Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/333

310 on them. In any case, this was a serious blow to foreign relations, because the mob when once aroused had not been content to deal with the French consul or the Roman Catholic Church only, but had also murdered a few Russians and destroyed British and American property.

The Chinese authorities acted with a speed equal to that of the foreign ministers in Peking, showing that they appreciated the gravity of the outrage. Two days after the massacre, orders were received by Tsêng to proceed to the scene and settle the case in conjunction with Ts'ung Hou. He did not, however, start for several days, not indeed until the fourth of July, though he dispatched two officials of taotai (or intendant) rank to make preliminary investigations, employing the intervening time for a careful study of the reports of officials in T'ientsin, that he might be prepared to meet the foreign representatives. The viceroy was ill at this time. On May 22 he had requested a month's sick leave and had renewed the request on the day before the massacre. It was therefore from a sick bed that he rose to meet this new duty, and he was possessed of a fear that the difficulties of the task would cost him his life. In view of this apprehension he probably spent the interval, while underlings investigated the case at T'ientsin, in arranging his affairs for fear he should never return to Paotingfu. At any rate, he drew up a farewell letter to his sons, which opens as follows:

Today I am proceeding to T'ientsin to investigate and settle the case of the murder of foreigners and the burning of churches. The temper of foreign countries is passionate and the disposition of the T'ientsin populace is giddy and conceited. All in all, it will be hard to harmonise them; a bad spirit may be engendered, soldiers be brought on, and the matter may eventuate in