The Devil Soldier by Caleb Carr

unconventional warfare were beyond question. These were all qualities that Ward later embodied and prized in other men. And, again like Garibaldi, Ward was inattentive and somewhat inept when dealing with life’s more pragmatic questions, such as earning a living.
    Late in 1851 that question came up again, and Ward took his customary step of shipping out on an American trading vessel. Now an experienced officer, he accepted the post of first mate on a bark boundfrom San Francisco for Shanghai. The practical decision to return to sea was in no way an indication that Ward’s desire for military employment had subsided. Far from it. As CharlesSchmidt wrote, “he meant some day to fulfil the destiny allotted to him.… In order to get at the final object of his every day study, he took to going to sea, thinking that by observing the difference of chances in other climes he might finally succeed in gaining that object easily. He did not go therefore from choice, or with the intention of becoming a great navigator.”
    Ward’s choice of destination, however, may well have been deliberate. For by early 1852 rumors of rebellion and chaos had begun to make their way out of the Chinese empire—rumors that brought more than one foreign soldier of fortune to the treaty ports in the hope of finding a market for his talents.
    The year 1850 had witnessed the sudden rise to eminence in China of two men who, though they were enemies, shared dismal personal shortcomings that were destined to bring the empire to the verge of collapse. The first of these was Hsien-feng, son of the old emperor Tao-kuang. While Tao-kuang had never been prescient or progressive in his dealings with the West (even after the Opium War he referred to the British not as adversaries but as “rebels,” demonstrating his continued belief that China occupied a place above all other nations), he had not been entirely foolish. The opening of the five treaty ports had involved a strategy, albeit one of appeasement: By granting the foreigners the right to live and trade in the five cities, it was hoped that their appetite for commerce would be sated enough to make future concessions unnecessary. Therefore, while Tao-kuang was alive the Westerners were given no further cause for serious complaint.
    But the ascension of Hsien-feng to the Dragon Throne in 1850 altered the situation significantly. A young libertine, Hsien-feng had an understanding of policy that was limited at best, while his arrogance was unbounded. To make matters worse, he surrounded himself inside Peking’s Forbidden City with princes who advised a policy of insulting or, more often, ignoring Western ministers when they attempted to remind the Chinese government that it was pledged by treaty to open more ofthe empire to trade and to protect the property and safety of foreign nationals. Hsien-feng was far more interested in his concubines than in the business of governing, and the anti-Western tendencies of his court filtered unimpeded down to provincial governors and local officials. Western trade began to be generally harassed, and China’s rulers demonstrated remarkably little concern for the obligations they had entered into.
    Anti-Westernism might have been a satisfying indulgence for those who lived in the splendor of the palaces in and outside Peking, but it did nothing to alleviate the continuing misery of millions of Chinese peasants. To an increasing extent, the anger of these subjects became focused not on the white traders but on their own Manchu rulers. This was especially true in the impoverished southern provinces of the empire, where multiethnic populations struggled against not only the mounting demands of the imperial tax system but local organizations of bandits and river pirates. The economic crisis brought on by the Opium War had augmented the traditional Manchu inattentiveness to military needs, and in provinces such as Kwangtung and Kwangsi government armed forces did little or