The Pressure for Peace (1)
Alas, promise and will availed me little. The cease-fire announcement I had sprung upon the war correspondents aboard ship stood no chance of reaching Beijing in any short span of time.
It was neither a failure of the telegraph nor obstruction born of the hostility piled high between the two nations. It was simply that the battlefield had splintered into so many theaters, and the front had drawn itself out so immeasurably far, that no one dared claim to take its measure.
Fortunately — and contrary to the correspondents' anxious predictions — the French Expeditionary Command, which had been shoving even surrendered Qing sailors into the sea in the Gulf of Bohai, responded favorably to the idea of peace talks.
"The regions where fighting is currently underway between the Tripartite Alliance and the Qing can be broadly divided into the Indochina Peninsula borderlands, Yunnan and Guangdong provinces, and Liaodong and Manchuria. Even if we force ourselves to summarize, that is three fronts."
"That's a vast stretch of ground."
"However, if we include the remnant enemy forces still carrying out sporadic resistance in the occupied territories and rear cities, the number of fronts on which Allied troops are presently committed rises to five."
The staff officer, who had circled the Kingdom of Vietnam and Taiwan in red, gave a little twitch at the corner of his mouth.
"The Allied nations have committed a full three hundred and fifty thousand men to the front. That figure includes the volunteer corps and mercenaries of the United States, as well as the non-combat nursing personnel rushed in by the various Far Eastern trading companies."
"Hmm."
"Therefore, unless we are facing a genuine inferiority in strength, any further commitment of manpower is meaningless. That is the Expeditionary Command's conclusion. Accordingly, the Command has reached a consensus that, in accordance with the Korean government's request and proposal, preliminary groundwork is required to draw the Qing government effectively to the negotiating table."
"Oh? And what is the plan?"
"First of all, Your Excellency's views align closely with our own. The specialists' judgment is that psychological pressure will prove far more effective than the aggressive brandishing of military force."
"Quite so. If we persist in nothing but a hard line, we will only fan the enemy's will to fight to the last. A wise landlord applies the carrot and the stick together."
"Your words are entirely just."
The staff officer dispatched from the French expeditionary fleet expressed his agreement that I must now actually bring about the peace negotiations, then drew out an operations map and began to explain.
"As of this hour, the movements of the French Far East Squadron will be greatly restricted. At the same time, the Beiyang Fleet, which had been threatening the Yellow Sea and the South China Sea, has taken such heavy losses in its engagement with the Far East Squadron that it is not expected to return to service in the near term. In effect, both the Beiyang Fleet and the forces of the Zhili General's Office are assessed to have dropped out of this war."
The French Expeditionary Command, which had requested a comprehensive squeeze along the entire Chinese coast, wanted the Far East Squadron divided among three stations to seal off the treaty ports along the Chinese seaboard — Guangzhou and Tianjin foremost among them — and so cut the arms-import routes completely.
In other words, they meant to occupy the mouths of China's principal canals and thereby choke both inland water transport and the import harbors at a single stroke.
"We have already broken the enemy's fighting spirit with overwhelming casualties. Now we must put the lid on and bring the water slowly to a boil, until the Qing's internal economic problems rise to the surface."
"And that is the port blockade?"
"Precisely, Your Excellency."
The dispatched staff officer went on to report that the Expeditionary Command had already begun preliminary work to turn the canals against their masters, so as to deliver psychological pressure and economic shock simultaneously to a Qing Empire whose meaningful naval power had now been extinguished.
"Look here, Your Excellency. I am given to understand that the Qing, like other Eastern nations, depend upon inland waterways for a considerable share of the national economy."
"That is so."
Following the staff officer's index finger, China's canals branched like the limbs of a tree and spilled out into the sea.
He pressed his finger upon the thickest of them, smiled faintly, and explained.
"The moment the preliminary work is complete, our expeditionary fleet intends to commit a canal-destruction flotilla of seven coastal ironclads, auxiliaries included, to wreck the enemy's internal water-transport network and threaten their rear."
"A canal-destruction flotilla?"
"Yes, Your Excellency. During the American Civil War, both the Union and the Confederacy fought a number of major battles over control of the Atlantic waterways. Our position, however, is far more favorable. The enemy has no meaningful naval force left, their mine-laying has come to nothing through mechanical failure, and above all, the Qing coastal defenses have scarcely advanced since around 1840."
"..."
Once I grasped that the French were pointing at the Ming Dynasty's Jing-Hang Grand Canal, and that they meant to blockade it and so extinguish the enemy's will to resist, I nodded readily.
Unlike the canals of the earlier Sui and Tang, the Ming had driven a nearly straight waterway from Beijing to Guangzhou — a monumental labor that had, for centuries, paid enormous economic dividends, and that had been the very foundation of the system by which the North effectively governed the South. Moreover, until the greatest fruit of the Industrial Revolution, the railroad, arrived in this distant Far East, it was China's Grand Canal that had, on the strength of a logistics revolution, carried the vast surplus of agricultural produce. If that artery were struck, the Qing's internal economy — and its military logistics — would collapse in real time.
"There is still a point that needs further explanation."
What made the operation truly catch my ear, however, was the French staff officer's observation that the Qing would find it nearly impossible to defend so many canals.
"You say the enemy's mines have a mechanical defect. What do you mean by that?"
At my question the French officer looked blank for a moment, then slapped his forehead as though he had only just remembered.
In short, it was a story almost too absurd to believe: that the enemy's mines had all turned into so much garbage.
"Ah! It seems the Korean government has not yet received the Far East Squadron's report from the minesweeping operations in the field. Rejoice, Your Excellency. The work of the mine flotilla that the Qing navy committed so desperately to seal off the Gulf of Bohai has come to nothing."
"What?"
"At first, even the vessels assigned to the sweep wondered whether the enemy had mixed in dummy mines to deceive us. But of course — they are the Qing army. If they had been capable of a deception of that sophistication, they would not have been driven back at every turn!"
I was not the only one on the bridge stunned by the French staff officer's account. At the words "dummy mines," Captain Howard, who had been listening quietly beside me, Seo Jae-pil, who was attending me, and even the war correspondents who had merely poked their heads in to scribble in their notebooks — all of them had their eyes gone round.
"Do you mean to say both sides endured such a desperate naval battle over nothing more than dummy mines?"
Worse still — the Gulf of Bohai, which the Qing navy had staked their lives to seal off, had been useless? What on earth did that mean?
"Ah, no. I seem to have phrased that in a way that invites misunderstanding. The mines the Qing meant to sow in the Gulf of Bohai were genuine. The problem is whether those 'mines' actually functioned."
Savoring the curiosity that filled every gaze on the bridge, the French officer turned slowly and sneered as he pointed out how wretched the enemy's circumstances were, for all their will.
"The majority of their mines began taking on water the instant they hit the sea. They had not rusted, but unlike the outer casings, the wires and fuses connecting the detonators had dissolved, and the traces of salt were unmistakable. There can be no doubt. We surmise there was a design flaw the enemy themselves had not anticipated — a mechanical defect, or the limits of their welding. In the end, with the fuses and wiring dissolved by salt, it was all but impossible for the detonators to fire. The specialists and warships committed to the sweep have confirmed it across the board: every last one of the enemy mines lying beneath the surface had a soaked detonator and would not function, so the sweeping was completed with ease."
"Good heavens..."
"They say you just drag them up with a hooked pole and you're done."
And the Qing army's disgrace, which had already filled our heads with the image of those countless hooks, did not end there.
We had watched the furious gunnery duel from close enough for fragments to fly, but our position was nothing like that of the men who had taken those hits on the open deck. In the same sense, the officer now conveying the Expeditionary Command's position before us was one of those men.
"Whether they were short of powder or whether the supply system had broken down, I cannot say — but of the enemy shells that burst on our decks, fully half did nothing more than smash the wooden hull and that was the end of it."
"Is that... even possible?"
"It shouldn't be. The Qing seem to have made it possible. For enemies, they are quite remarkable inventors. If they exported their weapons to the world, they might put at ease the hearts of countless wives and mothers who send their husbands and sons to the front."
The officer shrugged, laughed with easy good humor, and swept a hand across his brow as he went on.
"When we later tore open a captured enemy ship, the magazine that greeted us was packed with shells filled nearly halfway with sand! Thanks to that, the quartermaster had to rewrite his prize report from the beginning. Not 'one hundred tons of considerable spoils we have taken,' but 'we need a method of disposing of one hundred tons of garbage'!"
By way of a further note: among the high-explosive shells indispensable to modern gunnery, the most famous is the Paixhans gun, developed by the Frenchman Paixhans in 1822. One can only imagine, then, how speechless the French — the very originators of the modern high-explosive shell — must have been at an enemy who not only packed their shells with sand but fielded mines that flooded on contact with the sea.
In any case, the will and the conclusion of the French Expeditionary Command were one and the same. Rather than overstimulate a Qing Empire that was already little more than a paper tiger — a Qing that, until only a few years ago, had treated as a near-vassal the very newborn nation now beating it black and blue across Liaodong and Manchuria — and so help them steel themselves for a fight to the death, the idea was to wreck and blockade the canals and coastal cities of the Jiangnan, that soft underbelly, and starve them out economically.
"In addition, the valiant fighting of the expeditionary divisions and of the Korean army in Liaodong has greatly encouraged the deputies in Paris. The military achievements of both nations are already sufficient to draw the Qing court to the negotiating table, and in accordance with Your Excellency's proposal — you who hold the lives of your own people so dear — we have agreed to refrain from any further meaningless combat."
"But we have not yet secured Shenyang."
I was anxious that the enemy might use Shenyang as a pretext to refuse a complete withdrawal from Liaodong and so scuttle the talks. The French officer soothed me with a look that said I need not worry.
"But the valiant Korean army has already taken 'half' of it! That is no pretext the Qing court can use to oppose the cession of Shenyang. Moreover, now that all the principal cities of Liaodong have fallen into the Korean government's hands, the French government and the expeditionary divisions will, on the basis of the alliance treaty, do everything in their power to help the Korean government exercise its rightful claims over Liaodong and Manchuria."
"I am grateful."
"The United States will be no different. Indeed, they are the ones who will have to come to us with their hats in their hands. France and Korea are, after all, allies who have shed blood together, are they not? Your Excellency, we French are infinitely generous toward a true ally who has not turned his back on his duty."
"Ah — haha."
At that moment, a series of sharp clicks sounded behind us, and the few cameras belonging to the war correspondents on the bridge burst into light. Before and after those flashes, the reporters' eyes, still tormenting their notebooks, grew sharp.
Concrete clues to the victorious powers' demands had just spilled out. Tomorrow's morning papers would fill their front pages with the conversation of a moment ago.