Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang Page A

the Taiping had little in common with Christians. Their leader, Hong Xiuquan, for a long time imposed total sexual abstinence on ordinary members and decreed the death penalty for those who broke the ban, even if they were husbands and wives; but he officially bestowed up to eleven wives on each of his chiefs and took eighty-eight consorts for himself. He wrotemore than 400 crude ‘poems’ telling the women how to serve him – the Sun, as he called himself. And this was not the worst thing, as hordes of peasant rebels indulged in cruel and wanton slaughter of the innocent, burning villages and towns wherever they went. The area they devastated was as large as all Western and Central Europe combined. The English-language North China Herald came to the conclusion that the‘whole history’ of the Taiping ‘has been a succession of acts of bloodshed, rapine, and disorganisation; and [its] progress from the south to the north, and now in the east of this unhappy land, has been invariably attended by desolation, famine, and pestilence’. The rebels were not friendly to Western Christians, either: they turned down their request to leave Shanghai alone, and instead tried to seize the city, jeopardising Westerners’ own business and security.
    Some powers had offered help to fight the Taiping while Emperor Xianfeng was still alive. But he detested them as much as he did the Taiping themselves. Shortly after he died, the matter was raised again, and Cixi was enthusiastic. To those who suspected that Westerners were up to no good and might well occupy the land they took from the rebels, she reasoned: ‘Since the treaties were signed, Britain and France have kept their word and withdrawn. It is in their interest to help us.’She was cautious, though, and declined to employ Western troops, taking note of the counsel of Thomas Wade, Secretary to the British Legation, that foreign troops on Chinese soil were not a good idea for China. fn1 That Wade should give advice with China’s interest in mind was not lost on Cixi. She chose to have Western officers arming, training and leading local men, under overall Chinese command.
    With her encouragement, Frederick Townsend Ward, a thirty-year-old American from Salem, Massachusetts, a tough adventurer and soldier of fortune with leadership qualities, organised an army of several thousand Chinese, with Western training and Western officers. Ward and his army won many battles, of which Cixi learned in glowing reports. She publicly conferred on him prominent honours, and named his force the ‘Ever-victorious Army’. It was unheard-of thatimperial decrees ‘frankly and explicitly recognised’ the merits of a foreigner, and Westerners saw this as ‘a significant indication of the change in the Chinese attitude’.
    Ward was fatally wounded in a battle in 1862 and Cixi ordered a temple built to commemorate him. Charles Gordon, an English officer, assumed the command of the Ever-victorious Army. Gordon felt strongly that ‘the rebellion ought to be put down.’ He wrote,‘Words cannot express the horrors these people suffer from the rebels, or the utter desert they have made of this rich province. It is all very well to talk of non-intervention; and I am not particularly sensitive, nor are our soldiers generally so; but certainly we are all impressed with the utter misery and wetchedness of these poor people.’ Like Ward, Gordon had a penchant for bravado and would go into action armed only with a rattan cane. A hero to his men, he would become the famed ‘Chinese Gordon’ and played a key – and, some say, indispensable – role in defeating the Taiping and rescuing the Qing dynasty.
    Although she had no direct contact herself with the Western warriors and envoys, Cixi was quick to learn about the West and to grasp ideas from the massive and detailed reports she received from Prince Gong and other officials who dealt with them. In one case, an imperial decree had thanked ‘the