2

MASS.

THE CYCLOPEDIC (REVIEW 1896

OF

CURRENT

CAMPRU

HISTORY

VOL. 6.

JULY 1-SEPTEMBER 30, 1896.

NO. 3.

LI HUNG-CHANG.

AMONG the most notable figures in the closing years of the nineteenth century is that of the great Chinese viceroy, Earl Li Hung-Chang. A unique personality, representative of a nation far exceeding any other in numbers-a nation mysterious in its almost incredible antiquity, yet with some characteristics of an enduring infancy -this man appears thrice in strong relief against the background of startling events which have made memorable the recent months. In the first of these scenes he is, at the age of seventy-three, for the first time on foreign soil, ending a war of a few months by a treaty in which his nation, the most self-satisfied on earth, confesses itself hopelessly vanquished on land and sea by an adversary small and despised; and yet he is bearing himself with unswerving dignity. In the second scene he is in the ancient Muscovite capital at the coronation of the czar, where, in the grandest and most august assemblage of nations and their potentates that the modern world has seen, no figure draws more of questioning regard than his. In the third scene, closing only a few weeks since, this delegate from the slumberous Orient, where a thousand years leave scarcely more mark than does a single day, is in the whirl of our American life, tumultuous in its business activity, hysterical in its vices and its virtues, and is moving through it all with the grave look of mingled wisdom and inquisitiveness sometimes seen on the face of a child. The greatest living Asiatic making the tour of Europe and crossing the continent of America at an hour so critical for his nation as the present, offers an interesting study in his history and his personality, and suggests momentous questions of commercial and diplomatic relations. What is the man aiming to do? What is he able to do? What does he show Copyright, 1896, by Garretson, Cox & Co.

Vol. 6.-34.

of the attitude of China toward modern civilization? What political, social, moral changes in the great Eastern world does he herald? While little answer to these questions is here attempted, some of the facts that seem most pertinent are offered, with their suggestions and intimations. The enigma of the Orient remains.

LI HUNG-CHANG [pronounced Lee Hoong Chang] was born in 1822 at Hofei, a little city in the province of An-Huei, one of the provinces of central China. The Li family (in China the first name corresponds to our last or surname) is purely Chinese without mixture of Manchu blood. Though resident in Hofei through many generations, it had never been notable. The father of the statesman who is our theme became one of the class of literati in virtue of his degree taken at the district examinations in Chinese literature, which are the only door for entrance to official or social rank; but he never made his way beyond this lowest step. Young Li was studious from his early years; and, after taking his first degree at the government district examinations, he passed upward through the two successive grades of scholastic honor (the provincial and the imperial), winning distinction among 20,000 competitors at the triennial imperial examination at Peking in 1849. Afterward he gained admission to the Han-lin college, an institution whose members receive salaries while awaiting their turn for appointment in the government service. These scholars take rank as nobles, for there is in China no hereditary nobility. The imperial blood gives a rank almost celestial, and the princes of that blood hold some of the high offices of the country; but aside from these few the most important posts, civil and military, are open to the lowest subject, and are reached only through attainments in Chinese literature as attested by the three grades of severe scholastic examinations. As the scholastic standard has scarcely changed for 2,000 years, literary attainment is far other than that known in Western lands. The Chinese literary man is not expected to have acquaintance with mathematics or any of the natural sciences, or foreign languages, or universal history. Of Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Charlemagne, he may not have even heard. He must have mastered and largely memorized the political and ethical philosophy of Confucius and other Chinese classics including the ancient poets of the nation, and he must be an adept in the fearful and interminable complexities of the Chinese literary language. The native intellectual force of Li Hung-Chang is evinced by its surviving the unnatural strain of such a mechanical system of education; and it is fair to add that careful observers make the same remark concerning some other Chinese officials of the present day.

The Tai-Ping rebellion (1851-64), ranking as the greatest in modern times for devastation of property and destruction of life, called Li from a life of study to a military activity for which he had had no fit training, but in which he showed unusual ability. The rebels, having captured and plundered town after town, at length possessed themselves of Nanking, the ancient capital, and gathered to their standard 100,000 fighting men. Their march through Li's native province toward the capital of the empire incited him to raise a regiment of home troops, with which he harassed the rebel army, hanging on their rear and cutting their communications. His conspicuous patriotism and ability in the crisis, which ended in a general repulse of the rebels, brought him to the notice of Tsêng Kwo-Fan,

commander-in-chief of the Chinese armies, then the greatest Chinaman known to foreign nations, father of Marquis Tsêng, long the Chinese minister to Great Britain. Li's militia were incorporated into the main army, and he was given important military commands.

After the Anglo-French invasion of China ending in the capture of Peking (1860) had given the almost quenched rebellion a revival which again endangered the imperial dynasty, Li was appointed (1861) viceroy or governor of the province of Kiangsu, with his residence at Shanghai. This was an important epoch in his life. He was at the age of forty years. In Shanghai, with its dominant European population and influence, Li-to whom recent events had shown the weakness of China, especially in its methods and weapons of warfare -was brought into close connection with foreigners, and doubtless gained much of that liberty from the trammels of Chinese precedent and conservatism which has made him ever since the often distrusted and savagely opposed, but always the finally indispensable, leader of his nation and mainstay of the throne.

His province became the scene of the bloodiest conflicts of the rebellion. He took the field in person and showed remarkable military abilities. Immediately under Li's command was a legion recruited from European adventurers, always numerous in Shanghai, organized and led on modern methods by Frederick Townsend Ward, a native of Salem, Mass., who had been appointed admiral-general in the service of the emperor of China. Ward's legion, well trained and skilfully handled by him, soon became noted for its dashing bravery; and from its series of brilliant successes the Chinese called it the "Ever Victorious Army."

General Ward was killed in battle in 1863, and his legion passed under the leadership of that strange hero, Charles George Gordon, then major in the British army, afterward major-general in the Soudan. Li's close official association with Gordon, and the curious personal relations between the two men-an intimate friendship, diversified occasionally like that of two boys, by fierce but transient disagreements-had doubtless much influence in opening the Chinaman's mind to Western ideas. It must have been to him like a liberal education. The disagreements, so sharp that Gordon repeatedly resigned his commission and as often resumed it, resulted from the immense contrast in all their inherited and habitual modes of thought. Most memorable of these disagreements, and to Gordon most honorable, was one occasioned by Li's action in 1863, after the final battle, in immediately beheading the captured rebel chieftains who had surrendered to Gordon at Soochow on his pledge, known to Li, that their lives should be spared. The Scotchman's indignation at this base and cruel act was like a flame of fire. It is credibly reported that in the first flush of his terrible anger he seized a weapon and sallied forth to find Li and take his life as forfeit for his violation of military honor, and that Li-warned of the danger-withdrew into hiding. Afterward Gordon's wrath was appeased. His English advisers urged on his attention the fact that the Chinese at that time knew almost nothing of the modern mitigations of cruel war, nor of keeping pledges made to an enemy, nor of the sacredness with which a human life is invested in Christian lands; also the fact that the beheaded rebels had habitually practiced the most horrid cruelties and had led a rebellion in which 20,000,000 lives had been sacrificed and whole provinces devastated; moreover, that after their surrender they had been refractory and insolent instead of submissive. Gordon

gradually allowed his wrath to cool, consented to retain his command, and, till the end of his life, held friendly relations with the viceroy. The peculiar quality of the friendship between these two leaders of men is evident; and it, together with Li's reverential friendship for General Grant, may perhaps stand as various types of whatever real sympathy-except that developed in the Christian fellowship—is likely to obtain between people of the West and the present generation of Chinamen. There can be, there must be sympathy and kindly acts; but the element of a firm reciprocal confidence will probably be of slow growth. Letters from Gordon are extant, and some have been published, in which he depicts Li as always pressing to make every possible use of him, but as never giving him his confidence. He complains that Li was accustomed to claim for his Chinese troops more than their share of credit for the results achieved in fight. A thoughtful writer, however, has pointed out that the viceroy's conduct in these respects may seem not entirely unreasonable in view of the fact that Gordon was doubtless the only foreigner serving under Li actuated by any motive higher than self-interest, and that even Gordon distinctly asserted that he was before all else a British officer with British interests first at heart. The viceroy, in his friendship of later years with General Grant, seems to have made a great advance on his earlier type-his confidence becoming veneration. But Grant, as a man who had been one of the mightiest military commanders and civil potentates on earth, may have appeared almost as a god in the eyes of one accustomed to see divine honors paid to parents and ancestors after death, and likewise to the living emperor.

From the campaign which ended the terrible Tai-Ping rebellion, Earl Li Hung Chang came forth with a repute above that of any other man in his nation for ability as a soldier, as an administrator of government, and as a diplomatist. He was endued with the threeeyed peacock feather and the yellow jacket, special marks of imperial favor and of lofty authority. From that day to this, the emperor and the Tsung-li-Yamên, the high council which formally has charge of foreign relations, have left much of their ordinary work in his hands, and have turned instantly to him in every delicate crisis and in every great emergency in the domestic or foreign affairs of the empire.

For a quarter of a century Earl Li held the office of viceroy of Chi-Li, having been made successor to the great Tsêng Kwo-Fan in 1870. To this position he was appointed because of the peculiarly difficult and critical situation of affairs in that province due to the atrocious massacre at Tientsin in that year of the French consul and his wife and twenty-one other foreigners mostly French Roman Catholic sisters, with the destruction of the French consulate and cathedral. The danger of the situation-a danger of war with Francewas in the fact that the crime was known to have been encouraged by the authorities of the city. Grave questions of punishment of the offenders, restoration of order, protection of foreigners, reparation to sufferers, and satisfaction to the French governinent, were to be settled by the new governor. On one hand the populace were enraged; on the other hand France was threatening swift and dire vengeance. The imperial authorities, perplexed and alarmed, looked to Li for extrication from their trouble. The new viceroy proved himself fully able to cope with the dangers of the crisis: with mingled tact and force, and with provision of indemnity, he quelled both the domestic tumult and the foreign menace.