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Updated: June 18, 2025
The American Consul at Shanghai, Mr Seward, officially thanked Major Gordon for his "great kindness to misguided General Burgevine and his men." Nearly two years later this adventurer met the fate he so narrowly escaped on several occasions. He had been forbidden by his own Consul as well as the Chinese Government ever to return to China, but in June 1865 he broke his parole.
Not only did he strike Takee, but he carried off the treasure necessary to pay his men. Such conduct could not be upheld or excused. Li Hung Chang made the strongest complaint. Burgevine was dismissed the Chinese service, and General Staveley forwarded the notice to him with a quiet intimation that it would be well to give up his command without making a disturbance.
Writing home he playfully alludes to a ridiculous report that was being circulated, that he intended to throw off allegiance to Egypt, and set up as an independent Sultan, similar to what the American adventurer, Burgevine, proposed to do in China.
Consequently the Governor strongly opposed the return of Burgevine, and at the same time took the opportunity of informing the Pekin authorities that Gordon was gaining the confidence of his men, as well as of the merchants and others at Shanghai. This for a time closed Burgevine's career, though we shall hear of him again.
In the first place, Burgevine was disappointed at finding several of the rebel Wangs as clever and ambitious as he was, and they were disappointed at the amount of service and help he could give them. This feeling culminated in angry scenes, when, on being sent into Shanghai in disguise to purchase arms with a large sum of money, he returned to Soochow without either money or weapons.
This unexpected question was the more embarrassing to Macartney, because, long before Gordon was appointed, rumour had freely credited him with coveting the command of the Ever Victorious Army in succession to Burgevine, and, as a matter of fact, the Chinese authorities had wished him to have the command.
Macartney wrote to Major Gordon stating that he had positive information that Burgevine was enlisting men for some enterprise, that he had already collected about 300 Europeans, and that he had even gone so far as to choose a special flag, a white diamond on a red ground, and containing a black star in the center of the diamond.
By the month of July its strength had been raised to 5000 men, the commissioned officers being all Europeans except one Chinese, named Wongepoo, who had been given a commission for special gallantry by Admiral Hope. Ward was in chief command, and Colonel Forrester and Burgevine were his first and second lieutenants.
These were strong steps to take with a force such as that he had under him, but he succeeded in making them acceptable by increasing the pay of the men, and by substituting on his staff English officers the services of a few being lent him by the commanding officer at Shanghai for the adventurers who had followed Ward and Burgevine.
The situation at Quinsan was full of peril, for although Burgevine had thrown away a chance, by taking a roundabout instead of a direct route to Soochow, of striking a decisive blow before Gordon could get back, the Taeping leader, Mow Wang, had not been so negligent, and his operations for the recovery of several places taken by Gordon in the last few days of his command were on the point of success, when that officer's return arrested the course of his plans.
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