We have now reached a point in the history of the Tae pings, where they ceased to move from place to place in one united body. Henceforth while occupying permanently an important position, extending over 50 miles of a large river in the heart of the country, they sent out from that position separate armies in different directions. It is the point where the Tae ping movement, in its military aspect, changed from what I have called the locomotive and concentrated, to what may, by way of contrast, be characterized as the stationary and distributed phase.

stand rightly social phenomena among the Chinese. In December, 1853, eight months after our British visit in the Hermes, the French Minister and diplomatic suite accompanied by his official interpreter, a Macao Portuguese, and two French gentlemen, Catholic priests, went to Nanking in a war steamer chiefly, if not altogether for the purpose of collecting information. The vessel lay a week at anchor before Nanking, and one of the missionaries passed two nights in that city. Yet when the whole party had returned to Shanghae, I found that they were quite unable to account for the ascertained fact that the rebels had an enormous number of females shut up in Nanking. It was not till my explanation, given in the text, was communicated to them that they learnt, it was the Tae ping method of enforcing conscription. Some Protestants may be inclined to assume that the priests did know the reason, but withheld their knowledge from their lay countrymen. Were that the case it would equally prove that the Catholic accounts of China are not to be relied on. But I do not see that it is at all necessary to assume anything so injurious to the character of the two gentlemen. We have M. Huc's own authority for the fact that the missionaries in the interior are compelled to live too closely concealed among their co-religionists to learn anything of heathen i. e. of really Chinese life; and then every man of experience must admit that a cloister-educated celibatary cannot be expected rightly to comprehend much of what he does see in the great world. Even I, however, who had long known that the opportunities and powers of observation of the Catholic missionaries of the present day were greatly over-rated, was surprised at their having been unable to account, when on the spot, for a striking and important fact, perfectly understood by me, months before they went to Nanking.

CHAPTER XIV.

MILITARY HISTORY OF THE TAE PINGS, AFTER THE OCCUPATION OF NANKING, UP TO THE PRESENT TIME.

ON or about the 12th May, 1853, an army of Tae pings, detached from Nanking, effected a landing on the northern bank of the Great River, where they defeated, and captured the baggage of a body of Tartars, who had been brought down from Northern Manchooria, and on whom the Emperor had placed great reliance. On the 15th May, they defeated another body of Tartars at Lew ho. On the evening of the 28th May, they took the departmental city, Fung yang, from whence they advanced by way of Po chow and Kwei tih to Kae fung, the capital of Honan; where they appeared on the 19th June. On the 22nd they made an unsuccessful attempt to take Kae fung by storm. They then crossed the Yellow River and marched to the departmental city of Hwae king, about 100 miles to the west of Kae fung. They spent about two months in an unsuccessful siege of Hwae king, they themselves being, during the second month, subjected to the attacks of the Imperial forces in the field, which had assembled to prevent their further advance. The Tae ping camps commanded the Tan river which, flowing eastward, becomes further on the Wei, under which name it joins the Grand Canal at Lin tsing, on the northern side of the highest level of the Canal waters. It constitutes, therefore, the head of a continuous water communication down-stream to Teen tsin, the port of Peking. This water communication is not to be compared, in point of magnitude, with that formed by the Seang and the Great River, by which the rebels had

descended about a year before from Kwang se to Nanking; but it is sufficiently large for the transport of the munitions. of war in the smaller river craft of China; and there can be little doubt that the prolonged efforts of the Tae pings to take Hwae king, in itself but a second-rate city, proceeded from a desire to establish there a basis of operations, and to facilitate an advance from thence, by the easy route of the Wei river and the Grand Canal, on Peking. There are two other circumstances which make Hwae king an important strategical point: the Sin river, which flows by it in the south, is an affluent of the Yellow River and opens a communication with the East; and it lies on the great route which goes west through the province of Shan se to Peking. But this latter route is entirely a land road and crosses a mountain ridge.

The fact, therefore, that the Tae pings, when they raised the siege of Hwae king on the 1st September marched westwards by it into Shan se, shows that the Imperial forces were strong enough to prevent their descent by the Wei river. The westward movement was, however, so little guarded against by the Imperialists that the Tae pings took the district city of Yuen keuh on the 4th September, and on the 12th September the departmental city of Ping yang; after taking the district cities of Fung and Keuh wuh on the way. From thence they proceeded, first in an easterly, then in a north-easterly direction by way of the district cities of Hung tung, Tun lew, Lo ching, Le ching, She heen, and Woo gan-all of which they entered-to the Lin ming pass, in the ridge between the provinces of Ho nan and Chih le.

They then defeated a Manchoo force, and debouched into Chih le on the 29th September. On the 30th September they entered the district city of Sha ho; on the 1st of October, that of Jin heen; and on the 2nd those of Lung ping and Pih heang. On the 4th October they took the departmental city of Chaou chow; and on the 6th the district city of Lwan ching. On the same day they

took the district city of Kaou ching, situated on the southern bank of the Hoo to. On the 8th they left that city, crossed the Hoo to by a floating bridge, which they themselves constructed, and took the district city of Tsin chow. On the 9th October they took the departmental city of Shin chow, where they remained for fourteen days, till the 22nd, when they proceeded to the district cities of Heen and Keaou ho, entering the latter on the 25th of October. From thence they proceeded by the Grand Canal to the district city of Tsing hae and to Tuh lew, an unwalled town of some little commercial importance a few miles to the north of it. Both of these places, which they occupied about the 28th October, are situated on the Grand Canal about twenty miles to the south of Teen tsin and about one hundred miles from Peking. One of their advanced parties appeared before Teen tsin on the 30th October, but was repulsed with some loss; and the whole army was immediately afterwards, i. e. in the first days of November, 1853, blockaded in its position at Tsing hae and Tuh lew, by the forces that had been following it from Hwae king, as well as by those detached from Peking. These latter were composed chiefly of a portion of the Manchoo garrison of that city, aided by 4,500 Mongols, veritable nomads, who had been brought in from beyond the Great Wall. The want of cavalry, to cope with these born horsemen, was doubtless one of the causes why the Tae pings were unable to approach nearer to Peking. The Imperial Gazettes and a letter despatched to me from Peking at that period showed that the Court and Capital were greatly alarmed; but the danger was averted, and they have not since been so seriously menaced.

The march of this Tae ping army from Nanking to Tsing hae is one of the most remarkable of which history gives record. The whole of the above particulars are, I must observe, taken from the "Peking Gazette," the Imperialist organ; the statements in which must be interpreted as we, if without our own accounts, would interpret those about the

N

Allies in the Russian journals published for the Russian people. Now the distance which the army marched in its advance from Nanking to Tsing hae is not less than thirteen to fourteen hundred miles, and the very day that it left the northern bank of the Great River opposite Nanking, all communication with its friends at the latter place was cut off; with the exception of such correspondence as could be maintained by disguised messengers. It was immediately followed by a force of the Imperialists, detached from their armies of observation near Nanking and Chin keang; apart from which the local troops always closed in its rear as it advanced. The spectacle of this army, so isolated, making its way perseveringly northwards, in spite of constantly accumulating difficulties in the shape of inclement weather and more numerous as well as more efficient foes, swerving first to the west then to the east, but never turning southward during a period of six months, this spectacle speaks powerfully for the strength of the Tae ping organization. It is pretty well established that none of the five subordinate Tae ping Princes, still less the "Heavenly Prince" himself, accompanied it; for the Imperialist accounts of battles fought on the route, while they make frequent mention of "false Ministers,""false Army Superintendents" and "false Generals," as they term the Tae ping officers bearing such titles, never speak of any "false Prince" being with them. On the other hand, when the Tae ping army was engaged in its two months' siege of Hwae king, and was in its turn there attacked by Imperialist armies in the field, the fact of the "false Minister, Lin fung tseang" having "himself" headed 5,000 men in order to stimulate them in an attack, is mentioned by the Gazette in such manner as leads to the inference that this man was the known Commander-in-chief. It was, therefore, some of their third and fourth rate men whom the Tae ping leaders could entrust with the execution of this bold and perilous attempt on the very stronghold of the Manchoo power. How faithfully the commanders strove to carry out