Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/241

218 and Huichow into insurgent hands. This opened a way from Nanking to Chekiang, over which the Taipings proceeded towards Hangchow. That wealthy city fell before the Chungwang on March 19, though the Tartar city still held out. The relieving force sent from Nanking reached the gates on the twenty-fourth and captured the city the following day, but a great conflagration destroyed a large portion of Hangchow and cost thousands of lives. The Chungwang meanwhile hurried back to Nanking where, after a conference with the other generals, he surrounded and attacked Ho Chun and Chang Kuo-liang on March 28, forced them to retire to Tanyang, and thus again relieved the pressure on Nanking.

This was a brilliant piece of strategy. The diverting of a large army to Hangchow, and the combined attack by all the greater Taiping generals at Nanking, gave the latter an advantage that would not have been theirs had Tsêng felt strong enough to abandon the cautious policy of proceeding only as he could drive all the enemy before him, or had the generals before Nanking not fallen into the trap prepared by the wily Chungwang through his clever feint in the direction of Hangchow. Yet the perturbation of the imperialists at the prospect of losing Chekiang was not unnatural in view of their dependence on that rich province and upon Kiangsu for most of their supplies. Moreover, they had been kept in ignorance of the overwhelming numbers of the enemy that were gathering against them.