Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/80

62 he expected to rely on fighting rather than magical arts to gain the throne.

The only question that remains is whether this man is the same one referred to as Chu Kiu-t'ao. No document thus far available makes any attempt to identify the two. But the confession expressly states that the name Hung is an assumed one. Again, one standing in such intimate relations with the T'ienwang as to associate freely with him, wear the insignia of royalty, receive a title indicating equality and even superiority, and discover the exact spot at which the Taiping movement will fail if the defects of Hung continue to guide its policy, must have been previously in a position to secure such honor from all. No other man stands in this place, as far as we know, but we do have the testimony that Chu was in exactly that situation. The identity of Hung Ta-ch'üan seems almost of necessity to be revealed as this Chu Kiu-t'ao.

If we admit this document as genuine it gives a vantage ground from which to reexamine the movement and trace out its course of development. A comparative study of the various accounts of this new set of sources enables us to form a picture something as follows: a Hunanese named Chu, unsuccessful in the examinations in his province, secluded himself in a monastery somewhere and gave himself to the study of military tactics with a view to overthrowing the empire. At some date, probably about 1843 or 1844, he was in Kwangtung at a place named Kout'ushan and came in contact with Hung and Fêng. He was apparently himself organising fraternities, but the new 'superstition' of Hung's so appealed to him as a means of acquiring a following that he came to some understanding with Fêng to become a propagator of the new movement. The Chungwang's statement that Fêng originated the movement, interpreted in the light of this new source, leads to the view that the purpose of