Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/100

80 ten thousand boats comprising their fleet—and depart to set up the Celestial Kingdom at Nanking.

This great multitude skirted the two banks of the river, plundering the various towns which they passed. The Nanking viceroy, who had been awaiting them near Wusueh, at the border of his domain, suddenly felt it necessary to fall back on Nanking. This conviction was partly the result of cowardice, and partly due to the small force at his command. He had sent forward a tsungping to stop the rebels, but that officer had promptly been defeated, and the viceroy, together with the governor of Kiangsi, took to flight. By their cowardice Kiukiang was left without defence to fall on February 17. At Anking, the governor died suddenly, leaving the provincial treasurer to hold the city, which he failed to do. It fell on the twenty -fourth of February. A week later the treasurer lost the small town to which he had retired on the fall of the capital. Thus town after town succumbed, to the dismay and disgust of the high officials in Peking. Even at Nanking the governor, who, in the absence of the viceroy should have done something for the defence of the city, moved off to Chinkiang, pretending a strategic move. The rebels stood before the outer defences of Nanking on the eighth of March and were in possession of the city on the nineteenth. The imperialists say that the Manchu garrison defended the inner city stubbornly, but the reb-