Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/313

290 to Nanking for the support of the besieging army there. Even this amount was insufficient.

On July 3, 1864, Lung Potzu Shan (Dragon's Shoulder Hill) was captured, giving Tseng Kuo-ch'üan the ability to dig his mine despite the resistance of the rebels within the walls. This was ready on the nineteenth. Its explosion made a breach of more than two hundred feet, through which the imperialists poured, cutting their way into the city. Immediate siege was laid to the imperial city within; it fell the same evening. Word was sent speeding to Peking by a courier travelling seven hundred li per day.

For three days and nights the imperialists gave themselves up to pursuing and slaughtering the defeated Taipings, nor did they stop before a hundred thousand had perished. The Chungwang and the younger brother of the T'ienwang, Hung Jen-tah, were captured as they were attempting to escape to Kiangsi, but the T'ienwang was beyond their reach, having committed suicide on the first of June when he realised that matters had become hopeless. News of the suicide had been kept from the populace who were already on the verge of panic, and within the recesses of the palace the lost leader was buried and his son, Hung Fu-t'ien proclaimed as T'ienwang in place of his father.