Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/104

84 After disturbing Ch'uchow and Linghwai Kwan, they captured, May 28, Fêngyang, an important prefectural city about ninety miles northwest of Yangchow. Six of the twenty-one "armies" or regiments had been detached to take Liuho and keep the region between that place and Puk'ow for the Taipings. Through the bravery of the volunteers and village braves at Liuho, this small force suffered heavy losses and was forced to return to Nanking.

General Lin's main army, reinforced by large additions from the Eastern king, went on victoriously through northern Anhui. They were followed but never caught by Sheng Pao, who had started from Yangchow after a safe interval. Kweiteh-fu, Honan, was stormed on June 13; the capital, Kaifeng, was reached on the nineteenth, but the rebels, failing to capture it, moved on, pursued by all the imperial troops in that region. By the first of July they stood on the bank of the Yellow River at Ssushui.

There was now no place for paltering and excuses. The safety of Peking was believed to depend on keeping the rebels south of the Yellow River. Na-ur-ching-ê, viceroy of Chihli, was given supreme authority; the governors of Honan, Shantung, and Shansi were ordered to cooperate with him, and Mongol forces were summoned in all haste from Chahar. Cavalry was ordered from Heilungkiang and Hsian-fu. With such high officials and large armies converging on them, the rebels perceived how untenable their position would soon be and quietly and speedily moved away, crossing the river on coal barges. On the seventh of July they attacked Hwaik'ing-fu, but were in turn attacked by the governors named above and their