The Devil Soldier by Caleb Carr Read Free Book Online Page A

Drinker’s intentions were judged prejudicial to China’s national integrity (although American diplomats had decided that he deserved a consolation fee for his troubles, and the Chinese were thus made to pay even more money for services not rendered). No such fate befellGough and Ward, however, quite possibly because Consul Smith in Shanghai had no interest in being so diligent. As long as the activities of the Pirate Suppression Bureau created no diplomatic incident, they were allowed to proceed.
    Admiral Gough apparently did not introduce Ward to his own paymaster, the banker Yang Fang, but the network of acquaintance among so small a foreign population as that of Shanghai ensured that the meeting eventually did take place. Its architect was one of Shanghai’s many commercial factotums,Charles E. Hill, an American whose fame rested on his being “the introducer into China of the Troy dredging machine.” Hill was an arranger of the classic mold: “an enterprising man, with a great deal on his hands, and with the hopeful side of his nature more developed than the other,” was how one American official put it. “I do not believe,” Hill later claimed, “there is one man in the world who knows what I owe, or who owes me, or what I am worth.” This sort of attitude—at once secretive and boastful—was common to many of Shanghai’s commercial freebooters, native as well as foreign, and it is not surprising that Hill should have been friends with both Ward and Yang Fang. Hill later said that for Yang he “did more … than I would for any other man in China at the time.”
    The exact date of Ward’s introduction to Yang Fang was never recorded, but the energetic young New Englander and the wily old Chinese banker apparently took to each other from the start. Yang didnot, however, hold sufficient bureaucratic power to sanction projects such as the Pirate Suppression Bureau officially, and Ward’s mind was beginning to fill with plans for the protection of Shanghai that went beyond the scope of the bureau. The authority needed to pursue such goals rested with Wu Hsü. Either Ward convinced Admiral Gough to arrange an introduction or the idea was Gough’s own; at any rate, Ward and the taotai finally met, almost certainly in May, with Yang Fang also present.
    Wu’s desire to bring Western expertise to bear on the Taiping problem was well known. He could hardly fail to be interested, therefore, when Ward—who, Gough told Wu, was “well trained in the art of war”—offered to organize a small but heavily armed group of free-lance foreigners, lead them into the field, and engage the rebels. The proposed force, said its would-be commander, would prove capable of recapturing vital walled towns and in time even cities. Their pay would be according to a set scale: Ward’s enlisted men would receive approximately fifty American dollars per month (although actual payment would be made in silver Mexican dollars), his officers about two hundred, and Ward himself just over five hundred, plus a handsome bonus for each town recaptured. The amount of the bonus would vary according to the size of the town; but it would, at the very least, reach into the tens of thousands of dollars.
    These were heady sums for the place and time. And Wu, Gough’s recommendations notwithstanding, had no hard knowledge of Ward’s background or abilities. Furthermore, Peking was known to look with disapproval on the idea of using Westerners to fight the rebels. Add to this a considerable language barrier and the extent of Ward’s achievement in persuading Wu Hsü to release the vast sums necessary for the training, pay, and equipment of his force becomes clear. True, Wu continued to cover himself in the usual fashion, instructing Yang Fang to take care of the actual payments (most of which were made to Ward through the Pirate Suppression Bureau). And, because Ward was apparently the only man in Shanghai willing to take the field against the