'58, after we shelled Canton, the river banks were black with Chinese—kow-towing. You will observe, Sir Harry, that they do not kow-tow today. Much as I admire our chief, I cannot share his recently-expressed satisfaction that in these enlightened times we no longer require every Chinaman to take off his hat to us.'
But even Elgin's patience was beginning to wear thin. Some-how he preserved a placid politeness through every meeting with Manchoo officials who barely concealed their satisfaction in wasting time and frustrating our progress, but afterwards he'd be in a fever to get on, snapping at us, tugging his fringe, urging Grant and Montauban with an energy that stopped just short of rudeness; Montauban would bridle and Grant would nod, and then we staff-men would get pepper again. He was bedevilled, trying to keep the Chinks sweet and the advance moving, fearful of provoking downright hostility, but knowing that every hour lost was time for the war party in Pekin to get their nerve back after Taku; we knew Sang-kol-in-sen was back in the capital, urging resistance, and Elgin in his impatience was being tempted by a new Manchoo ploy—speedy passage to Pekin in return for a promise of active British help against the Taipings, which he daren't concede or bluntly refuse.30
It took us ten crawling days to cover sixty miles to Tientsin, a stink-hole of salt-heaps and pi-dogs—and smiling Manchoo mandarins sent by Pekin to 'negotiate' our further progress. They talked for a full week, while Parkes risked apoplexy—and Elgin nodded gravely, with his lip stuck out. Finally, after interminable discussion, they agreed that we might advance to Tang-chao, eleven miles from Pekin—provided we didn't take artillery or too many gunboats to alarm the people—and from there Elgin and Baron Gros might go into Pekin with a thousand cavalry for escort, and sign the damned treaty. It seemed too good to be true—although Grant looked grim at the smallness of the escort—but Elgin accepted, hiding his satisfaction. And then the mandarins, smiling more politely than ever, said of course they couldn't confirm these arrangements, but doubtless Pekin would do so if we were patient a little longer …
If Bismarck or D'Israeli or Metternich had had to sit through those interminable hours, listening to those bland, lying old dotards, and then received that slap in the face, I swear they'd have started to scream and smash the furniture. Elgin didn't even blink. He listened to Parkes's near-choked translation of that astounding insolence, thanked the mandarins for their courtesy, stood up, bowed—and told Parkes, almost offhand, to pass 'em the word that they now owed Britain four million quid for delays and damage to our expedition. Oh, aye, and the treaty would now contain a clause opening Tientsin to European trade.
Back on Coromandel he was grimly satisfied. 'Their bad faith affords the perfect excuse for proceeding to Pekin forthwith. Sir Hope, the army will no-longer halt when discussions take place; if they want to talk we'll do it on the march. And if they don't like it, and want a fight, they can have it.'
Suddenly everyone was grinning; even Parkes was delighted, although he confided to me later that Elgin should have taken a high hand sooner. Elgin himself looked ten years younger, now that he'd cast the die, but I thought exuberance had got the better of him when he strode into the saloon later, threw The Origin of Species on the table, and announced:
'It's very original, no doubt, but not for a hot evening. What I need is some trollop.'
I couldn't believe my ears, and him a church-goer, too. 'Well, my lord, I dunno,' says I. 'Tientsin ain't much of a place, but I'll see what I can drum up —'
'Michel's been reading Dr Thorne since Taku,' cries he. 'He must have finished it by now, surely! Ask him, Flashman, will you?' So I did, and had my ignorance enlightened.31
It was bundle and go now. We left 2nd Division at Tientsin, shed all surplus gear, and cracked away at twice our previous pace, while the Manchoos plagued Elgin with appeals to stop the advance—they would appoint new commissioners, they had further proposals, there must be a pause for discussion—and Elgin replied agreeably that he'd talk to 'em at Tang-chao, as agreed. The Manchoos were frantic, and now we saw something new—great numbers of refugees, ordinary folk, streaming towards us from Pekin, in evident fear of what would happen when we arrived. They flooded past us, men, women, and children, with their possessions piled on rickety carts—I remember one enormous Mongol wheeling four women in a barrow. But no sign of armed opposition, and when our local guides and drivers decamped one night, spirits were so high that no one minded, and Admiral Hope and Bowlby, the Times correspondent, took over as mule-skinners, whooping and hawing like Deadwood Dick. We swung on up-river, the gun-boats keeping pace and the Frog band thumping 'Madelon', for now Pekin was barely thirty miles ahead, and we were going to see the elephant at last, seven thousand cavalry and infantry ready for anything, not that it mattered for the Manchoo protests had subsided to whines of resignation, and we were coming home on a tight rein, hurrah, boys, hurrah!
And the dragon … waited.
It happened the day after we held divine service in a big temple, and afterwards there was much fun while we looked over a book of pictures which Beato, who'd been photographing the march, presented to Elgin. Word came that new Manchoo commissioners, including the famous Prince I, were waiting just up ahead, at Tang-chao, and they hoped the army would camp on the near side of the town while we negotiated the details of Elgin's entry to Pekin.
'Go and see him,' says Elgin to Parkes, so on the Monday, in the cool of a beautiful dawn, about thirty of us set out to ride ahead. There was Parkes, Loch, De Normann from Bruce's office, Bowlby of The Times, and myself, with six Dragoon Guards and twenty of Fane's sowars under young Anderson, as escort. Walker, the Q.M.G., and Thompson of the commissariat rode along to inspect the camp site.
We trotted up the dusty road, myself in the lead as senior officer, with Parkes (who rode like an ill-tied sack of logs, by the way). To our right was the river, half a mile off, and on our left empty plain and millet fields to the horizon. Beyond a little village we were met by a mandarin with a small troop of Tartar cavalry, who said he would show us our camp-site; it proved to be to the right of the road, where the river took a great loop, near a village called Five-li Point. Walker and I thought it would do, although he'd have preferred to be closer to the river, for water; the mandarin assured us that water would be brought to us, and as we rode on he chatted amiably to Parkes and me, telling us he'd been in command of the garrison we'd defeated at Sinho.
'As you can see.' He touched the button on his hat; it was white, not red. 'I was also degraded by losing my peacock feather,' he added, grinning like a corpse, and Parkes and I made sounds of commiseration. 'Oh, it is no matter!' cries he. 'Lost honours can be regained. As Confucius says: Be patient, and at last the mulberry leaf will become a silk robe.'
I remember the proverb, because it was just then that I chanced to look round. The six Dragoons had been riding immediately behind Parkes and me since we set out, in double file, but I'd paid 'em no special heed, and it was only as I glanced idly back that I saw one of them was watching me—staring at me, dammit, with the oddest fixed grin. He was a typical burly Heavy with a face as red as his coat under the pith helmet, and I was just about to ask what the devil he meant by it when his grin broadened—and in that moment I knew him, and knew that he knew me. It was the Irishman who'd been beside me when Moyes was killed.
I must have gaped like an idiot … and then I was facing front again, chilled with horror. This was the man who'd seen me grovelling to Sam Collinson, my abject companion in shame—and here he was, riding at my shoulder like bloody Nemesis, no doubt on the point of denouncing me to the world as a poltroon—it's a great thing to have a conscience as guilty as mine, I can tell you; it always makes you fear far more than the worst. My God! And yet—it couldn't be! the Irishman had been a sergeant of the 44th; this was a trooper of Dragoon Guards. I must be mistaken; he hadn't been staring at me at all—he must have been grinning at some joke of his mate's, when I'd caught his eye, and my terrified imagination was doing the rest -
'Where the hell d'you think you're goin', Nolan?' It was the Dragoon corporal, just behind. 'Keep in file!'
Nolan! That had been the name Moyes had spoken—oh, God, it was him, right enough.
I daren't look round; I'd give myself away for certain. I must just ride on, chatting to Parkes as though nothing had happened, and God knows what I said, or how much farther we rode, for I was aware of nothing except that my cowardly sins had found me out at last. You may think I was in a great stew over nothing—what had the great Flashy to fear from the memory of a mere lout of a trooper, after all? A hell of a deal, says I, as you'll see.
But if I was in a state of nervous funk for the rest of the day, I remember the business we did well enough. At Tang-chao, we met the great Prince I, the Emperor's cousin, a tall, skinny crow of a Manchoo in gorgeous green robes, with all his nails cased; he looked at us as if we were dirt, and when Parkes said we hoped the arrangements agreed for Elgin's entry to Pekin were still satisfactory to their side, he hissed like an angry cat.
'Nothing can be discussed until the barbarian leader has withdrawn his presumptuous request for an
