3.30 Fall and Rise of China: Taiping Rebellion #7: Ward’s Mercenaries & the Battle for Shanghai

Last time we spoke Hong Rengan, the cousin of the heavenly king made a long pilgrimage to get to Nanjing. When Hong Rengan finally made it to Nanjing, the heavenly king rejoiced and began showering him with titles. Hong Rengan soon became the Shield King, but this drew jealousy and resentment from the Loyal king Li Xiucheng. Hong Rengan quickly went to work restructuring the movement, making dramatic improvements and began a campaign to win over foreign support. A grand strategy was formed to break the encirclement of Nanjing and it succeeded in a grand fashion, bringing the Taiping closer to Shanghai where a large foreign community awaited. However rumors spread that the Taiping wished to attack Shanghai creating fear amongst the foreigners they sought to ally with. Could Hong Rengang turn the tides in favor for the Taiping?

#30 This episode is The Taiping Rebellion part 7: Ward’s Mercenaries & the Battle for Shanghai

 

Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War.

Shanghai was not a typical Chinese city, it had a complicated division of jurisdictions such as the international city with each nation having its own military force and each foreign citizen was liable only to their nations authorities. Trading vessels came and left, exchanging not only cargoe but crews from all around the world. People from all walks of life came to Shanghai and much like Mos Eisley, “you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy”. Now in 1860, just 12 miles due west of Shanghai a group of irregular military men began to run drills in a muddy little village. There were around 200 Europeans and Americans in a unit, wearing a hodgepodge of uniforms. Some wore red coats and dark pants, typical British marine getup, other blue jackets with white bell bottoms, that of french sailors, others tattered fabrics of merchant crews. For weapons, many had colt revolvers others sharp repeating rifles and the reason they drilled was to capture the Taiping held town of Songjiang, 10 miles further away from Shanghai. Alongside Qingpu, Songjiang was a strategic walled town and a necessary stepping stone for one to invade Shanghai from Hangzhou or Suzhou. The motley crew of mercenaries were being paid for by a banker named Yang Fang at the incredibly high rate of 100 dollars per month per man. On top of their handsome salaries these men were promised rewards of a hundred thousand dollars if their unit was able to defeat the Taiping garrison at Songjiang alongside anything they could loot. The commander of this unit was an American named Frederick Townsend Ward. He was 29 years old, from Salem Massachusetts and had deep black eyes and a thatch of unruly raven like hair worn long over his ears. 

 

Wards army was modeled on the so called filibusters, those American soldiers who frolicked in latin america in the 19th century. Ward was not drawn just by money but also the dream of establishing a new state to govern. Ward had been frustrated during his military career, he had failed to gain admission to West Point in 1846 and spent a year at Norwich university, a private military college in Vermont, without even graduating. His real military training came informally, in central america in 1852 when he enlisted with the infamous William Walker who led a small army of Americans to fight a civil war in Nicaragua to overthrow its government with the intent to form a new Yankee state. Ward fought hard for Walker, but left his camp to form his own, while Walker conquered Nicaragua and installed himself president in 1856. It was a short lived state to be sure, 4 years later the British captured Walker and arrested him for breaking neutrality laws. Meanwhile Ward traveled to Shanghai to launch his own venture against the Taiping, while his former mentor was executed by firing squads in Honduras. 

 

The Taiping-Qing civil war was a fantastic opportunity for a would be filibuster and initially ward came to china to join the rebels and overthrow the Manchu. However upon making it to Shanghai, making contact with the Taiping proved difficult. Ward first found work aboard a french steamer named Confucius, hired by some wealthy Chinese merchants to protect them against Yangtze pirates. Eventually Ward and the captain of the Confucius found themselves employed by local military authorities, thus Ward ended up selling his sword to the Qing. They saw in him some leadership qualities and had him begin recruiting Europeans, Americans and Filipinos to create a mercenary force to defend the region outside Shanghai. His army was strictly illegal, a complete violation of the neutrality laws. His force of mostly deserters could not even be treated for wounds in Shanghai lest they be arrested. 

 

Despite the small size of his force, the practically mythical belief in western arms being vastly superior led many of their enemies to simply surrender upon seeing a causasian opponent. Wards army was meant to be a spearhead for a 10,000 strong Qing force that followed behind it as they invaded garrisoned cities. Wards unit attacked Songjiang in april of 1860 and it did not go very well. With zero artillery to blast open the gates, Wards planned to sneak over the city walls under the cover of darkness using scaling ladders. Ward’s men got so shit face drunk before their daring attack, that all their singing and swearing alarmed Songjiangs defenders when they approached. As they tried to climb, the Taiping cut them to pieces. After the failure ward sent men to purchase artillery pieces in Shanghai, managing to grab 2 pairs of half ton Napoleon field guns and Ward also procured a ton more men. Now he attacked Songjian again in July, this time with 500 troops, a great many being Filipino’s. Under the cover of a fog, and less drunk the artillerymen bombarded the gate of Songjiang with 12 pound shells as the unit stormed the city. This assault proved to be a worse disaster than the last one. When they got through the outer gate, the found out the inner gate was undamaged. Thus Ward and his men were stuck in the wall, they couldn't get past the inner gate and could not bring their Napoleon cannons across the moat to hit it. The Taiping defenders were above them tossing stinkpots filled with burning sulfur all night long. Ward’s men managed to budge the inner gate a couple of feet using bags of gunpowder, but they were being fired upon all the while. If it was not for their repeating rifles being so effective at close range, they probably would have not survived the night. Luckily they survived the night and soon their Qing backup showed up at dawn forcing the Taiping garrison to flee. Most of Wards 500 men were dead and all by 27 survivors were severely wounded.

 

It was a terrible victory, but the city was theirs and Ward set up his new HQ in a Confucian temple. With Songjiang as a base, he regrouped, recruited and set up a new offensive for August the 1st to hit Qingpu 10 miles northwest. It did not go well, turns out the Taiping in Qingpu had managed to assemble their own type of Ward army led by an English coastal pirate named Savage who rangled up several of his comrades along the Taiping to man some big guns. Wards Qing backup army also did not show up and during the fighting Ward took a bullet right through both of his cheeks. Wards extremely drunk lieutenant tossed the new recruits, made up of mostly greeks and italians to throw themselves at the walls of Qingpu again 2 weeks after the first failed attack, this time with the Qing backup showing up, but all they managed to do was stir up a Taiping garrison now reinforced to a whopping 50,000 men led by Li Xiucheng himself. Li led a surprise flanking attack that routed the Ward army, not only winning the battle for Qingpu but also threatening Songjiang as Li Xiucheng chased them all the way there. The Taiping harassed Songjians gates for over 2 weeks and the only saving grace for Ward was the fact Savage was alongside the Taiping and he got shot dead. 

 

As we have seen, not all the foreigners were so hostile to the Taiping, Ward initially and Savage were willing to sell their swords to them. And in early july of 1860 as Ward had been preparing his attack on Songjiang, a small boat left Shanghai for the interior carrying 5 British and American missionaries who sought to contact the Taiping in Suzhou. One of them was Joseph Edkins and friend to James Legge, who was trying to find out if Hong Rengan had made it to Nanjing. The group ran into some Taiping units who told them Hong Rengan was the prime minister of Nanjing. The group were mortified when they got to Suzhou seeing the savagery committed there and as Griffith John described of seeing the ruined temples ““It is common to see the nose, chin, and hands cut off. The floors of these buildings are bestrewn with relics of helpless gods. Buddhist and Daoist, male and female. Some are cast into the canals, and are found floating down the stream mingled with the debris of rifled houses and the remains of the dead.” Li Xiucheng was in Suzhou at the time and he invited the missionaries for an audience. It was not a long meeting, but the missionaries found the man to be gentle, intelligent and he kept his soldiers well disciplined. They found themselves in agreement when it came to religious doctrine, but the missionaries knew the merchants of Shanghai cared for only one thing. Thus hey asked Li Xiucheng if he would allow the silk trade to continue under Taiping rule and Li Xiucheng replied that was exactly what the Taiping sought. Thus the group returned to Shanghai and countless newspapers in SHanghai began to publicize pro Taiping accounts. Edkins declared “They are revolutionists in the strictest sense of the term; both the work of slaughter and of plunder are carried on so far as is necessary to secure the end. These are evils which necessarily accompany such a movement, and are justifiable or otherwise in so far as the movement itself is so.” The idea the Taiping would be a state friendly to the west gained momentum. At the end of July, Edkins and Griffith returned to Suzhou for a second visit upon letters of invitation from Li Xiucheng and Hong Rengan.

 

This time they found an even warmer welcome, with Hong Rengan present draped in silk robes wearing an embroidered gold crown. Hong Rengan insisted they do not kowtow nor kneel as this was not the western fashion, but instead give him a hearty handshake, and he dismissed servants so they could talk informally. They talked of old times like old friends about missionary work, they prayed and sang hymns and talked of China’s future. Hong Rengan said for his part all he wanted was to lead the Taiping towards a correct understanding of Christianity. The missionaries were delighted by all of this, a man they knew and worked with was in the seat of power and he wanted to bring real christianity to China. By November nearly all of the major missionary organizations in England joined together to sent a letter to the foreign minister calling for Britain to continue its strict policy of neutrality. In many ways the veil of the Taiping had finally been lifted and there gleamed a chance perhaps at some western support. 

 

Now let us not forget, while the Taiping forces were launching this massive campaign to break the siege of their capital, the Qing were dealing with another campaign, the second opium war. Lord Elgin was writing back to Britain all the while and he had some interesting points to make. In one letter to Lord Russel in July of 1860 he wrote “We might annex the Empire if we were in the humour to take a second India into hand, or we might change the Dynasty if we knew where to find a better.” According to Putyatin, Elgin had privately said in his presence “Britain should recognize as Chinese Emperor one of the leaders of the rebel movement assuming he would agree to the favorable conditions of the Tianjin treaty.” He argued that it could give Britain the desired trade concessions, end conflict and perhaps prevent future wars. He took it a step further saying “if the capital of China were moved nearer to our military presence like Nanking … England could control the Chinese Empire with four gunboats.Let the north disappear or form a separate government, we don’t have any trade interests there.”

 

Meanwhile his brother Bruce was anxious that the Taiping would still march on Shanghai. The two events were simultaneous, the war in the north with Elgins coalition marching upon Beijing and the loomed threat in Shanghai. Luckily for Bruce, Elgin showed up to Shanghai on June 29th of 1860 with a fleet of French and British gunboats. Bruce sighed with relief, surely his brother would look out for their interests in Shanghai. Yet the coalitionary forces had no intention of helping Bruce defend Shanghai, they were going to depart shortly to head north and hit Beijing. They departed and left a scant defensive force of a couple gunboats and some stray divisions of Sikh soldiers. The foreign community of Shanghai lamented they had been abandoned in their hour of need. Despite the work of the missionaries to present Hong Rengan as a friend and not foe, Bruce did not buy it. He assumed the missionaries were being duped, like he had been at the hands of the Qing. Despite his opinions of the Manchu, Bruce told those around him they were still the legitimate authority in China. Many tried to change Bruce’s mind on the matter of the Taiping, but none succeeded.

 

In july of 1860 Bruce was brought a sealed letter addressed to the representatives of the US, France and Britain from Li Xiucheng. Bruce apparently refused to even open it. Then he received another letter, this time from Hong Rengan, but Bruce again refused to open it. These letters were fatally important, in the first Li Xiucheng notified the foreign authorities that the Taiping were on they way to Shanghai and intended to take possession of the Chinese held section of the city. He stated the Taiping had no quarrel whatsoever with their “foreign brethren” and pledged no harm to them nor their property. Any Taiping who harmed a foreigner would be put to death and he hoped the foreign representatives would call upon their people to stay indoors and hoist yellow flags above their doors to signify they were foreigners in said homes. 

 

In the later afternoon of August 17th, the sky to the west of Shanghai suddenly grew dark with smoke. The next morning saw fleeing Qing soldiers rushing to the Shanghai gates pursued by Taiping cavalry. The British let in a few Qing in before they destroyed the bridge going across the moat. The Taiping advance guard surged forward as suddenly the British and French opened fire with their artillery. Alongside this, the Taiping were fired upon by a hodgepodge of differing muskets, rifles and such. The Taiping force was small, just a few thousand men, lightly armed with a few notable foreign mercenaries with them. The British and French gunners atop the walls, watched the Taiping hide behind buildings and other structures, with clear baffled faces. None of them shot back, then one Taiping detachment tried to advance forward waving Qing flags they had stolen, but they were shot at. Next another detachment rushed forward waving an enormous black flag that the Taiping used to drive reluctant troops with. One very lucky shell lobbed from half a mile smashed right in the middle of the unit flattening the flag bearer into the ground.

 

In a bewildered disarray the Taiping ran into houses for cover, but the wall artillerymen kept firing at them. As the night came upon them, word spread that Qing forces within Shanghai were executing Taiping POW’s, prompting the British to demand they be surrendered over to them unmolested. Then the French frustrated it seems by the Taiping using all the houses for cover decided to simply start blowing them down with artillery. The next morning, French troops marched through the city firing their muskets at will. One eye witness reported to the North-China Herald “French soldiers were rushing frantically among the peaceful inhabitants of the place, murdering men, women and children, without the least discrimination. One man, was stabbed right through as he was enjoying his opium-pipe. A woman who had just given birth to a child, was bayoneted without the faintest provocation. Women were ravished and houses plundered by these ruthless marauders without restraint”. Another eye witness estimated the French left tens of thousands of Chinese homeless in the course of defending against 3000 lightly armed Taiping. The Taiping force retreated, but the suburbs of Shanghai burned for days as the Europeans claimed victory. The Taiping attack on Shanghai honestly did more to build sympathy for their cause, the news paper ran rampant stories about how the europeans fired upon a group who called themselves brethren and did not fight back. 

 

Now we have not talked about a key player in all of this for awhile. On October 16th of 1860, General Zeng Guofan was in his HQ in Qimen of Anhui province sick out of his mind. He was vomiting heavily, suffering some bad heart palpitations, had a bad case of insomnia, just not doing all that great. At lunch he received a message that the emperor had fled to his hunting grounds in Manchuria and that the British and French armies were literally a few miles from Beijing. There was nothing he could do, he apparently broke down in tears feeling helpless. Zeng Guofan was stuck fighting a protracted rear action campaign against the farthest Taiping stronghold up the Yangtze river. Zhang Guoliang and He Chun were both dead, the siege camps around Nanjing were shattered. He knew he could do nothing to stop the european march on Beijing so he pulled himself together and focused on a task he actually could do something about.

 

Up until 1860, Zeng Guofan’s Xiang army on the Yangtze played only a supporting role in the overall Qing campaign. Zhang Guoliang and He Chun’s blockade of Nanjing was much more of a focus compared to that of Zeng Guofans offensives. Yet when victory seemed within grasp, Hong Rengan’s daring plan was unleashed. The Taiping broke out of the encirclement and ran rampant marching east. In the leadership vacuum that ensued, Zeng Guofan’s time had finally come. In June of 1860 Emperor Xianfeng appointed him as the governor general of Anhui, Jiangsu and Jiangxi the provinces most ravaged by the civil war. By late august the emperor named him imperial commissioner in charge of the military affairs in those 3 provinces and the new commander in chief of the Qing dynasty’s forces in the Yangtze river valley. Boy oh boy the Chinese love bestowing so many titles on one person, that tradition just keeps living on. The frustrations of having to constantly provide for his Xiang army was beginning to ease as the desperate emperor had no one else to turn to. After years of scrambling to make his army’s ends meet, while the Green Standard army enjoyed full funding and support, now Zeng Guofan was in charge of both military and civil administrations for the primary theater of war. 

 

His years of service had shown him how ineffective the bureaucrats of the Qing government could be, how inexperienced and self-gratifying they could be, and he would not tolerate them to affect his campaign. He had refused orders in 1859 to chase down Shi Dakai into sichuan, and now in 1860 he was given new orders to abandon his campaign in Anhui and to rush over to instead protect Suzhou and Shanghai. He offered instead the excuse he did not have the forces necessary to help at the moment and would stay put where he was finishing his campaign. The strategy he was performing was one of encirclement. Now back in 1859 Zeng Guofan tried to explain to the Qing court that the dynasty was not facing one kind of rebel force, but rather 2. The roving bandits constantly moving, and the pretender bandits, those who actually sought to attack Beijing and take the dragon throne. Shi Dakai, the Nian rebels and numerous vagabond armies on horseback were roving bandits. The only way to fight roving bandits was to hold a position and try to blunt their momentum. But for the pretender bandits the most important being the Taiping with their capital in Nanjing, you could only defeat them by “severing their branches and leaves”. What he meant by this was you had to cut off their foraging armies, ie: their logistics, before crushing them. He pointed out that the Green stand army had failed to encircle Nanjing completely, there had always been a single pathway open. He argued Nanjing must be completely encircled and once that was met the Qing forces could gradually conquer the fortified cities along the Yangtze one by one. He sought to begin with the Brave Kings base of operations, Anqing in Anhui province. Anqing had been under Taiping control since 1853, and was the farthest stronghold up the Yangtze. It protected both the river and land approaches to Nanjing and thus was a major choke point. As long as it stood, the Taiping in Nanjing could not be properly sieged, Anqing had to be crushed. 

 

Now this was not going to be any simple task, in 1860 Zeng Guofan had a force of 60,000 men while the Rebels had vastly more. Zeng Guofan could not contend with them in the open field. His intelligence reports indicated the Taiping were using irregular formations known as “crab formations”. This was a cluster of troops in the middle (the crabs body) and 5 lines reaching out on either side that could rapidly reconfigure itself as 2 columns, 4 columns or a crosslike configuration of 5 phalanxes, depending on the enemy. There was also the “hundred birds formation”, in which a large division would disintegrate into small clusters of 25 soldiers, each roaming freely, making it impossible for their enemies to figure out how large their force was. Then there was “crouching tiger”, usually applied to hill terrains where 10,000 troops would hide close to the ground in total silence and then ambush their enemy as they passed through a valley, suddenly leaping up like a tiger.

 

To defeat these innovative rebels, would require manipulation of the battlefield. In every engagement Zeng described the situation as being either a host or guest. The host always enjoyed the advantage, such as being defenders of a wall city. The same situation could be said of a fortified camp. If two armies were to meet in the open field, it was the first army to reach the site of battle that would be the host. Now having the weaker army, Zeng tried to ensure the Taiping would always be the guest, by trying to lure them into attacking his defensive works or if failing that to try and provoke them to make the first move. To that end he got his men to build up fortified camps always in close proximity to the Taiping in the hopes of drawing them in to make the first move. In June of 1860, when the Taiping were focused on their eastern campaign, Zeng Guofan had moved into Anhui from the west with his brother Zeng Guoquan who began a siege of Anqing. Guoquan had 10,000 Hunanese forces who pitched a camp near Anqing’s walls, building high earth walls with 20 foot wide moats. The idea was simple, they protected their fronts to the city and their backs from Taiping relief forces. For further protection against relief forces, a 20,000 strong Manchu cavalry unit led by Duolonga was set up in Tongcheng, 40 miles north of Anqing while Zeng Guofan led naval forces to blockade the Yangtze river just a few miles below the city. In late July, Zeng took the rest of his forces, 30,000 men into the mountains south of Anhui where he formed his HQ in Qimen, which is in a valley around 60 miles southeast of Anqing.

 

However the summer of 1860 changed everything as the new war with the Europeans in the north erupted. Beijing sent orders on October 10th instructing him to send his best field commander, Bao Chao along with 3000 troops to help Prince Seng’s banner forces fight the Europeans in the north, but Zeng Guofan believed without these men who would not be able to hold the encirclement of Anqing. It would take Bao Chao until January to reach the area of Beijing, far too late to be of help, thus Zeng reasoned it was useless. Alongside that, if the Taiping were allowed to break out of Anqing they could march upon Wuchang and threaten Hunan again. So Zeng cleverly sent word back to the Emperor asking him to choose another commander to come help in the north, and that message would take 2 weeks to get over to Beijing over 800 miles away thus earning him at least another 4 weeks time.

 

October was quite depressing and cold for Zeng Guofan. The Taiping in Anqing apparently had plentiful stores and could wait quite long for reinforcements. One of his most beloved commanders holding a garrison in the nearby town of Huizhou was overrun by Taiping raiders and reports indicated there were many Taiping forces encircling his base of Qimen. Then on November 6th, he received a letter from a colleague in the north, stating the Europeans had successfully invaded Beijing and burnt down the summer palace . Zeng wrote in his diary “I have no words to describe the depths of this pain,”. The eight banner army lost to the Europeans and now he was all alone commanding a breaking army, all he had left was this damn Anqing campaign. We will come back to the plight of Zeng Guofan soon, but now we will be venturing back to the Shanghai situation.

 

On August 21st, 2 days after his men were sent back from the walls of Shanghai by European grapeshot and shells, the Loyal King Li Xiucheng wrote a very angry letter to the British and American consuls there. “I came to Shanghai to make a treaty in order to see us connected together by trade and commerce. I did not come for the purpose of fighting with you.” Li Xiucheng accused the French of setting up a trap, stating a few of them had come to Suzhou earlier that year inviting the Taiping over to Shanghai to establish relations. He could not believe the French would be deluded by the Qing demons and betray them. He said he heard reports of the Qing sending large amounts of money to the French to defend Shanghai and it seemed they were sharing that money with the Americans and British since they opened fire on his men! He went on to say the event could be forgiven, in the case of his fellow protestants, but not the French, oh no there would be a day of reckoning for them when the Taiping took control of China. Yet he finished his angry letter swallowing his pride and said the Taiping still sought friendly relations with their christian brethren. 

 

Though it was a letter from Li Xiucheng, in reality it was sentiment sent by Hong Rengan, whose entire strategy depended on gaining support from the British and Americans in Shanghai. They needed to buy steamships to control the Yangtze river. Yet Li Xiucheng hated Hong Rengan and began to talk within his inner circle about how foolish Hong Rengan was thinking the foreigners would ever help them. The unexpected conflict with them at Shanghai proved his point and thus a rift was widening more so between the 2 leaders. Hong Rengan for his part, blamed Li Xiucheng and not the foreigners, stating they must have heard of Li’s belligerent attitude towards them before he showed up and thus they assumed he was going to attack. Despite the 2 men’s bickering, they both knew Shanghai needed to be secured for its rich financial stores and to be a point of which the Taiping could purchase weapons from the west. It was now up to Hong Rengan to smooth things over with the foreigners. 

 

A letter was sent to the foreigners of Shanghai stating they wanted to open up trade and that they had vast amounts of teas, silks and other desired goods. It asked why not make a treaty, perhaps with the United States? John Griffith went over to Nanjing and returned to Shanghai in December with an edict from the Heavenly King written in imperial vermillion ink on yellow satin, welcoming foreign missionaries to take up residence in Nanjing. An interesting gesture, given the British were so obsessed with having the same in Beijing only to be continuously thwarted by the Qing court. However the missionaries were reluctant to go, because no formal communications had been established between Nanjing and Shanghai, thus to go meant they would be at the mercy of the rebels. On December the 2nd, Lord Elgin returned to Shanghai in triumph after marching upon Beijing and getting Prince Gong to sign the treaty. He quickly learnt from his brother how the Taiping threatened the city. But the treaty had been signed with the Qing and the letters from Hong Rengan and the HEavenly king suggested the Taiping wanted no hostilities with the foreigners at Shanghai. Thus everyone expected no further conflict to occur and the European coalitionary forces that had marched on Beijing were disbanded and sent home. By the end of December, half the British forces were already returning to India and Britain with the others being stationed in Hong Kong, Tianjin and the Taku forts, just incase Beijing decided not to meet their end of the treaty terms yet again. 

 

As for Shanghai, by the end of 1860, just 1200 British soldiers were left for the city and Elgin argued they were far too many. Elgin spent a good month in Shanghai before leaving China. Though his work with Beijing was over, he did have one last task before leaving, he wanted to gauge the possibility for Britain to form relations with the Taiping. The Taiping at this time controlled the riverway and thanks to the new treaty with the Qing, trade was finally open for business. Elgin was not too pleased to hear about the supposed defense that his brother erected against the Taiping. He was even more disgusted to find out about the damage caused by the French to the outer suburbs and population of Shanghai. Elgin tried to counsel his younger brother that the Taiping were not necessarily all bad, he said “as bad as the imperials and Taiping both are, the rebels might provide a brighter future. From what I have seen of the regions under their control, they exhibit honesty and power”. He also rebuked his brothers refusal to read the Taiping letters warning not to accede to any Qing requests for Britain to avoid contact with the rebels. “it will never do to come under any obligation not to communicate with them on the Yangtze. It would be wrong in principle … and impossible in practice.” 

 

When winter came Elgin had to leave China, he had no time to make another voyage up the Yangtze, so he left orders for Rear admiral Hope to pay a visit to Nanjing to investigate if there might be a basis for relations between the rebels and Britain. Elgin knew it was a delicate situation, they had after all just signed a treaty with the Taipings enemy, thus he added a private note to Hope “at any rate it is clear that we must not become partisans in this civil war”. For his part General Hope after defeating the Manchu, was quite open to forming relations with the Taiping. Meanwhile the Taiping were consolidating their control over China’s wealthy eastern province of Jiangsu. By September they controlled every county around Shanghai except for this under the protection of the foreigners. They were capitalizing on the people losing faith in the Manchu. They would make such proclamations as “The emperor of the Qing is the emperor of a lost country, and his ministers are all the ministers of a lost country. They extended their control over Jiangnan which encompassed the confluence of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui. Within Jiangsu province they held the capital, Suzhou along with the major cities of Wuxi and Danyang. They held Anqing, the capital of Anhui, and in Zhejiang they had the major trading city of Ningbo.

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

Hong Rengans efforts to gain foreign support were falling to pieces. Zeng Guofan was building up his army hoping to capture Anqing, a major stepping stone to take Nanjing. Who was going to win the battle for the east?