Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/168

148. At first this mandate, which reached Tsêng about the twenty-second of January, did not meet Tsêng's wishes. He considered that he ought to complete his mourning, but even if under the pressure of public danger he should undertake the task and the point regarding the mourning should be waived, there was still the great difficulty of attempting what was certain to meet with much opposition on the part of the gentry on whom he would have to call for aid. He foresaw two parts of success with eight parts of trouble. Nevertheless he was open to persuasion and some of his influential friends went to his home and begged him to consent. The fall of Wuchang and the consequent unrest everywhere proved very strong arguments, and Tsêng set out from home on the twenty-sixth of January for a conference with the governor. It was his idea to use the new army first against local bandits and afterwards against the Taiping rebels.

He threw himself at once into the task which now had the aspect of an imperative duty. On the thirty-first of January he submitted his plan for transmission to Peking. Seeing that Hunan was threatened by rebels and that the soldiery available for its defence was weak, he proposed setting up a great camp at Changsha, with recruiting agencies in all the districts. Those who had already undergone some training as militia in the country were to be enrolled, sent to Changsha for adequate training, and then employed for a time in various parts of Hunan against the robber bands. In the same document he renewed his request for permission to return to the country to complete his period of mourning.