Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/286

Rh a well-disciplined force, after having quelled a number of mutinies, generally led by adventurers who resented the change in commanders. Tsêng was so angered at this action of Burgevine's that he suggested in a letter to Li Hung-chang a joint memorial to the throne urging the execution of Burgevine for wounding the taotai Ouyang. Tsêng's account of this episode differs somewhat from that given above from foreign sources. He says:

Burgevine, the foreign general of the "Ever Victorious Army," had decided in the middle decade of the ninth moon to come to the rescue of Nanking, but repeatedly postponed the date of starting, at last, however, appointing the tenth of December as the time of departure. Chen Wu-chao had gone ahead with two steamers to gather his forces at Chinkiang, but Burgevine, on the pretext that the pay of his army was in arrears, did not come into the Yangtse. On the third of January in Sungkiang the gates were closed and a mutiny occurred, and on the 4th with several tens of the armed brigade [i.e., those armed with foreign guns] he came to Shanghai, broke into the premises of Ouyang, wounded his relatives, seized more than $40,000, and departed. Such trampling on rights and running amok without the slightest regard to the law not merely renders it impossible for China to use its strength to attack rebels, but is something that foreign countries openly detest. Li Hung-chang should clearly explain the case to the minister in Peking and together with him inflict the severest punishment.

We are now in a position to understand Li Hung-chang's implacable hatred for this man whom he persistently refused to reinstate, even after Burgevine had gone to Peking and secured the support of the British and American ministers there. The withdrawing of

39 Hake, pp. 226-234. 40 Miscellaneous Letters, XX, 34b. 41 There is a discrepancy in dates here, foreign accounts giving the second. 42 Dispatches, XVII, 52a.