China by Edward Rutherfurd (historical books to read TXT) 📕

our heritage, our arts, and our religions. It also seems to me that they showed their stupidity. For it is not wise to tell a vanquished enemy that you despise him and everything he loves. He will not forgive it. In the Celestial Empire, as I still call it, the rape and burning of our paradise and the contempt it showed will never be forgiven or forgotten. Not in a thousand years.

—

I spent a lot of time with Prince Gong in the months that followed. He paid me only a pittance, but I was just glad to be alive and in his favor. When I wasn’t waiting upon him, I was often with the princess. I did her nails and those of her friends. She liked my company, and would talk to me, and slip me a little money now and then.

I think he trusted me more than most people. He had numerous eunuchs in his household, but they were house servants to whom he rarely spoke. One was trained as a secretary, so he was highly literate. But his duties were writing letters and preparing documents. I don’t believe the prince ever asked his opinion. Whereas I was special, glad to serve him in any way he chose, and to be discreet and enterprising, and to see a mission through.

He also discovered that if he wanted to know what people in the streets were saying, I was a reliable source. That’s because I went and asked my father, of course.

And during those months, I have to say, I came to admire Prince Gong very much. There he was, holding the fort in Beijing, keeping the whole empire together really, while the emperor, Prince Sushun, and the rest of the court stayed safely north of the Great Wall and criticized him from a distance. The weight on his shoulders must have been unbearable.

For instance, during those hectic days when he was negotiating the treaty with the British, the Russian envoy had put him in a horrible position. “Our empire extends across the whole of Siberia to the Pacific Ocean,” the envoy said, “but our Siberian coastline is frozen all winter. What we need is a Pacific port farther south. If you’ll give us just a piece of your huge territory in Manchuria—which is empty anyway—and let us move a few of our Siberian settlers there, they can build a little trading post by a natural harbor you’ve got there—just for our local needs. This will cost you nothing,” he’d pointed out. “But it will greatly please the tsar.”

But would it please the Son of Heaven?

“Prince Gong knew all the emperor’s people would blame him,” the princess told me. “But at that moment, it seemed the only thing to do.”

That little trading post is now the mighty Russian port of Vladivostok.

But even if he wasn’t always right, there’s no doubt that Prince Gong did what he thought was best for his country, at risk of his own life. I admired him for that, and I always shall.

At this time he also got his hands on a quantity of modern rifles and ammunition. Then he formed some of the best troops we had into a brigade to police Beijing and gave them the rifles. They’d lost to the barbarians again and again, seen their comrades helplessly mown down—not through any lack of courage or discipline, but because the barbarians were so much better armed. Now they could look any enemy in the eye. Deserters started coming back. People looked at them with new respect. And the prince restored order to Beijing.

—

If we consider the career of Prince Gong, both at this time and in the years that followed, I would say that part of his genius lay in his pragmatism.

Having understood the simple greed of the British, he made good use of them, just as he had suggested to the emperor. With the trading rights they wanted, they now supported the imperial government, and if the Taiping were going to cause chaos, they’d help the emperor smash them. Simple as that. And so Prince Gong was able to build up a new army, trained and commanded by British officers, with British rifles and cannon, that could be used against the Taiping rebels. It did so well that it was soon known as the Ever-Victorious Army. And thanks to this force, within a few years, the Taiping rebels were finally broken forever.

At first this army was commanded by an American named Ward. But after a time, command passed to a British officer who was to make a great name for himself. And I was to meet him in interesting circumstances.

—

This was a few years after the treaty. So successful had the Ever-Victorious Army been that there was talk of awarding this British commander the Yellow Jacket, which is the highest honor that can be given to a Chinese general, and which he was most desirous of receiving—for like many military commanders, he was not without vanity.

Now I’d heard enough about this British servant of China to make me curious, but I hadn’t seen him in person. So when I heard that he’d been summoned to an official audience with Prince Gong in the Forbidden City, I hung about to get a look and saw him just as he was arriving at the outer gate.

Minutes later I was at the door of the prince’s office. He was just on his way to the audience himself, but he gave me a friendly nod and asked what I wanted.

“Highness,” I said, “you are about to meet General Gordon.”

“I am,” he said. “What of it?”

“Do you remember I told you that a British officer had taken the jadeite pendant from me at the looting of the Summer Palace?” He said nothing, so I continued. “At the time I had thought his name was Goh-Dun. When I heard of this General Gordon I wondered if I had misheard the name, and they might possibly be