the erection of a religious monument. For its foundation, labourers dug in decomposed rocks, which yielded readily to the pickaxe. They had attained the depth of but a few feet, when they came upon lumps similar in form and appearance to the stones in the bed of a river. These lumps were observed to be very heavy, and were carefully examined. They proved to be silver-lead of great richness. It was from this providential bank, it is said, that the pretender paid his first soldiers. Whatever the authenticity of the tale, it is worth noting by the collectors of legends, whose writings will one day divert the leisure of the mandarins.... As if to confirm this metallurgic miracle, there have recently been discovered in Norway silver deposits precisely similar to those of Kouang-Si.”

It was in August 1850 that the Pekin papers for the first time spake of the insurgents, whom they designated as robbers; but robbers would hardly have established themselves in one of the poorest districts of the empire, remote from large towns and high-roads. The rebels showed no haste to contradict these rumours, but rather allowed them to gain credit, and waited patiently in the south-west part of the province, until the Celestial _tigers_[24] should be sent against them. They were on terms of amity with the Miao-tze, a race of men inhabiting the wildest parts of Kouang-Si. Dining one day with a Chinese functionary of high rank, in a pagoda at Canton, the author of this book received from him a curious account of those people, which they noted upon their return home, and now publish. The Miao-tze, the minister told them, are aborigines of the chain of mountains that extends from the north of Kouang-Toung (the southernmost province) into the central provinces of the empire. They dwell in small communities, never exceeding two thousand persons. Their houses are built on posts, like those of the Malays. They are warlike in disposition, and agriculture is their pursuit. The Tartars have never succeeded in subduing them. They have retained the old national costume—have never shaved their heads—have always rejected the authority of the mandarins and the Chinese customs. Their independence is now a recognised fact; and upon Chinese maps a blank is left for the country they occupy, to signify that it does not obey the emperor. For a great many years no attempt had been made to subdue them, when suddenly, in 1832, they made an incursion, pillaging wherever they went. They beat the Chinese troops sent against them, and were got rid of only by diplomacy and concession. They hold little intercourse with their neighbours, and are greatly dreaded by the Chinese of the towns, who call them man-dogs, man-wolves. “They believe them to have tails, and relate that, when a child is born, the soles of his feet are cauterised, to harden them, and render him indefatigable. These are mere tales,” continued the Chinese minister, whom Dr Yvan describes as a young and elegant man, and who is apparently of the more enlightened party in his country. “In reality, the Miao-tze are a very fine and intelligent race, and their manners have a tendency, I think, to become gentle.” Such a race as this was evidently a most valuable ally for the insurgents, whose first military movements put them in possession of two large towns, in one of which three mandarins of high rank were killed fighting against them. Siu, governor-general of the two Kouangs, took alarm; and upon learning that the rebels were coming his way, solicited the honour of making a pilgrimage to the tomb of the defunct emperor. This request was refused; and the troops he sent against the enemy were beaten and exterminated. The antiquated tactics of the insurgents—which would hardly have much success against any but a Chinese army—consisted in feigning a flight, and drawing their opponents into an ambuscade. This succeeded several times running—not being, we must suppose, guarded against in the Chinese twenty-four-volume treatise on the art of war. Emboldened by their repeated victories, the rebels crossed the frontier of Kouang-Si, and entered Kouang-Toung, where they soon met with and massacred, to the very last man, a detachment of imperial troops.

Two political acts of great importance were now simultaneously accomplished at Pekin and in the insurgent camp. In the former place, the emperor sent for Lin, the opium-burner, and bade him go and put down the rebellion. Notwithstanding his great age, the austere mandarin promptly obeyed. As if by way of retort, the insurgents issued a proclamation, declaring that the Mantchous, who for two centuries had hereditarily occupied the throne of China, had no right to it beyond that of the strongest; that that right was common to all—and that they had an equally good one to levy contributions on the towns they conquered. The Mantchous, they said, were foreigners, who had conquered the country by aid of a veteran army; their right of government consisted in possessing. This proclamation conveyed the leading idea of the rebels, which had previously been merely rumoured. They declared legitimacy to mean possession; and at the same time intimated their intention of expelling the Mantchous, and transferring to Chinese hands the management of the public revenues. This publication was the last act of the rebels in 1850. It coincided with the death of Lin, which occurred in November of that year. The old commissioner was in his seventieth year, and sank under the fatigue and anxiety of his new command.

The Chinese year begins in February. Its commencement is a sort of commercial and financial crisis, when everybody pays and calls in his debts. In January it was reported and believed, in Canton, that the insurrection of Kouang-Si was entirely suppressed, and that the celestial tigers had gained imperishable laurels. In consequence of this good news, business resumed its usual course, confidence returned, and the Chinese “settling day” passed without disaster. It was a mere trick of the cunning mandarins of Kouang-Toung, who, in the interest of the commercial community, had fabricated the bulletins. The public satisfaction and tranquillity were soon dispelled by intelligence of the cutting off of tails already mentioned, and which admitted of no other interpretation than “War to the Knife!”

Li succeeded Lin as imperial commissioner in Kouang-Si. The pusillanimous Siu was reduced four degrees of rank, which is something like reducing a field-officer to an ensigncy, but was still left governor of the two Kouangs. A very bad system was pursued by the agents of the Chinese government—exemplified by the following incidents. In March 1851, the little town of Lo-Ngan was taken by the insurgents, who levied a contribution, seized the contractor of the _Mont de Piété_, or pawning establishment, and fixed his ransom at 1000 taels (about £320). He paid, and was released. Next day the imperial troops drove out the rebels, levied another contribution, and squeezed 3000 taels from the contractor! This man, who was influential in the place, and indignant at suffering spoliation from those who should have protected him, harangued the people in the public square. Others spoke after him, and at last the excited mob cut off their tails, swore that the reign of the Tartars was at an end, and sent for the insurgents, who came in the night and massacred the garrison. Other things concurred to induce disaffection among the population to the reigning dynasty. Li took for his second in command a ferocious mandarin, who, when governor of the province of Hou-Nan, where the use of opium was very prevalent, had adopted the barbarous practice of cutting off the under lip of the smokers. Dr Yvan was in China at the time, and saw several poor wretches who had been thus mutilated, and whose aspect was horrible, the operation, performed by clumsy executioners, leaving hideous jagged wounds, “very different,” the doctor feelingly and professionally remarks, “from the elegant scars so artfully and happily produced by Parisian bistourys.” The nomination of the cruel Tchang (in his case, as in some others, we spare the reader the labour of reading his second and third names, which, although connected by hyphens, are not, as we perceive from Dr Yvan’s practice, inseparable from the first) was significant. At the same period, and in one day, thirty-six persons, accused of conspiring against the safety of the state, were put to death at Canton. Dr Yvan doubts whether their crimes were really political. In China they deal in what he calls prophylactic justice. The thirty-six executions were perhaps a preventive measure, and the victims common malefactors, elevated to the rank of rebels and traitors. “They may, however, have been members of secret societies, which are very numerous in China, and in those countries whither Chinese immigrate. At Singapore, Penang, Batavia, Manilla, we have known numerous adepts of the secret societies of the Empire of the Centre—a species of free-masonry, whose ascertained object is the dethronement of the Mantchous.

“In 1845, we lived for several days with a merchant of Chan-Toung, who clandestinely introduces arms into China. He took us to a house in one of the dirtiest and least reputable quarters of the town, and we ascended into a sort of garret. In that country garrets are on the first floor. His object was to obtain our estimate of arms which some Americans had sold him. They were enormous swords in steel scabbards. The heavy blades were clumsily forged; but cheap they certainly were, having been delivered in China at the price of ten francs a-piece. On our entrance the Chinese unsheathed one of these large blades, and uttered loud exclamations, gesticulating the while after the fashion of the Chinese heroes one sees painted upon fans. We asked him if it was for the equipment of the invincible tigers he purchased these arms. At the question he smiled significantly, and showed us, by an expressive gesture, the use intended to be made of them against the imperial troops. Perhaps at this moment the gigantic weapons are in the rebels’ hands.”

Neither the appointment of the terrible Tchang, the executions at Canton, nor the mendacious reports, perseveringly circulated, of imperial triumphs, checked the rebels. On the contrary, they replied to all this violence and boasting by the proclamation of an emperor of their own, whom they called Tièn-tè, which means _Celestial Virtue_! He was invested with the imperial yellow robe, and, contrary to Tartar usage, which forbids the reproduction of the sovereign’s features by his subjects, his portrait was circulated by thousands of copies. From one of those prints MM. Callery and Yvan have taken the frontispiece of their volume. The head-dress and costume are those of the days of the Mings, from whom the pretender’s partisans declare him descended.

The proclamation of Tièn-tè may be said to close the first period of the insurrection. Dr Yvan points admiringly to the patient policy of its chiefs. For a whole year Tièn-tè was kept in the background, his partisans contenting themselves with spreading a report that there existed a descendant of the Mings. Then they proclaimed, but did not show him to the people. He returned to a sort of mysterious obscurity, and showed himself but at long intervals, to his enthusiastic adherents. The rebellion now took the character of a civil war. The Emperor Hièn-foung, although deficient in political judgment, and in that tact and penetration which enable a sovereign to make the best choice of agents, displayed a good deal of energy; but this was too apt to degenerate into violence. He was certainly not well served. Siu, still governor of the Kouangs, was unequal to the difficulties that every day augmented. The inhabitants of two districts refused to pay taxes; the emperor ordered their punishment; Siu sent a mandarin to bring the ringleaders before him; the whole population rose, and pulled the officer out of his palanquin, which they broke to pieces, its occupant barely escaping with life. About the same time Tièn-tè set a price of ten thousand dollars on Siu’s head. The placard containing the announcement was affixed to the north gate of Canton, just as Siu was about to quit that city at the head of three thousand men, to join other forces directed against Kouang-Si. The viceroy was furious; and as his palanquin passed through Canton’s street, preceded by two gongs, and by a banner on which was inscribed, “Get out of the way and be silent; here is the imperial commissioner,” he glanced savagely right and left, as if seeking some one on whom to wreak his vengeance. “Presently he slapped his hand down upon the edge of his chair, and bade the bearers stop. It was just opposite the house of one of those poor artists who paint familiar genii and large family-pictures. The painter had hung up some of his most remarkable works outside his house; but strange to relate! in the midst of smiling deities, irritated genii, feetless women flying along like birds in silken vestments, there was displayed a decapitated mandarin. The rank of the personage was unmistakably indicated by the insignia painted on his breast. The corpse was in a kneeling position, and the head, separated from the trunk, was placed beside a beaver-hat bearing the plain button.” The unfortunate artist was called out of his shop, and kneeled trembling in the dust before Siu’s palanquin. In vain he protested that the picture was painted to order, and hung out to dry: he was sent to the town-prison to receive twenty blows of a bamboo for placing such ill-omened horrors upon the viceroy’s passage, and Siu went upon his way, gloomily impressed by the double presage of the placard and the picture. Besides his three thousand men, he had with him a host of mandarins, attendants, executioners, musicians, standard-bearers, and women, and a large sum of money, which he added to, upon the march, as often as he could. The women and the treasure were carried on men’s shoulders, in palanquins and chests. Dr Yvan relates the following curious incident as having occurred upon this march:—

“They one evening reached a deep and rapid water-course, which had to be crossed over a bamboo bridge. When a part of the escort had reached the farther bank, Siu stopped his palanquin, and ordered the coolies who carried the treasure-chest to cross slowly and cautiously. They obeyed; but just as they reached the centre of the elastic bridge, a sudden shock threw them and their load into the water. There was a moment of extreme confusion. The chest had sunk, the unfortunate coolies were struggling against the stream, and uttering lamentable cries, whilst Siu, furious, was breaking his fan for rage. Luckily the coolies swam like fish, and easily reached the shore. The viceroy was sorely tempted to bastinado them upon the spot; but he reserved that pleasure for another day, and ordered the poor wretches, who stood panting and terrified before him, instantly to fish up the precious chest, threatening them with a terrible chastisement if they did not find it. They stript off their clothes and courageously entered the water; skilful divers, they explored the river’s bed, and, after many efforts, succeeded in getting the heavy chest ashore. It was wet and muddy, but otherwise uninjured. Siu had it placed upon the shoulders of two fresh coolies, and the march was resumed. A few days later, on reaching Chao-King, his first care was to have the chest opened in his presence; but instead of his golden ingots, he found only pebbles and pieces of lead carefully wrapped in silk paper. The coolies were audacious robbers, who had skilfully planned the exchange. The viceroy set all his police on foot, but in vain; the thieves had doubtless taken refuge in the insurgent country, where they and their booty were safe.”

A Chinese gentleman, well-dressed, comely, and of intelligent aspect, has lately attracted considerable attention in Paris, in whose streets and public places he has been frequently seen. He is a friend and companion of M. Callery, and to him is owing the facsimile of a Chinese map included in the volume under notice. It represents those provinces which the insurgents have already traversed, from the mountains of Kouang-Si to the city of Nankin, the ancient capital of the Mings. A stream of red spots, running across its centre, and in some places spreading out wide, indicates the towns occupied by the rebels. The map is copied from one of the numerous charts published in China in 1851, towards the end of which year the victories of Tièn-tè’s troops were so numerous, and their progress so prodigious, that even the lying _Pekin Gazette_ ceased to record imaginary imperial triumphs. It must not be supposed, however, that, in the case of the captured towns, occupation invariably implied retention. The chiefs of the insurgents heeded not the strategical importance of particular places. With the exception of a few fortresses, into which the pretender occasionally retired, they abandoned successively all the towns they took, after raising contributions to pay their troops. “Their tactics,” says Dr Yvan, “are those of the barbarian chiefs who led the great invasions of which history has transmitted us the account. The insurgents go straight before them, seizing, each day, some new point, which they next day abandon. Their intention is evidently to cut their way to the capital. In a country where the centralising system prevails so completely as in China, the Mantchous reign as long as Pekin is in their power; but upon the day on which the descendant of the Mings enters the imperial city, the provinces he has marched through and left unconquered will acknowledge his right, and submit themselves to his authority.” In several chapters of Dr Yvan’s book we find amusing examples of the military tactics of these strange barbarians who deem all others such. Thirteen thousand imperialists advanced against the rebels near the town of Ping-Nan-Hien. The rebels defended themselves feebly, and retreated from one position to another. When this had lasted several hours, and the weary pursuers were about to desist, they suddenly found themselves in an ambuscade, entangled in a bamboo jungle, and attacked in front and flank by a strong body of rebels, with more than sixty pieces of artillery. When General Ou-lan-taï got back to his camp, it was with half his army; the remainder had either been killed, or had deserted to the enemy. Siu, the valiant viceroy, safe behind the thick walls of a fortress, swore by his meagre mustaches that he would revenge this rout. “To that end, he borrowed from the ancient history of the kingdom of Tsi a stratagem which reminds one of the Trojan horse, and of Samson’s foxes. He got together four thousand buffalos, to whose long horns he had torches fastened; the drove was then given in charge to four thousand soldiers; and the expedition, prepared in the most profound secresy, set out one night for the rebel camp. It was anticipated that each buffalo, thus transformed into _a fiery chariot_, would commit terrible ravages, kill all the men it could get at, and set fire to the camp. At first the horned battalions met with no obstacles; the insurgents, duly advertised of this splendid stratagem, suffered them quietly to advance. But before the imperialists reached the camp, the enemy, who observed all their movements by favour of the splendid illumination, fell upon them unexpectedly, as they had so often done before, and the same scenes of carnage were renewed. This manœuvre of Siu’s cost the lives of more than two thousand men, and gives an idea of Chinese proficiency in the art of war. Had our sole knowledge of the affair been derived from the Anglo-Chinese press, we should have hesitated to reproduce it here; but we have had opportunity of collating the account given by _The Friend of China_, with authentic Chinese documents, and they entirely agree in their narrative of this incredible occurrence. In the eyes of the Tartar warriors, and of the Chinese themselves, this comical invention of Siu’s passes for a highly ingenious strategical combination.”

Whilst such were the disasters of his armies, and the progress of his foes, what was the occupation of his Imperial Majesty, the Son of Heaven, Hièn-foung? Surrounded by favourites and courtiers, he composed a poem, whose subject was the heroic exploits of his Tartar general, Oulan-taï—the said exploits existing but in the general’s own bulletins! According to MM. Yvan and Callery, who have read a portion of the emperor’s epic, it is an inflated performance, indebted in every line to reminiscences of the classic authors of the Celestial Empire—the Chinese Homers, the Ariostos of Pekin; so that the braggart general appropriately found a plagiarist bard. Meanwhile Siu, who had more confidence in golden than in leaden ammunition as a means of victory, offered ninety thousand taels (nearly £30,000) for the heads of Tièn-tè, his father, and his mysterious privy-councillor—that being, for each head, just thrice the sum at which the insurgents had estimated his. But no heads were brought in, and the viceroy, weary and despairing, implored permission to return to Canton. To obtain such permission, he invented an ingenious story, which the official Pekin paper was so unkind as to publish. He represented to his master that the subjects of Donna Maria da Gloria, queen of Portugal, were preparing for an expedition against the Celestial Empire. He converted the peaceable Macaists into a band of pirates ready to aid the insurgents, and to appropriate to themselves the provinces of Kouang-Toung and Fo-Kien! With an emperor, a general, and a viceroy, such as these characteristic traits exhibit, Dr Yvan is surely justified in anticipating the early dissolution of the Chinese Empire. Under such chiefs, it is not surprising when armies exhibit neither discipline nor courage. In the autumn of 1851, the insurgents, having taken three towns, respected the lives and property of the inhabitants. By a proclamation, Tièn-tè exhorted the latter to remain quietly where they were, but permitted those who would not recognise his authority to quit the place, taking with them all they could of their goods and chattels. A considerable number profited by this permission, and departed, laden with the most valuable portion of their property. They fell in with a body of imperialist troops, who stripped them of everything, and killed those who resisted. The unfortunate victims of civil war reproached their spoilers with their cowardice. “Before the rebels,” they said, “you are mice; it is only with us that you are tigers!”

From an early period of the rebellion, the mandarins endeavoured to discredit its banner and partisans by the propagation of lying inventions, some of which had the double aim of exciting the Buddhist population against the insurgents, and of rendering the Christians more and more odious to the young emperor. Thus they asserted that the pretender really was a descendant of the Mings, but that he was a Catholic, and that, wherever he went, he upset pagodas and destroyed idols. Others affirmed that he was of the sect of Chang-ti—that is to say, a Protestant. Whilst noticing these statements, Dr Yvan contents himself with remarking that the name of Tièn-tè, chosen by the pretender, is purely pagan. Another manœuvre of the mandarins was to announce that the insurgents had declared their intention, as soon as they should have attained to supreme authority, of driving the Europeans from the five ports. Thus they thought to set the Europeans against the insurrection. But this flimsy fabrication was easily seen through. Attempts were also made to cast ridicule on the insurgents, by the circulation of pamphlets filled with incredible anecdotes.

“One of these satirical productions relates that Tièn-tè, having perished in an accidental conflagration of his camp, his wife had had his brother assassinated, and had seized the reins of government. But, in China, petticoat government is inadmissible, and people never speak but with horror of the Empress Ou-heou, that Elizabeth of the East, who possessed herself of the imperial power, and exercised it for more than twenty years. In this respect, Chinese prejudices are so invincible that the name of Ou-heou has been effaced from the list of the sovereigns of the Celestial Empire. For the Chinese, that shameful reign never took place. The idea of sovereign power in a woman’s hands fills them with indignation; yet they know that a woman reigns over that western people which conquered them, and that the English nation was never greater or more glorious than under the rule of Her Most Gracious Majesty, Queen Victoria.”

The existence of a Christian element or influence in the ranks and councils of the insurgents, which the mandarins put forward, probably without any better grounds than their own malicious intent, is traced, at a later period, by MM. Callery and Yvan, in a proclamation issued after several triumphs won, at short intervals, by the armies of Tièn-tè. In a previous proclamation, the pretender had referred, somewhat obscurely, to the idea of a federal empire, to be composed of several kingdoms dependent on one chief. This idea was more clearly developed in the manifesto affixed to the walls of the captured town of Young-Gan-Tcheou, and signed, not by Tièn-tè, although he was then present, but by Tièn-kio, one of the future feudatory kings, who dated it from the first year of his reign. It announced, in plain terms, the plans of the insurgents. They would combine their forces, march on Pekin, and then divide the empire. The whole plan, Dr Yvan, who highly lauds it, believes to have been conceived and elaborated by the secret societies. “Since the overthrow of the Mings, and the accession of the Mantchous,” he says, “those clandestine associations, the intellectual laboratory of declining countries, have been constantly active. The most celebrated of them, the Society of the Three Principles, or of the Triad, is powerfully organised. In every part of China, and in all the countries where Chinese reside, are found members of this association; and the children of the Empire of the Centre might say, almost without exaggeration, that when three of them are assembled together, the Triad is amongst them.”

But if the substance of Tièn-kio’s proclamation is politically important, to its form Dr Yvan assigns immense significance. He recognises in it a new and regenerative element—that of Christianity. “Its authors speak of _decrees of Heaven. They have prostrated themselves before the Supreme Being, after having learned to adore God. They have striven to save the people from calamities._ This is a style unknown to the idolatrous Chinese, and foreign to Catholic language: to Protestantism is due the honour of having introduced it into China; and it appears that there really is, amongst the insurgents, an indigenous Protestant, holding a very high rank, and exercising very great authority. This Protestant is, it is stated, a disciple of Gutzlaff, the last secretary interpreter of the government of Hong-Kong.” Having mentioned Gutzlaff’s name, MM. Callery and Yvan—one, if not both, of whom appears to have known him—give some curious particulars concerning him. They speak of him as an intelligent man, having extraordinary facility in learning languages, and of his books as narratives in which a little truth is mingled with very agreeable falsehoods. Born in Pomerania, there was nothing German in his aspect; his features were Mongul, and in his Chinese costume he could not be distinguished from a Chinese.

“One night, during our residence in China, we were conversing about him with the mandarin Pan-se-tchèn, who was a great friend of his, and one of us expressed his surprise at finding, in a European, the characteristic signs of the Chinese race.

“‘Nothing is more natural,’ the mandarin, quietly replied; ‘Gutzlaff’s father was a Fokienese settled in Germany.’

“This fact appeared to us so extraordinary that we should hesitate to mention it here, if Pan had not affirmed that he had it from M. Gutzlaff himself.”

We do not here trace the progress of the Insurrection in China, the leading events of whose earlier stages have, to a certain extent, been made known to Europeans by the public press; whilst the details of its later period, and especially those of the siege and capture of Nankin, had not come to the knowledge of MM. Callery and Yvan up to the very recent date at which their volume went to press. We have preferred to cull from this curious and uncommon book, traits and incidents which, although they may not be of paramount importance in a political or military sense, exhibit, as clearly as could do the most circumstantial narrative of the war, the character of people and parties, and the probable eventualities of the struggle. There exists, it appears, amongst the Chinese—at least in certain provinces—so strong a tendency to assist the insurrection, that the viceroy of the two Kouangs published a decree forbidding the young men of the towns to form themselves into volunteer corps. In this cunningly-drawn-up document he thanked them for their zeal, and assured them that the imperial troops amply sufficed to put down the rebellion. The fact was, experience had taught him, that, as soon as the volunteers were put under the command of a military mandarin, and taken into the field, they deserted to the enemy. Their aid would have been welcome, could it have been relied upon; for, at the very time the decree was issued, the imperialists were enduring daily defeats, whilst the insurgents, who everywhere appropriated public money, but respected private property, daily acquired fresh partisans.

In the month of September 1852, Tièn-tè, with all his court, and with his body-guard, which never quits him, took up his quarters at a town within a few leagues of the wily and prudent Viceroy Siu. This personage is the most amusing of all the strange characters we meet with in Dr Yvan’s pages. Crafty, cowardly, and particularly careful of his person, he is a type of the Chinese, as Europeans understand that nation, of which, however, Dr Yvan leads us to believe that we have but an imperfect notion. A short time before he found himself in the perilous proximity of the insurgent leader, Siu had been at his old tricks, trying to impose upon his countrymen. Having caught a petty chief of the rebels, he ticketed him Tièn-tè, and sent him to Pekin in an iron cage. The official gazette published the capital sentence pronounced upon him, which, according to Chinese custom, was preceded by the criminal’s confession. This was a long document, drawn up, doubtless, by some Pekin man of letters, in which the spurious Tièn-tè acknowledged his delinquencies, and attributed the insurrection especially to a secret society founded by Gutzlaff, the Chang-Ti, or Protestant. Here was evident the perfidious intention of the exclusionist party to bring the Christians into discredit. The execution of the sham Tièn-tè was still the leading topic of discussion at Pekin, when news came that the real pretender was still alive and active in the mountains of Kouang-Si, whence he exercised his occult influence, and observed the progress of the revolt. When his pretended captor, Siu, found himself in his immediate vicinity, he made no attempt to capture him in reality; and soon afterwards (in January of the present year) that officer fell into disgrace with his sovereign, owing to the disasters that occurred under his government. He was deprived of his vice-royalty, and of his peacock’s feather with two eyes. Shortly after the appearance of this decree in the _Pekin Gazette_, a melancholy report was circulated at Canton; Siu, it was affirmed, driven to despair by his disgrace, had poisoned himself. When the circumstances of the act came to be known, the minds of his anxious friends were considerably relieved. He had poisoned himself with gold leaf.

“The science of toxicology is about on a par, in China, with the military knowledge of the generals of the imperial army. When a great personage wishes to put himself to death, he takes an ounce of gold leaf, rolls it into a ball, and swallows the valuable pill. According to the physiologists of the Celestial Empire, these balls, once in the stomach, unroll themselves, and adhere to the whole interior of the organ, like paper on a wall. The stomach, thus gilt, ceases to act, and the unhappy mandarin dies suffocated, after a few hours’ somnolency—a mode of suicide which we recommend to despairing sybarites.”

The year 1852 closed as disastrously as it had begun. Throughout its whole course, the imperialists—or, to speak more correctly, the troops of the Tartar dynasty, since there are now two emperors in the field—had been invariably worsted, and the insurrection had spread far and wide. Stringent measures were adopted by Hièn-foung; his generals were warned that defeat would be promptly followed by their degradation, and even by the loss of their heads: Victory or Death was the motto they literally and compulsorily assumed. Another evil was soon added to the many that assailed the young emperor. The imperial finances were exhausted; the Celestial Chancellor of the Exchequer declared his penury, and denounced the mandarins who nominally commanded in the insurgent provinces. They would render no account of their stewardship; not a copper was to be got from them—that was hardly to be expected—but they sent in fabulous “states” of the troops under their command, and demanded enormous sums wherewith to carry on the war. In this emergency, the means proposed, and those resorted to, to raise the wind, transcend belief. No desperate prodigal, reckless of reputation, ever adopted more shameless expedients to replenish his purse. A mandarin proposed an opium monopoly. A similar proposal, under the reign of Tao-Kouang, cost a minister his place, and was near costing him his life. Times are changed; Hièn-foung, less scrupulous, and notwithstanding his aversion to opium-smokers, was giving to the project, at the date of the last advices, his serious consideration. Meanwhile, the official newspaper published (12th November 1852) a document, comprising twenty-three articles, in which everything was put up for sale—titles, judgeships, peacocks’ feathers, mandarins’ buttons, exemptions from service, promotions in the army. In this publication, a casual reference being made to the English, they were still treated as barbarians; but, five months later (on the 16th March last), when the insurgents were before Nankin, and likely soon to be within it, Celestial pride was so far humbled that we find the authorities earnestly and respectfully supplicating Christian succour, in a circular addressed to all the representatives of civilised nations, resident in those Chinese ports open to European commerce, and especially to the consuls of Great Britain and the United States. For “barbarians” was now substituted “your great and honourable nation.” To such an extent are carried Chinese vanity and conceit, that, Dr Yvan assures us, if the demand for aid were complied with by the English and American plenipotentiaries, the Son of Heaven would instantly persuade himself that those Western people rank amongst his tributaries, and would very probably issue a proclamation announcing that his troops had subdued the rebels, aided by nations who had lately made their submission, and who had conducted themselves faithfully in those circumstances.

Meanwhile, the insurgents employed much more straightforward and satisfactory means of filling their treasury than those resorted to in extremity of distress by the Mantchou emperor. In the month of February last they captured Ou-Tchang-Fou, a rich city of four hundred thousand inhabitants, the capital of the province of Hou-Pé. A friend of MM. Yvan and Callery, an intrepid traveller, gave them a glowing description of this city, situated upon the right bank of the Yang-Tze-Kiang, or Son of the Ocean—an enormous river, in whose waters porpoises disport themselves as in the open sea, and which allows the ascent of ships of the largest burthen. Five or six thousand (and Dr Yvan’s friend expressly disclaims exaggeration) are the number of the junks usually at anchor before Ou-Tchang. The person referred to saw upwards of a thousand laden with salt alone, and the town is an immense depot of China produce and of European and American manufactures. Chinese junks are the noisiest vessels that float; their crews are continually beating gongs and letting off fireworks. The quiet of Ou-Tchang may be imagined. It was on the occasion of the capture of this wealthy and important city that poor Siu was deprived of his peacock’s feather and driven to internal gilding. “The troubles of the south,” said the emperor in his proclamation, “leave us no rest by night, and take away our appetite.”