Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/306

Rh to repel the imperialist assault. But after this changes took place and the city became harassed more and more every day. Great fear and alarm were prevalent in the city, and there was no one on whom reliance could be placed for the safe keeping of the city or fortifications. In the event of any dispatch from the enemy being picked up and opened without the fact being reported to the Tien-wang, the offender, with the whole of his family, was sure to be executed. When General Tsêng drew his lines closer round the city, a severe mandate was issued by the Tien-wang to the effect that, anyone holding treacherous correspondence with the enemy, and any one failing to report the fact, when conscious that such correspondence was going on, should be treated as an accessory and dealt with in the same manner as the offender, that is, be either pounded to pieces or be flayed alive. Who was not afraid of death in this form? Every one must have been.

In spite of such cruel penalties it is probable that the number of those who would have abandoned the cause of the T'ienwang was very great had it not been for the fear of death by torture at the hands of the imperialists. This fear was increased by the execution of the surrendered wangs at Soochow. "But three days had not elapsed after their surrender of Soochow before they were killed by Li Fu-tai, a measure which has since then deterred other chiefs, who would have surrendered, from doing so."

On December 20 the Chungwang entered the Celestial Capital to lay the desperate condition of things before the T'ienwang and endeavor to get his consent to remove to Kiangsi or elsewhere. The T'ienwang, still fatuously clinging to his claim of divine power, scorned the idea. The Chungwang, whether from pure loyalty or because his mother was in the power of the T'ienwang and he himself constantly surrounded by spies, elected to remain beside his doomed chief. A sortie on December 23 was