Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/151

Rh There was also an allowance for buying other food, but this appears to have been according to the will of the chief. An allowance for worship was also given.

We cannot trace in detail from this time on the various steps in the evolution of the civil government. When the process was completed an elaborate list of officials existed, at least on paper, graded and assimilated in rank to those of the military service. As one would expect, the major portion of the great list of officials was attached to the court at Nanking or to the minor courts of the various wangs, but there were some who, in theory, were civil officials in the districts into which the Taipings expected to organise the country when they actually controlled it; on the whole, few of these actually functioned, because the boundaries of their state were not well established at any time, and, with the notable exception of a few cities which they held at the point of the sword, they did not long remain in control of any place.

In the capital, which they had renamed T'ienking or Celestial Capital, they placed all things under the control of the Eastern king until his assassination in 1856. Eventually six boards were established, modelled on those at Peking, with a separate department of foreign affairs. There was no difficulty about this, because these six boards did not originate with the Manchus but were found in the earlier dynasties. At first the five kings were placed over these boards, but later these kings became a privy council to the T'ienwang, presiding over the military departments, and the boards passed under