Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/391

368 of troops. (2) Lack of encouragement, at times amounting to actual opposition from the officials and gentry of the provinces in which he operated, because of his being for much of his career outside the line of regular administration. (3) Friction, at times, with the soldiers and officers of the regular army, who were naturally jealous of this irregular force. (4) His inability, until he became viceroy, to get possession of funds without begging for them from the regular officials. (5) The necessity of withstanding the frequent panics into which Taiping successes or imperial failures threw the Peking government, causing them to order him to abandon strategic positions and chase after some elusive insurgent king. (6) The snares of Taiping commanders more brilliant than he to draw him and his men from their proper objectives. (7) At times, great peril to himself, and at others (what is perhaps almost as important) "loss of face." In all these things he showed himself patient, enduring, and brave.

We must be careful not to claim too much for him. The plans which he so steadfastly carried out sometimes originated with others, in particular the gifted Kiang Chung-yuan and the incompetent Saishanga, to the latter of whom he owed the idea of the "new model" army, and to the insistence of the former, his flotilla. But it was his own skill that surrounded him with a galaxy of faithful and able officers, many of whom reached high rank both during and after the Taiping rebellion — Hu Lin-yi, Pao Ch'ao, Yang Tsai-fu, P'eng Yu-ling, Li Hung-chang, Tso Tsung-tang, Li Han-chang, and his brother, Tsêng Kuo-ch'üan, not to mention a host of lesser lights and several who would have become equally famous had they not succumbed in the struggle. Through the support of such reliable men Tsêng not only brought the Taiping rebellion to a close and would doubtless have done so