Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/392

Rh foreign aid — but also gave to China a higher and better type of official than she would have had without his work.

At the close of the war he had become the most powerful official in the land, and his career was the precedent whereby several of those who served under him reached the highest provincial positions without actually passing through the lower grades. This was a radical departure from the usual practice, and one that calls forth comment from Li Ung Bing in his history. Tsêng himself, in the effort to suppress the Nienfei, held for a time power, not only over Chinese soldiers, but even over Manchu Bannermen in the north. And he achieved the suppression of the Nienfei by calling back to his side the same men who had supported him in the earlier war, though Li Hung-chang reaped the glory for which Tsêng had prepared the way. Such a service, both direct and through such men as these, is a sufficient refutation of the sarcasm of Morse who, speaking of Li and Tsêng, says: "Of the two, Tsêng had been brought little into contact with foreigners, and, if his sense of humour were small, might pride himself on having suppressed the great rebellion without their aid." It furnishes ground also for judging the opinion of Sir Robert Hart, who, as regards Tsêng's settlement of the T'ientsin massacre in 1870, holds that "his general inaction, his fear of the people, and his want of decision have led people very generally to wonder how he won his former laurels, and to think that he is an overrated man, of but mediocre ability (in which opinion I fully concur)." From the story of Tsêng and his work during the terrible years from 1853 to 1864 – considering all the circumstances — such a reflection seems unwarranted. Sir Robert Hart can have had no