Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/74

56 fairly complete view of tte Taiping beginnings. It will be remembered that on April 7, 1852, the Taipings, who had long been besieged in Yungan by the whole imperial army, made good their escape, and began their march which led them finally to Nanking. One small group, under suspicions circumstances, was cut off and the leader captured. This leader was so evidently a chief of high rank that he was sent to Peking carefully guarded. He never disclosed his true name, but called himself Hung Ta-ch'üan and claimed to be of equal rank with Hung, the Taiping-wang. His confession is important enough to be quoted in full.

Hung-Tai-tsuen confesses as follows:—I am a man of the district of Hung-shán, in the prefecture of Hung-chau; I am thirty years of age. My parents are both dead, and I have neither brothers, wife, nor children. I have been from youth devoted to letters, and have several times entered the examinations; but as the officers did not acknowledge my talent for writing and repressed my abilities, I became a priest. I had not long left the priesthood when I again entered the examination, and as before I was unsuccessful. This greatly irritated me, and I began to study books on the military art very carefully, in order to scheme against the empire; I also made myself perfectly familiar with the topography of every part of the land. While I was a priest, I kept myself quiet and retired, diligently examining all works on strategy, so that all the rules of discipline and war since the days of antiquity were familiar to me; and I was emulous to equal [in the days of the Three States]. Thus I came to think that I could carry out my plans speedily and if I followed the plans of Kung-Ming, flattered myself that I could take the empire as easily as turn my hand over.