CHAPTER XIII.

MILITARY AND POLITICAL PROCEEDINGS OF THE TAE PING REBELS FROM THEIR FIRST RISING TILL AFTER THEIR OCCUPATION OF NANKING.

PREVIOUS to the rising of the Godworshippers as Tae pings, that is to say, so long as the rebels in Kwang se and Kwang tung were of bandit or Triad Society origination, the Imperial Government does not appear to have viewed the state of affairs there with much apprehension. The Governor General of the two provinces was indeed ordered from his usual station in Canton to the scene of the rebellious movements; and two experienced generals, the afterwards famed Heang yung and another, accompanied by troops, were also ordered there from adjoining provinces; but the chief control was still left to the provincial authorities.

So soon, however, as the news reached Peking of a new and larger body of rebels having banded themselves together, we mark signs of anxiety on the part of the Imperial Government. Lin tsih seu, the functionary known to Occidentals as the anti-opium Commissioner, Lin, who was then living in retirement at his native city Foochow, received orders to proceed to Kwang se with supreme powers as Imperial Commissioner. He received his seal of office on the 1st November, 1850, started on the 5th of that month, but died on the way on the 21st. On the intelligence reaching Peking, Le sing yuen, an ex-Governor General was appointed Imperial Com

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missioner in his room; and Chow teen keo, an official who had also been Governor General, was appointed Governor of Kwang se in the place of the then Governor, who was degraded for inefficiency. These appointments were made in December, 1850. Chow teen keo had long been known among Roman Catholics for having put a foreign missionary to death, after having had him beaten about the face till his dress was covered with blood.

The above were the only Imperialist Commanders whom the Tae pings had opposed to them during the first six months of their military career. But during these same months they had established in substance that political and military organization which was subsequently found among them at Nanking. Hung sew tseuen was already the "Heavenly Prince," the other leaders were subordinate "Princes" assisting him in his divine mission " to exterminate the idolatrous and usurping Manchoos ;" and Tae ping edicts and other publications, showing all this, had been forwarded to Peking. These published aims, and the manner in which they had been supported, at length effectually aroused the Imperial Government. For the first time since disturbances had commenced in Kwang se, a high Manchoo, Woo lan tae, Lieutenant General of the Manchoo Banner garrison at Canton, was ordered direct to the scene; and at the same time the Prime Minister of the Empire, Sae shang ah, also a Manchoo, was ordered off from Peking as Chief Imperial Commissioner (Le sing yuen had died,) and Generalissimo, accompanied by a large staff of Manchoo and Mongol officers of lesser, but still high rank, and a guard of 200 Manchoo soldiers. These appointments were made in the end of April, but it was not till the month of July that Sae shang ah entered Kwang se.

In the mean time the Tae ping army was maintaining itself at various positions successively occupied in the Kwei ping, Woo seuen and Seang districts. A district is, the reader will remember, about the size of a county. After assembling his co-religionists as already stated, "Hung sew

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tseuen took possession of the opulent market town, where resided the above-mentioned graduate (the enemy of the Godworshippers) Wang, whose rich store of provisions and pawnshops filled with clothes quite suited the wants of the distressed kih keas. This town was surrounded by a broad river protecting it from sudden attacks. Here Hung sew tseuen encamped, fortifying the place, and before the mandarin soldiers had arrived his position was already too strong for them to disturb. The Imperial soldiers pitched their camp at a respectful distance from the market town, and both parties carried on hostilities by firing at each other over the river, which however no one ventured to cross. From this place Hung sew tseuen again sent to call the remaining relatives of his own clan and that of Fung yun san to join him in Kwang se; but before they could reach the spot he found it necessary, from want of provisions, to remove his camp to another place. This he did secretly, having crossed the river and retired in good order, without the knowledge of the Imperialists, who still supposed him to be in the town. As soon as they discovered his movements, the Imperialists sent light troops in his pursuit; but they venturing too near the rear of Hung sew tseuen's army, were in their turn pursued by his men, and a great number of them slaughtered. The Imperialists now commenced venting their rage on the deserted market-town, burnt between one and two thousand shops, and plundered wherever they could obtain booty."

I beg the reader's special attention to the various circumstances of the preceding extract from Mr. Hamberg's book; for these first movements of the Tae ping and the Imperialist armies are typical of the military proceedings and strategy of the whole subsequent war. The Tae pings take up a position and display a great deal of industrial * Pawnbrokers in China hold a much higher station than in England. In the smaller country towns they are usually the bankers; and the chief partners are often landed proprietors, who have taken a public service degree, men such as this Wang appears to have been.

energy in fortifying it, and no little amount of constructive ingenuity in availing themselves of the natural facilities, the materials at hand &c., towards effecting that object. As they succeed in effecting it, the Imperial forces begin to approach. At first these latter station themselves in entrenched camps of observation, at such distances as render their presence no very serious inconvenience to the Tae pings. As their numbers increase with the concentration of troops from various quarters, they gradually hem in the Tae pings, with more or less of resistance on the part of the latter, until an effectual blockade is established. Assaults and storms on the part of the Imperialists are occasionally attempted, but always fail; and are productive of so much loss that they give up the idea of conquering in that way, and confine their efforts to cutting off all channels of supply. In this they are eventually successful; and the Tae pings, straitened by want of provisions, are compelled to break out. They cut their way through their enemies, inflicting far greater damage on the latter than they themselves incur, and move to another position. Such of the Imperialists as dog them too closely on the way meet with some severe check from the Tae pings; but the great body of the Imperialists usually spend some time in plundering the original inhabitants of the place of everything the Tae pings did not take with them, and in slaughtering these unfortunate neutrals as "rebels." In the reports of the Imperialist leaders to the Emperor, as published in the Peking Gazettes, the breaking out of the Tae pings is called an "escape;" and the move to another position a "flight." But every one of these "escapes" has been from a position of lesser importance to one of greater; and every one of these "flights" has been from a spot more remote from the Imperial Capital, Peking, to a spot less remote from it; as the reader will perceive from the sketch and route which accompanies this volume. The first fortified positions of the Tae pings were villages or country towns; afterwards they were district cities; then

departmental cities; the provincial capital of Hoonan was next occupied by them for a month; and, at length, they took up, and have ever since held the most important military position in the Empire: its former capital Nanking, and the "King kow" the port of the capital, the city of Chin keang, which commands at once the Great River and the Grand Canal. There the military tactics of the Tae pings assumed a second phase. The first phase of their military career—what we may call the concentrated and locomotive phase, inasmuch as during it their whole force formed but one army, and kept moving from place to place-this first phase occupied two years and a half; from October 1850 till March 1853.

In the first months of this period the Tae pings, as we learn from Mr. Hamberg's book (corroborated by facts in my official contemporaneous reports made at Canton) took up positions in inimical villages and towns where they felt justified in despoiling the inhabitants, or the more wealthy of them, as their enemies. But soon, when continued success had strengthened the conviction on their minds of the reality of the Divine Mission of the Heavenly Prince, Hung sew tseuen, they took up that attitude towards the Chinese people, as well as the Manchoos, which they have invariably and consistently maintained since we met them at Nanking, and often in defiance and contempt of the dictates of immediate expediency: "Our Heavenly Prince has received the Divine Commission to exterminate the Manchoos-to exterminate them utterly, men, women and children-to exterminate all idolaters generally, and to possess the Empire as its True Sovereign. It and everything in it is his, its mountains and rivers, its broad lands and public treasuries; you, and all that you have, your family, males and females from yourself to your youngest child, and your property from your patrimonial estates to the bracelet on your infant's We command the services of all, and we take everything. All who resist us are rebels and idolatrous demons, and we kill them without sparing; but whoever acknowledges

arm.