Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/265

242 December he indicates that he may possibly send his brother, Kuo-ch'üan, to Shanghai because of its great strategic and economic value through its trade relations with Soochow, Hangchow, and foreign lands. It is not quite clear, but there are some indications, that he actually offered the place to his brother, who preferred to go on to Nanking. At any rate, within the next ten weeks he had secured Li Hung-chang's consent to go there, and had promised to supplement his Anhui recruits with General Ch'en Hsueh-ch'i — who had once been in the rebel ranks — and a thousand men, supplemented by five thousand of the Hunan water forces.

On the twenty-second of February Li Hung-chang came to Anking with his new Anhui force. He proceeded to organise them on the model of Tsêng's Hunan army, following similar rules. Tsêng detailed several ying of his own command to help train these new men. At the end of March eight thousand of the Anhui force were ready to go down the river. So urgent was the call for them that the original purpose of having Tsêng Kuo-ch'üan and Li Hung-chang fight their way down the river was abandoned, and seven steamers were chartered at a cost of 180,000 taels, which the Shanghai gentry secured. During the month of April the entire body was carried down in three trips. On April 25 Li received the formal appointment, long expected, of acting governor of Kiangsu.

The points of chief military activity were now along the Yangtse below Anking, where Tsêng Kuo-ch'üan was slowly making his way with a force of twenty thousand men, accompanied by his brother, Chen-kan, with about five thousand, and P'eng Yu-ling, who commanded the fleet. In Chekiang, Tso Tsung-tang was commencing his