Peace Pressure (3)

The shocking news of the Beiyang Fleet's defeat shook the continent.

They had possessed at least forty ships — more than twenty of them fine fighting vessels — and still they had been silenced before the French Far East Squadron like mice before a cat. The capital seethed.

Forty-odd ships of a great fleet, reduced overnight to cinders not even fit for kindling. What on earth had happened?

At the market stalls, merchants and peddlers poured the news of the defeat into every passing ear, each telling spawning the next, and the stories crossed into neighboring cities already swollen with fresh invention.

People whispered among themselves.

"When the Beiyang Fleet sailed out, the sky split open and waves rose up like mountains and swallowed every last ship!"

"The Westerners summoned ghosts and turned all the powder and shells to sand with their sorcery!"

"Sailors, officers, even the high generals — they couldn't recover a single corpse!"

What had begun as simple word of the Beiyang Fleet's defeat grew flesh and bone at a terrifying speed, spawning rumors so wild they bordered on the absurd — that the Mandate of Heaven had run out on the Qing, that the dynasty was finished. Those fantasies began, little by little, to rattle a Beijing already lost in its own delusions, and the current reached the ears of the General Headquarters in Zhili, where the war was being directed.

And Li Hongzhang, Minister of Beiyang, who had known of the fleet's annihilation before anyone else, sat with a devastated face and both hands covering it.

"So. How many ships survived?"

"The damage has not been fully tallied, so a complete picture is difficult, Your Excellency. But all told, we believe it will come to fewer than ten."

The ships that had been under repair in Fujian and Nanyang had been thrown into the Bohai Gulf in desperation, and they too had gone down in flames. The admiral's hesitant, averted gaze left no room to doubt the truth of it.

Looking at the man who had taken the burden in Ding Ruchang's place — Ding himself still unable to rise from his bed after the ordeal of that life-or-death escape — Li Hongzhang broke into tears and staggered.

"Oh, Heaven."

That magnificent fleet. The old minister who had counted the days until its commissioning ceremony felt his eyes well and blur. An atheist, driven by a blow so vast that he called upon a god — that was how terrible today's news had been.

The Qing Dynasty's front gate now stood wide open. And not only the gate. Thieves could stride into the courtyard, into the innermost chambers themselves, and carry off every stick of furniture and every scrap of treasure, and this country would be too broken to lift a hand against them.

"Aaaah."

Li Hongzhang collapsed to the floor and wailed. He dragged the palms that had covered his face down across his own cheeks, and there, in the center of a conference room gone utterly silent, he wept and pointed at the bill the enemy had presented.

"We're finished. All of us. I'm finished, you're finished, the Beiyang Army is finished — this country and the imperial house along with it."

He mocked himself that everything was ruined, and still he could not bring himself to spit out the word people. It hovered on the tip of his tongue. Then Li Hongzhang clenched his teeth against the bitter tears, beat his own fist against the tightness in his chest, and took up the invoice the vile invaders had shoved across the table.

The country and the imperial house stood at the brink of ruin, or wandered the threshold of it — but the people of this land had been disappointed so thoroughly, for so long, that even the news of the nation's collapse no longer stirred them. If anything, that fact cut deeper still into the heart of a man who ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had fought himself ragged to save the Qing and the throne.

"..."

And yet he could not refuse. Refusal would be met with a shout of Here we come! and the return of the cudgel, and after that a still fatter invoice from the enemy would occupy this very seat. He could see the day as clearly as if it had already arrived.

"Haa."

He accepted the reality he could no longer dodge — that a more constructive conversation, a conversation about ending the war, was now unavoidable — and let out a long breath. The tightness in his chest eased, just a little. And then the bold lettering that had so frankly inscribed the Qing Dynasty's euthanasia swam into focus.

Insolent as it was, the fact that this country was finished was known not only to its own Qing subjects, but to the opposing nations of France and America, and to the Korean dogs who had played the jackal beneath them and gotten their first taste of meat.

What was peace, and what was an agreement, he could no longer tell. Li Hongzhang, Minister of Beiyang, understood once more that the youth he had spent across more than twenty long years, laboring to hold together an imperial house and an empire whose discord never ceased, had been nothing but an illusion — and that illusion now sat in his hand as a scrap of paper.

Since the Opium War, he had joined hands with those who never stopped crying out for reform as the country slid toward ruin, and he had worked day and night for wealth and strength. Nothing had changed at the root. Every reform up to this day, and every fruit those reforms had borne, had come to nothing.

The European cannon and warships bought with gold had never truly been theirs. Worse, the generals and the imperial house who were supposed to command them had been like a child handed a grown man's sword — waving it wildly until the weight and force overcame them and they struck themselves in the head. And that head had shattered.

Li Hongzhang tapped the peace ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠agreement Korea and France had demanded with his index finger and spoke.

"If we accept this as it stands, we are all finished..."

With hands that would not stop trembling, he set the document down and let out a groan.

Liaodong and Manchuria had originally belonged to Korea, they said, and now everything was to be put back as it had been. Since when had Liaodong and Manchuria been Korean land?

Taiwan was to be abandoned, and that island would be governed fairly and justly by the three cunning, craven nations bound together in their little conspiracy. Where, exactly, was the fairness and justice in beating a sleeping man awake and then emptying his purse?

The kingdom of Viet on the Indochina Peninsula was now to be a French possession in full, and the Qing were to keep their hands off the south. From the Qing's standpoint — from Li Hongzhang's standpoint — this one actually stung.

Unlike Korea, which until recently had claimed the seat of foremost tributary and most loyal vassal (and which now would not even take orders, and had instead planted a knife in their belly), Viet had been a thoroughly delinquent tributary, styling its own ruler an emperor and bowing to the Qing only for show.

We should have just let those bastards go under on their own!

But the moment France reached out, Vietnam had screamed for its life, never mind emperor-at-home and king-abroad, and the Qing — citing the tributary relationship, or perhaps simply the matter of face — had been forced to send troops, and so had sunk into the deep mire of a war with France. That mire had only deepened with Korea's independence ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and the war that followed, and with the entry of the United States. Climbing out of it alone was no longer even a dream.

Next they wanted new concessions and open ports for the French in Yunnan, Sichuan, and Guangdong. The Americans were to be included as well. The Koreans, who could not even operate a steamer of their own, mercifully lacked the credentials to put their names forward. And what, after all, would men from a country the size of a fingernail, whose only products were ginseng and gold, come all this way to sell?

Instead those same men demanded a monstrous war indemnity, plus compensation for the massacre of their soldiers in the Imo Year and consolation payments for the victims — sums so outrageous they defied belief.

"Five hundred million taels. Do they think five hundred million taels is the name of somebody's dog?"

It was a figure he had never imagined even in his dreams. Li Hongzhang's hands and feet shook; he was furious. And the problem was that this was not the end of it.

The still-sleeping mines of North China were to be opened to American extraction. For reasons he could not fathom, neither the French nor the Koreans had expressed any opinion on this particular article. It almost looked like a clause the American government had simply shoved in without prior consultation with the others.

Of the five demands, the working staff had accordingly judged this the cheapest in quality, and they had already agreed among themselves to try settling it with an increase in the war indemnity instead.

Those first five, then, had been blunt and forceful enough that everyone present had already heard them from Admiral Deng Shichang — now released — and had already steeled themselves. And so the working staff, the General Headquarters, and the core officials of the Beiyang Army faction, all of whom had already accepted defeat as a settled fact, kept their silence under Li Hongzhang's lead.

But what followed — the demand that the three nations be allowed to station troops in the ports, in the leased territories, and even in Beijing where the Son of Heaven resided; that French and American warships be permitted to drop anchor and undergo repairs at will, without leave, in China's harbors along the Yellow Sea and beyond — those were demands no one had imagined.

Foreign warships, and great-power warships at that, lurking freely along the entire southern Chinese coast whenever and wherever they pleased, was no different from going to sleep with a poisoned dagger on the pillow. Even Britain, which had won two Opium Wars and earned merit by sending mercenaries during the Taiping Rebellion, had never asked for such a thing.

And above all — the imperial capital, where the Son of Heaven himself resided. What barbarian army was to be garrisoned there? When Li Hongzhang first received this agreement, he had concluded that they had no intention of ending the war at all. A man who wanted peace, who wanted the fighting to stop, would say something that made sense, would he not?

To admit their troops into the imperial capital — into Beijing, where the Son of Heaven existed in the fullest sense — was the same as the Qing offering up their own emperor to the barbarians with their own hands.

The French, moreover, were pressing hard for exclusive permission to navigate the Grand Canal, the lifeline binding Jiangnan to North China. It looked like nothing so much as a scheme to siphon off the canal tolls, one of the few remaining ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠sources from which the Qing still managed to wring meaningful reform funds out of a treasury leaking from every seam.

They had, he suspected, instinctively grasped how heavily North China now depended on Jiangnan's goods and tax revenue in this war. Even now, while diplomatic envoys were still going back and forth, Li Hongzhang was issuing real-time orders for the canal's expansion and repair, to keep it protected.

And that was not all. Worse even than the cession of Liaodong and Manchuria — land the Koreans were illegally occupying, their history a fabrication — came the demand for an official apology from the imperial house. Specifically, a written apology from the Son of Heaven himself.

Like disciples of the European barbarians, they had founded some bizarre new state modeled on a republic, and their minds had apparently gone bizarre along with it. Invoking a humiliation two hundred years old, they demanded that the Qing monarch travel in person to Korea's Hanyang, kneel before a mere commoner calling himself Tongnyeong, and apologize. When Li Hongzhang heard this, he was certain the Koreans had all gone mad.

For all these reasons, the present Ten Articles were, from the Qing standpoint, a proposal that simply could not be accepted.

Land, treasure, people — those things sprang up again, given time. But the Qing Dynasty's pride, the unmentionable existence of the Son of Heaven, and this whole suite of poison clauses designed to set the empire beneath them like a colony — no one who was not a complete fool could swallow those quietly.

And what Li Hongzhang feared most was something else entirely.

That the ruffians who will look at the fruit the Triple Alliance has plucked from us and hold the Great Qing cheap will send the court demands just as outrageous as these.

Some would call it premature anxiety, with the war not even over. But the Great Qing already possessed a beautifully effective instrument for seizing it by the throat: most-favored-nation treatment.

Which was to say, the British Empire — the very power that had dragged the Great Qing's prestige into the dirt and made it the neighborhood simpleton. Those people would surely, and without the slightest shame, demand a share of the fruit the three nations had taken, the better to squeeze a weakened Qing still harder.

Behind them stood Russia, whose borders drew steadily closer, and behind Russia the German Empire, ravenous for colonies.

For that reason Li Hongzhang believed this peace, too, had to be concluded well, if the aftermath was to be contained. He forced his eyes wide, put steel into his gaze, and issued his orders to the officials.

"Treasure if they want treasure. Land if they want land. Whatever those people wanted, we can grant it. But these things that come after — these are them looking down on us. No. They can look down on us! We lost! But this goes beyond ignoring the Great Qing. This is them no longer even seeing us as human beings!"

He nearly tore the agreement in half. Then the fear that doing so would truly cross a line — or that the story would twist into a rumor that this side had rejected the peace proposal — made him swallow his rage and simply slam the table instead.

These were, at least, officials who knew how to do their jobs, not hat-racks occupying chairs in official caps. A performance of this much force was enough.

"Mining rights, cession contracts, the expansion of concessions — grant them while peeling away as much as you can. Territorial cession? If we can fold it all into the war indemnity, I don't care if it costs a hundred million in gold. Try it! But!"

His throat had gone raw from shouting. Li Hongzhang swallowed hard and went on.

"Them setting foot in Beijing, or making those vile demands of the Son of Heaven that one is afraid even to speak aloud — that must never be allowed to happen! And as for the right to navigate our canal as they please, there is not a shred of consideration to be given! I would sooner build them warships of gold and silver than accept any of the above! Do you understand me!?"