William Mesny
William Mesny
General William Mesny 1842-1919, pictured with his son Hushen Pin was an adventurer, and writer, born in Jersey
Early years
William Mesny was born in Trinity, Jersey, the eldest of three children of William Mesny (a cobbler) and Marie Rachel Nicolle, on 9 October 1842. The Mesnys are an Alderney family, but his father had settled in Jersey. He was to spend most of his early childhood in Alderney. Mesny left home at the age of twelve to sail the oceans until finally, after visiting India and Australia, he deserted his ship and made his way to Hong Kong. Here he quickly learnt the language, and made many Chinese friends among the merchant class.
China was in the throes of civil war, and the Tai-ping rebels looked as though they might overthrow the Manchu dynasty. Both sides were recruiting foreign mercenaries. Mesny returned to Shanghai, and tried to raise a company for the Emperor's service. He enlisted a group of all nationalities, but on the night they were to sail, being overheard speaking French, he was arrested by a party of French marines, who were rounding up naval deserters, and his company left without him.
Mesny embarked on trading on the Yangtse River, sailing his small boat, the Rob Roy, and then a Chinese junk, past the fighting which was going on on both banks, and making a good profit on salt and other commodities.
He also made what he called "a few very successful speculations in the arms trade". Once his boat was seized by Imperialists, and he was wounded. On another occasion he was captured by Tai-pings, who fixed his ransom at $100,000 - "a princely price", he said, "for a poor Jerseyman". At first he was treated badly but, when his captors discovered that he could play Chinese tunes on his flutina, their behaviour changed. After six months in captivity he was rescued by a British gunboat.
Chinese army
He worked for the Chinese Customs under Robert Hart and then served under Gordon, who was seconded to the Chinese Government to command a force that was to suppress the Tai-pings When Gordon returned to England in 1865, Mesny remained in the Chinese Army.
In 1873, at the age of 29, he became a Major-General and was created Ying Yang Pa-t'u-lu, the Chinese equivalent of the French Legion d'honneur.
He travelled from end to end of China, visiting districts that no European had ever entered. On these travels he acquired fame as a plant-collector, and discovered a number of new specimens. He sent specimens back to the British Consul in Canton, Dr Henry Fletcher Hance, a famous botanist. One species, Jasminum mesnyi, was named after him.
He volunteered for service in Hsin-Kiang, and went to Hami. In 1882 he served in Shansi as Adviser on Foreign Affairs, and the nineteen great industrial works undertaken by the Viceroy Chang Chih-tung were planned by Mesny.
In 1883 he volunteered for active service, and was sent to Yunnan, and in 1884 to Foochow. In 1885 he was in charge of the two arsenals at Canton, and in the following year he was promoted Lieutenant-General.
Family
In about 1882 he married Fenglan Han, by whom he had a son, Hushen Pin, and a daughter, Marie Wan-er, who married an Englishman, F H Watson, and had two children. In 1885 he became a Mandarin of the First Class, always wore Chinese dress and a magnificent pigtail, and was said to be the only European who could speak Chinese without a foreign accent. In 1890 he was awarded the decoration of the Pao Hsing (the Star of China).
He spent 59 years in China. He always retained British citizenship and was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, the Royal Horticultural Society, and of the Imperial Institute.
At one time he was the senior adviser to the Commander-in-Chief of the Chinese armed forces and was given the rank of Brevet Lieutenant-General.
He visited almost every part of China, including Xinjiang and Tonking (northern Vietnam), and accompanied Captain William Gill on his expedition in 1877 from Chengdu to Burma via Litang, Batang, Dali, along the Tibetan borderlands to Bhamo. He wrote a history of Tungking, now northern Vietnam, which also includes details of his campaigns there.
In his later life he periodically produced a sort of weekly newspaper or journal in Shanghai called Mesny's Chinese Miscellany. Publication began in September 1895, and continued through 1896, was revived briefly in 1899 and again in 1905. It was composed of his reminiscences of his life and adventures, snippets of recent news, and thousands of brief articles and notes on a very wide variety of topics relating to China. He still kept in touch with his native island and constantly reprinted verses and paragraphs from the Jersey Observer.
A set of six stamps was issued in Jersey in 1992, on the 150th anniversary of his birth, showing Mesny in various roles in China. They comprise two stamps of 16p denomination: one showing him in 'Shanghai 1860', and the other 'Running the Taiping blockade 1862'; two stamps of 22p: as 'General Mesny, River Gate 1874', and 'Mesny accompanies Gill to Burma in 1877'; and two of 32p: 'Mesny advises Governor Chang 1882', and 'Mesny, Mandarin First He died in Hankow, aged 77, on 11 December 1919.
