Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/246

Rh to hold high positions for forty years, during many stirring events, kept him in the eyes of mankind long after the other great men of this time had passed off the scene and been well-nigh forgotten.

The War Office frantically urged Tsêng to send Tso Tsung-tang and others through Chekiang to effect the recapture of Soochow and Ch'angchow, for the way was now open to the rebels to press north as well as to overrun these coast provinces. To explain the urgent nature of the mandates now showered upon Tsêng (not fewer than four reaching him between August 31 and September 8), urging him to go to Kiangsu and Chekiang, we must recall that this was the year in which the British and French were fighting their way to Peking. They had landed August 2, 1860, defeated the Mongolian tribesmen under Senkolintsin August 12, and were slowly but steadily pushing on towards Peking, which they reached in October. In those days of stress and fear after the defeat of Senkolintsin these orders came to Tsêng, for the imperial court feared — and not without some basis of truth — that the Taiping rebels might take advantage of the foreign war to press on to the north. In fact, the Chungwang had received orders from the T'ienwang todo this very thing and sweep away the Manchus altogether, but demurred because of his own plans to go to Kiangsi to secure large numbers of recruits. He was reprimanded in consequence.

On the other side, Tsêng could not be hustled off into the province of Chekiang. Between his army and Chekiang lay the two important prefectural cities of Ningkuo and Kwangteh, both of strategic importance in the