General Gordon. Seton Churchill
them. Gordon quickly drove off the enemy that were seeking to encompass the Imperialists, and then he found that General Ching was anxious to attack the eastern gate of the city, a proceeding that did not at all commend itself to him. He saw at a glance that the western gate would probably be the better one to attack, as the enemy would be less prepared there. Quinsan was an important place, and was strongly defended; it was held by at least 15,000 men, and the moat round the fortification was forty feet wide. Before coming to a definite decision, Gordon made a reconnaissance in a steamer, taking the Governor and General Ching with him. Being convinced by personal observation that he was right in the step he intended to take, he informed the Chinese General to that effect, and in a letter written some little time after the event he says, "General Ching was as sulky as a bear when he was informed that I thought it advisable to take these stockades the next day, and to attack on this side of the city."
At dawn on the 30th May, having surrounded the city with his own and the Imperialist troops, he took a small force by water to a point on the main line of communication between Quinsan and Soo-chow, only defended by a weak stockade, which was easily taken. Gordon then took the celebrated little steamer the Hyson, and went towards Soo-chow. Meeting a large force of the enemy on the way to reinforce Quinsan, he opened fire upon them. Little anticipating an attack in this direction, they got into confusion and fled, the steamer following them. Having inflicted heavy loss on the retreating army and steamed right up to Soo-chow, he turned round and went at full speed till he got back to Chunye, where he had that morning left a small detachment of riflemen. It was 10.30 p.m. and a rather dark night. His intention was to wait till the next morning and renew the conflict by attacking the city. But the rebels within the walls had been seized with panic, and knowing that the city was invested on three sides, they made a rush for Soo-chow. In doing so they met Gordon's steamer returning. Again she opened fire and blew her whistle, the sound of the latter doing much damage by adding to the noise and increasing the panic among the rebels. The men were in dense masses, and each shell mowed them down in large numbers. Gordon says, "The mass wavered, yelled and turned back." The city had fallen, and by 4 a.m. on May 31st everything was quiet, and it was reckoned that from three to four thousand of the enemy must have been killed, drowned, or taken prisoners. The little steamer had won the day, having fired some eighty or ninety rounds; the troops had done little or nothing. Only two men on Gordon's side were killed and five were drowned.
Thus in a single day had fallen this important city, which was the key to the position of Soo-chow. Indeed, the impetuous young commander was anxious to dash on and seize Soo-chow itself, but he could not inspire the Imperialist General with his spirit. He says, "I have no doubt of my having been able to take Soo-chow the other day, if the Mandarins had been able to take advantage of our success." The capture of Quinsan was one of the most brilliant strokes of success Gordon had during the whole of the campaign, and he attributed it to the fact that the lines of communication between that city and Soo-chow were neglected, and that he was permitted to get his steamer into the canal, which ran parallel with the only road. Both the armies which he defeated were compelled to march along the road, as on each side of the road there was water. Through the men marching thus in dense masses, the shot and shell from the steamer carried death and destruction, creating much confusion. The Taiping rebels were evidently not prepared to fight such an amphibious general as Gordon proved himself to be.
It may be well to remark here on the fertility of resource and the initiative power which this young commander possessed. It mattered not what difficulties arose, his fertile brain sooner or later devised a method by which he could overcome them. It is said that the best doctor is not necessarily the cleverest man, but the one who is most fertile in resource. If disorders of the human frame refuse to yield to one kind of treatment, another must be tried, and so on, until at last the right method is discovered. There can be no question that this is also true of the military and other callings in life. The man of a fertile brain, ever ready to suggest new methods when old ones have failed, is the most likely to succeed. It was to this cause, more than to any other, that Napoleon at first owed his success. When he was a young man, it was the custom in Europe to imitate blindly the tactics of Frederick the Great of Prussia, and to rely on ponderous heavy squares and a slow stiff method of moving. Napoleon was the first to see that, however suitable such tactics had been during the time of the great Prussian general, before the development of artillery, they were not adapted to the changed circumstances under which battles were fought in his own time; and so in 1806 at Jena he smashed to pieces the Prussian force, which came against him in all the pride of inherited traditions, handed down from one of the greatest generals of his age. While it is almost a truism to say that what is appropriate to one age is not suited to another, it is only men of the type of Napoleon and Gordon who are quick enough to see the necessity for a change of method, and sufficiently resourceful to adopt new plans. Ninety-nine generals out of a hundred would never have thought of utilising a little steamer to destroy a land force, but would have proceeded in the old-fashioned methods of a siege, and perhaps have lost an enormous number of men in the process. The enemy are always more or less prepared for conventional methods of fighting, but it stands to reason that they are unprepared for new ideas. Hence much of Gordon's success.
In addition to this fertility of resource, Gordon displayed wonderful courage in carrying out his ideas. No sooner had Quinsan fallen than he saw that it would be a good thing to make a change in his headquarters, and to transfer them thence from Sung-kiang. With the old centre were associated all sorts of traditions connected with the army before his time, in the days when discipline was lax, and the one idea of the soldiers was that the war was being carried on for the sake of providing them with loot. There were loot agents and other means by which the officers and soldiers could easily dispose of their booty. All this was demoralising, so Gordon decided on an immediate change. But the army looked at the matter from a different standpoint, and a mutinous spirit arose. Mr. Wilson informs us that the artillery threatened to blow the officers to pieces, and a written notification to that effect was sent to the General. Gordon at once summoned the non-commissioned officers, who he knew were at the bottom of the plot, and threatened to shoot every fifth man if the name of the writer of the notice were not revealed. Immediately they all commenced to groan, one corporal making himself specially conspicuous by groaning very loudly. Whether Gordon had any suspicions with regard to this particular man, we are not informed, but he directed him to be seized, and ordered a couple of infantry soldiers standing by to shoot him. He then had the others confined, and again repeated his threat to the effect that one in every five would be shot if the name of the writer were not given up. Events proved that the corporal already shot was the culprit. No doubt many in this country will judge Gordon harshly with regard to this summary method of dealing out justice; but it must be remembered that a civil war was going on in which thousands of lives were annually sacrificed. Gordon knew perfectly well that he could suppress it if he had a disciplined force under him. He also knew what a frightful scourge an undisciplined army might become. According to the tradition of all nations, each man in Gordon's army had forfeited his life by disobedience in the presence of the enemy. What was the life of one man compared with the thousands of women and children who were suffering through the horrors of that war? We in England have been for so long mercifully spared the misery of war in our own country, that possibly public opinion has become a little too sentimental. During the Trafalgar Square riots in 1887, it was suggested by some that the Fire Brigade should pump cold water on to the rioters in order to disperse them; and one writer seriously deprecated such a step, on the ground that possibly the poor fellows who got the ducking might catch cold! It is possible to go from one extreme to another, and, while wishing to avoid harshness and cruelty in any form, to become too sentimental, and thus do harm in an opposite direction. Sentimental people too often forget the sufferings of the many innocent victims when contemplating those of a few culprits. War is too stern a thing for us to trifle with, and those whose duty it is to be engaged in it must be prepared to suppress with a strong hand anything in the form of incipient mutiny.
With regard to the threat which Gordon held out of shooting one man in five, such a form of punishment is by no means uncommon in countries more civilised than China. It has been frequently resorted to in Russia, and as recently as 1876, during the Russo-Turkish war, on symptoms of a mutiny exhibiting themselves among the Russian troops, the commander-in-chief threatened to shoot one in every ten of the men, and thus quelled the manifestation. There can be no