Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 4: Flashman and the Dragon, Flashman on the March, Flashman and the Tiger. George Fraser MacDonald
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could point out such objects of interest as the distant Ming Tombs, one of the wonders of ancient China, and the huge siege-works from which the Imps had been expelled two weeks earlier, massive entrenchments bigger than anything I saw later in the Civil War or in France in ’70, and filled now with thousands upon thousands of decaying corpses raked together from the battlefields which extended for miles around. The stench was appalling, even with armies of coolies burying for dear life, with quicklime by the cart-load. Lee said it was nothing to ’53, when the river was so solid with corpses that boat traffic had had to be suspended.
Nanking lies on the Yangtse bank, girdled by hills, and long before we reached it we could see those famous beetling walls, sixty feet high and forty thick, which enclose the city in a great triangle twenty miles about. It’s one of the finest cities in China today, but when we’d passed through the long tunnel at the south gate I was shocked to find myself gazing on a scene of ruin and desolation. The suburb had been razed flat, and was swarming with crowds of miserable-looking serfs labouring at nothing, so far as I could see, under the direction of Taiping troops; starving beggars everywhere, ragged children played among the pot-holed streets and piles of rubble; all was foul, muddy, stinking squalor.
Any doubts I might have had about the social nature of the Taiping revolution were dispelled in the next hour. The Great Kingdom of Heavenly Peace obviously consisted of two classes: the State (the Wangs, the officials, and the army) and the populace, who were the State’s slaves. Everyone, you see, must work, according to his capacity, but he ain’t paid. How does he feed and clothe himself, you ask? He has no money, since it and all his valuables and property have been confiscated by the State, but there are no shops anyway, since all is rationed and distributed by the State. He is thus free of all care and responsibility, and can give his mind to work and absorbing the precepts, decrees, and heavenly thoughts of the Tien Wang, or Heavenly King. And if the rations are shorter and the work harder and the laws more savage than under the evil Imps – well, there’s a good time coming, and he can take comfort in the knowledge that what is happening to him is “correct”. The foul old system has given way to Heavenly Peace, and while the baskets of heads are even more numerous than in Shanghai, and there’s no lack of malefactors crawling about in wooden collars placarded with their offences (disobeying “celestial commands”, mostly), well, there’s a certain tranquility about that, too. At least every man-jack had his wooden token with the Heavenly Seal on it, to prove his existence and to use as a passport in and out of the city – what happened to anyone who lost his token I don’t care to think.
But if the folk were ground down in misery, the military were riding high, and no mistake. I recall one splendid figure in crimson coat and hood, marking a subordinate Wang, mounted on a mule and attended by three skinny urchins carrying his sword, his flag (each Taiping officer has a personal flag), and his umbrella; all three, I was informed, aspired to being “ta-jens” (excellencies) some day, like their master, with power of life and death over all despised civilians – such as another urchin sitting naked in the gutter offering stones for sale. I was so bemused by this that I bought one (and still have it) amidst the laughter of Lee’s retinue; only later did it occur to me that it must be a State stone, which the little bugger had no right to be selling, presumably. He probably owns half Nanking by now. It’s pleasant to think that I may have founded his commercial career.
Lee didn’t seem to notice the filth and poverty of the state he’d been extolling to me two days earlier, but he drew my attention to the incessant drum and gong signals booming across that muddy desolation, and to the fluttering coloured flags on the walls relaying messages to the central watch-tower ahead; all was efficiency and discipline where the military were concerned, with battalions of red-coats chanting at their drill, and there were thousands of off-duty Taipings sauntering among the coolie crowds; I reckon every fourth man was a soldier – which explains why the slave population voiced no audible discontent.
All this was plainly the “progress, work, and improvement”, to say nothing of the “sacred right of human liberty”, which Lee had described to me. Now I beheld proof of his “benign enlightened democratic” government, as the ruins gave way to the splendid new palaces and offices being built in the city centre for the Wangs and their favoured subordinates. We passed through broad, well-kept streets, flanked by magnificent yellow walls, with lofty minarets and towers beyond, tiled in red and green and lavishly decorated; extensive gardens were being laid out by coolies hard at it with mattocks and spades, scaffolding clung to the new buildings like spiders’ webs, and great loads of brick and paint and timber and tile were everywhere to be seen. The place was humming like a beehive; well, thinks I, if this is the revolution, I’m all for it.
To remind everyone of what a bloody good idea it all was, every other street corner had an official orator reading out His Heavenly Majesty’s poems and meditations to rapt crowds of soldiers and officials and a few hang-dog peasants, all no doubt reflecting what fine transcendental stuff the monarch was turning out these days.12
“The Grand Palace of Glory and Light,” says Lee, as our cavalcade turned a corner, “the earthly residence of the Tien Wang,” and I had to admit that it laid over everything we had seen before. There was a forty-foot yellow wall emblazoned with ferocious dragons and hung with yellow silk scrolls of His Majesty’s ghastly poems in vermilion ink; a vast gilded gateway guarded by cannon and splendidly-caparisoned sentries with matchlocks; and through the gate you caught a glimpse of the palace itself, a half-completed monstrosity of minarets and peaked roofs, tiled in every conceivable hue, with dragon designs and silken banners and revolting Chinese statuary; it must have covered acres, and was slightly more grandiose than the Taj Mahal, if in more questionable taste. There was even an enormous granite boat to commemorate the Heavenly King’s arrival in the city in ’53 – the real boat was rotting in a shed round the back.
We dismounted before a low wall dividing the length of the street – the quality use the palace side, and the rabble t’other, and if the latter stray the guards beat ’em to pulp in the name of democracy. Lee led the way through the gate and then through a series of courts and gardens of dwarf shrubs, discoursing as he went – and it was now that I got the unexpected shock I mentioned earlier. For after some commonplace remarks about the building, he suddenly says:
“In describing this as His Majesty’s earthly residence, I do not imply any earthly term to his existence. He is, as you know, immortal, but a time will come when he decides to take up permanent abode in Paradise. As it is, he makes frequent visits there, in his Dragon Chariot, for discussions with God. Of late his wife has accompanied him on these excursions to Heaven, and conversed with the Heavenly Father and the Elder Brother Jesus.”
I wondered if I’d misheard, or if he was speaking symbolically or even with irony. But he wasn’t. He went on, conversationally:
“It is a gratifying demonstration of the ordained equality of the sexes in the Heavenly Kingdom that the Heavenly King’s consort enters so fully on his affairs. It was she, you know, who received the divine command that henceforth the Tien Wang should devote himself to meditation – apart from such duties as annotating the Book of Revelation – so that he may be fully prepared to take his place with the Junior Lord, his son, in Paradise, and sit with God and the Elder Brother.”
“I see”, seemed the best response with which to cover my sheer amazement and alarm. Until now, this apparently normal young man had spoken sanely and rationally, and here, suddenly, without a gleam in his eye or foam on his lips, he was talking the most outrageous balderdash. I knew that from all accounts the Heavenly King was as mad as a senile Sapper, but this was one of his foremost generals! Could he conceivably believe this bilge about dragon chariots and tête-à-têtes with the Almighty, with Mrs Heavenly King going along, presumably to help with the service of tea and ginger biscuits?
Hesitantly, and in the hope of receiving an answer that would restore my faith in Lee’s sanity, I inquired how old his Heavenly Majesty might be, and when he could be expected to go aloft permanently, so to speak. I was a fool to ask.
“In earthly terms,” says Lee placidly, “he is forty-seven, but in fact he was born out of the belly of God’s first wife before Heaven and Earth existed. How