14 – Frederick Townsend Ward and the Ever Victorious Army
As the Civil War raged in the US in the 1860s, an even more destructive civil war was raging on the other side of the globe in China: the Taiping Rebellion. It was a mixture of peasant uprising and millenarian Christian cult upheaval, led by an odd Chinese figure who, after failing the entrance exams into the Chinese civil service, had a breakdown, and upon recovery, declared himself Jesus Christ’s younger brother.
He amassed a following, and established the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom – an oppositional state that waged a brutal war from 1851 to 1864 against China’s ruling Qing Dynasty. By the time the Taiping were defeated, about 30 million people had been killed, making the rebellion the bloodiest war in history, until its toll was exceeded by that of World War II.
In the early runnings, the Taiping rebels repeatedly routed the armies of the Qing Dynasty. When Taiping armies drew close to Shanghai in 1860, the city’s business community pooled its resources to hire an American, Frederick Townsend Ward, to lead a mercenary force and protect the city. Officered by Westerners who led Chinese rankers drilled in modern warfare, Ward’s force, which came to be known as the “Ever Victorious Army” (EVA), turned the tide.
Although never exceeding 5000 men, the EVA’s well-trained mercenaries routed far bigger Taiping armies, and secured Shanghai. It then operated as a crack unit, spearheading the Qing Dynasty’s counterattack, and helping the imperial forces recapture Taiping fortresses and strongholds along the Yangtze River. Ward did not see the final victory, as he was killed in battle in 1862. His army was then taken over by a British officer, Charles “Chinese” Gordon, who led the EVA until the Taiping were finally crushed in 1864.