Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/103

Rh at Kiukiang and arrived before Nanking on March 30. By that time the rebels were strongly intrenched and had possession of Chinkiang. So he had to settle down to the slow siege of the place. We cannot stop to recite the details of that eleven years' siege with the countless minor engagements that gave trifling advantages now to this side and now to that. The presence of a hostile encampment outside their capital did not greatly alarm the insurgents but it altered their entire outlook on life, for they were under necessity of regarding Nanking as a camp, which throughout the long siege was constantly under martial law. Armies were apparently free to go and come at will; people with good credentials might easily pass through the city gates; foreign vessels, at least after 1860, plied up and down the Yangtse. But Nanking was no longer open to trade. Its gates were closed and guarded; its population lived on rations from the state, while husbands, fathers, and sons fought in the Taiping armies that came and went. The strictest laws were enforced within the vast camp.

The importance of Chinkiang and Yangchow insured a serious imperialist attempt to effect their recapture. In a remarkably short time Ch'ishan, an imperial commissioner, and two viceroys. Ch'eng of Chihli and Yang of the grain transport service, with four thousand cavalry and at least thirty thousand infantry, were encamped at Yangchow. But they were not able to dislodge the strongly intrenched Taipings. Under their very noses Lin Hung-ch'iang impudently removed the women and children and even the treasure to Nanking, leaving General Tseng Li-ch'ang to defend the city. He himself then started for the North with twenty-one "armies," setting out from Yangchow about the twenty-second of May.