imperial troops, in the so-called Battle of Muddy Flat in April 1854.
Disavowed by the Taipings because of religious and other differences, the Small Sword rebels were eventually reduced to cannibalism inside the Chinese city, and their movement ultimately withered and died. The final imperial attack on Shanghai’s walls was made in 1854 with French assistance and was successful; but the spectacle of foreigners fighting against both rebels and imperial troops during the Small Sword uprising was portentous. In the wake of this experience, Shanghai’s foreigners formed their own Municipal Council and took over the management of the Chinese Customs House for the imperial government, to ensure the free flow of trade. Such was the state of imperial fortunes that the Peking government seemed happy to approve the Western-manned Imperial Chinese Customs Service. In fact, the erosion of imperial authority caused by the Western response to Chinese anarchy was becoming severe. The Chinese needed to formulate an effective response to internal disorder and external encroachment, and they needed to do so quickly.
Unfortunately, Peking was not yet desperate enough to seek theadvice and aid of sympathetic Westerners in formulating that response. Thus Ward once again could find no employment to suit him in China in 1854, and he soon departed. Always on the lookout for new opportunities, Ward was drawn this time to the great power conflict that was brewing in Europe. But China was by now exercising a powerful hold on him, and besides his native America it was the only place to which he would return time and again during the years to come.
Ward’s sisterElizabeth vividly remembered her brother coming to say good-bye to her at boarding school in 1854, “on his way to the Crimean War.” Through family friends, Ward had apparently secured a lieutenancy in the French army. Journeying first to France and then on to Russia, the twenty-three-year-old Ward demonstrated that his idiosyncrasies were crystallizing into patterns.
The Crimean War, pitting Great Britain and France against Russia, was a politically senseless conflict, and that senselessness was echoed in the dull-witted savagery of the combatant armies. But Ward took advantage of the dismal affair to learn a great deal about the weapons and tactics then in use among large national armies. Most important, the experience offered some practical training in the employment of modern riflemen as independent skirmishers (rather than as traditionally organized units of marching infantry) and in military engineering, particularly siege techniques. The reduction of fixed fortifications was the ultimate key to victory in the Crimea and would be of immense value to Ward later in China.
But Ward’s Crimean adventure came to an end when, as A. A. Hayes recorded, “he quarreled with his superior officer and was allowed to resign.” Ward’s Yankee self-reliance was showing a marked tendency toward intolerance of superior authority. Indeed, for the rest of his life Ward would display simultaneously a talent for leadership and an inability to suffer constricting subordination, traits not inconsistent with his boyhood experiences in Salem. Taking his leave of the French service without penalty, Ward next surfaced in China in 1857.
It was, in all likelihood, news of war that drew him back. In 1856 France and Britain, weary of the imperial Chinese government’s ongoingrefusal to comply with its treaty obligations, had seized on a minor offense in Canton as an excuse for forcefully coercing Peking into more cooperative behavior. In 1857 a joint Anglo-French expeditionary force bombarded the Chinese forts at Taku in the mouth of the Peiho River, opening the way for an overland march to Peking. Once again, the Chinese were humiliated, and once again the Westerners demanded increased trade and increased safety for foreign nationals.
But the British and the French—as well as the Americans, who,
Disavowed by the Taipings because of religious and other differences, the Small Sword rebels were eventually reduced to cannibalism inside the Chinese city, and their movement ultimately withered and died. The final imperial attack on Shanghai’s walls was made in 1854 with French assistance and was successful; but the spectacle of foreigners fighting against both rebels and imperial troops during the Small Sword uprising was portentous. In the wake of this experience, Shanghai’s foreigners formed their own Municipal Council and took over the management of the Chinese Customs House for the imperial government, to ensure the free flow of trade. Such was the state of imperial fortunes that the Peking government seemed happy to approve the Western-manned Imperial Chinese Customs Service. In fact, the erosion of imperial authority caused by the Western response to Chinese anarchy was becoming severe. The Chinese needed to formulate an effective response to internal disorder and external encroachment, and they needed to do so quickly.
Unfortunately, Peking was not yet desperate enough to seek theadvice and aid of sympathetic Westerners in formulating that response. Thus Ward once again could find no employment to suit him in China in 1854, and he soon departed. Always on the lookout for new opportunities, Ward was drawn this time to the great power conflict that was brewing in Europe. But China was by now exercising a powerful hold on him, and besides his native America it was the only place to which he would return time and again during the years to come.
Ward’s sisterElizabeth vividly remembered her brother coming to say good-bye to her at boarding school in 1854, “on his way to the Crimean War.” Through family friends, Ward had apparently secured a lieutenancy in the French army. Journeying first to France and then on to Russia, the twenty-three-year-old Ward demonstrated that his idiosyncrasies were crystallizing into patterns.
The Crimean War, pitting Great Britain and France against Russia, was a politically senseless conflict, and that senselessness was echoed in the dull-witted savagery of the combatant armies. But Ward took advantage of the dismal affair to learn a great deal about the weapons and tactics then in use among large national armies. Most important, the experience offered some practical training in the employment of modern riflemen as independent skirmishers (rather than as traditionally organized units of marching infantry) and in military engineering, particularly siege techniques. The reduction of fixed fortifications was the ultimate key to victory in the Crimea and would be of immense value to Ward later in China.
But Ward’s Crimean adventure came to an end when, as A. A. Hayes recorded, “he quarreled with his superior officer and was allowed to resign.” Ward’s Yankee self-reliance was showing a marked tendency toward intolerance of superior authority. Indeed, for the rest of his life Ward would display simultaneously a talent for leadership and an inability to suffer constricting subordination, traits not inconsistent with his boyhood experiences in Salem. Taking his leave of the French service without penalty, Ward next surfaced in China in 1857.
It was, in all likelihood, news of war that drew him back. In 1856 France and Britain, weary of the imperial Chinese government’s ongoingrefusal to comply with its treaty obligations, had seized on a minor offense in Canton as an excuse for forcefully coercing Peking into more cooperative behavior. In 1857 a joint Anglo-French expeditionary force bombarded the Chinese forts at Taku in the mouth of the Peiho River, opening the way for an overland march to Peking. Once again, the Chinese were humiliated, and once again the Westerners demanded increased trade and increased safety for foreign nationals.
But the British and the French—as well as the Americans, who,
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