The journey of a lifetime from deckhand to revered China hand

A Tibetan village on the border of Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, which Mesny visited during his travels. [Photos Provided to China Daily]

Mesny, a native of Jersey in the Channel Islands, led a full and dangerous life in China, plying many trades - gunrunner, jailer, newspaper columnist, government official, soldier, artillery expert, bridge designer, author and historian, to name just a few - before donning his general's uniform.

He spoke fluent Chinese, advocated the modernization of all areas of society and, unusually for a Westerner at the time, had several close Chinese friends and seems to have been genuinely untainted by notions of superiority.

Indeed, both Mesny and his brother John, an officer in the Chinese customs, married Chinese women - William twice, at different times, of course - and raised families with them.

His life and travels were so remarkable, and well-publicized at the time, that it's surprising to learn that The Mercenary Mandarin is the first full biography of Mesny, although Leffman expresses great admiration for Keith Stevens' 100-page A Jersey Adventurer in China, published by the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1992.

In Leffman's hands, Mesny emerges as a Zelig-like character; someone who was always - at least in his own accounts of events - in the thick of the action, whenever and wherever it occurred.

On the positive side he was ingenious, industrious, generous, resourceful, courageous and honest.

Sadly for Mesny, those attributes were often overshadowed by less admirable qualities, such as impulsiveness, a desire to stand on his dignity and an almost childlike naivety. Weighing heavier on the scales are his tendency to take the credit for other people's ideas, and at a time when traveling in the interior inevitably meant handing out bribes and "gifts", his refusal to give face or money to local officials often hindered his progress in terms of both geography and his career.