Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/191

Rh overland to the northeast, through P'ingkiang to Ts'ungyang, at the Hupeh border about halfway to Wuchang.

The two divisions that had concentrated at Yochow fought and defeated a fleet of several hundred Taiping vessels on July 27. Tsêng Kuo-fan believed and reported that Hunan was now free of rebels, but he proved to be mistaken, for scarcely had he sent his dispatch when they again swarmed up the river to Yochow and kept Tsêng Kuo-fan and his lieutenants busy for nearly two months — but with this encouraging change, that the latter were winning victories, being successful in twelve out of the thirteen engagements fought.

On the twenty-fourth of September the expedition was ready to move forward to Hupeh along the river. But the force at Ts'ungyang was held in check by a large Taiping army, and there were a few scattered nests of rebels to be destroyed along the lake shore. T'a Chi-pu, who had been sent from Yochow to reinforce that Ts'ungyang division, drove the rebels back from Yangloussu (September 18) and aided in the capture of the rebel base at Ts'ungyang on the twenty-fifth. The rebels fled, hotly pursued, to Hsienning, where they were defeated. About the same time Kwan Wen, the Tartar general, sent five thousand men from Kingchow, who aided Tsêng's forces at K'ingkow below Yochow on the Yangtse River, and Tsêng was able to move his headquarters to that place on the second of October.

The report of victories was most grateful to the Peking authorities. The emperor conferred on Tsêng the blue button of the third official rank. With becoming modesty