Page:Eminent Chinese Of The Ch’ing Period - Hummel - 1943 - Vol. 1.pdf/380

Rh banks, an educational system, etc., but Hung Jên-kan made no efforts to promote such reforms. Except for his routine duties, his chief contribution to the Celestial King was to advise him in the appointment of princes (wang), in the hope of retaining thus the loyalty of the officials to the Taiping cause. It is said that more than 2,700 princes were created after Hung Jên-kan came to power, though we now know the names of but seventy-five of them. Many of these new princes, as Li Hsiu-ch'êng pointed out, had little or no qualifications to warrant their titles. For this reason, also, many generals were reluctant to fight for them. At the same time Hung presided over the official examinations and revised (1859) the Taiping calendar (see under ) into a year of 366 days, which necessitated months of 28 days every fortieth year.

From 1861 to the first half of 1862 Hung Jên-kan was concurrently Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Taiping government. During that time he was helped by his former teacher, I. J. Roberts, who had been invited to Nanking (October 1860), and then worked as Hung Jên-kan's interpreter in diplomatic affairs. Roberts lived in Hung's yamen and was treated with marked consideration. But on January 13, 1862 Hung himself murdered one of Roberts' servants in his master's presence. Offended and disgusted with the whole régime, Roberts left Nanking on January 20th. The principal link of Western Protestant missions with the Taiping movement was then broken. Hung Jên-kan's foreign diplomacy was also a complete failure. He did not gain the confidence of Westerners who, consequently, helped the Ch'ing forces to repulse the Taiping attack on Shanghai and also assisted them in taking many cities and towns in Kiangsu. This fact, as Hung Jên-kan admitted, was one of the chief factors leading to the collapse of the Taiping régime.

In 1863 Hung Jên-kan was ordered by special mandate to look after the Celestial King's son, Hung Fu (see under ), who in his childhood had been taught to read the Bible, but by the time he was nine years old had four wives. Hung Jên-kan was much distressed at the responsibility thus thrust upon him, for Nanking was then in a precarious position, having been under siege since May 1862. Four days before Hung Hsiu-ch'üan committed suicide (June 1864) Hung Fu was made his successor and Hung Jên-kan was appointed regent. When Nanking was taken by on July 19, 1864 the young king fled to the mansion of Li Hsiu-ch'êng who finally succeeded in escorting him and several hundred followers through a break in the city wall. Li gave his own war horse to the young king, but himself failed to escape (see under ). The young king was protected by Prince Chao 昭王 whose name was Huang Wên-ying 黃文英, (d. Nov. 23, 1864). Followed by several hundred adherents, he fled to Kuang-tê, Anhwei, from where the party was forced by to flee to Hu-chou, Chekiang. In Hu-chou they met Hung Jên-kan who, in the hope of summoning relief, had left Nanking before the city fell. From Hu-chou they went to Hui-chou, Anhwei; to K'ai-hua, Chekiang; and to Yü-shan, Kuang-ch'ang, and finally to Shih-ch'êng, in Kiangsi. In Shih-ch'êng their numbers were greatly reduced by the Hunan Army under Hsi Pao-t'ien 席寶田, a native of Tung-an, Hunan. Hung Jên-kan and many other rebel chiefs were apprehended in Shih-ch'êng on October 9, 1864. The young king, having taken refuge alone on a mountain, was captured a few days later. After a legal inquiry he was executed by order of the court (November 18, 1864). Five days later (November 23) Hung Jên-kan, Huang Wên-ying, and others were put to death.

The Taiping remnants, having wandered over Fukien for several months under the command of Prince Shih (i.e. Li Shih-hsien, see under ), Prince K'ang 康王 (i.e. Wang Hai-yang 汪海洋, d. Jan. 29, 1866), and Prince Hsieh 偕王 (i.e. T'an T'i-yüan 譚體元, d. Feb. 1866), gathered together in great numbers from Fukien, Kiangsi, Chekiang and other places at Chia-ying-chou, Kwangtung. They took the city of Chia-ying on December 8, 1865 and government troops, under the command of, and others were sent from Kiangsi, Chekiang, Fukien, Hunan and Kwangtung to lay siege. The Taipings were forced to evacuate Chia-ying on February 7, 1866. A few days later their remnants were annihilated or absorbed by overwhelming government forces who both ambushed and pursued them. Thus ended the Taiping Rebellion.

Hung Jên-kan was the chief compiler of three books: 資政新篇 Tzŭ-chêng hsin-p'ien (1859), dealing with Hung's administrative ideas; 欽定士階條例 Ch'in-ting shih-chieh t'iao-li (1861), dealing with the civil-service examinations of the Taiping state; and 英傑歸眞 Ying-chieh kuei-chên (1861) which takes the form of a dialogue 368