Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/84

66 Triads in the group, were they original members of the God-worshippers, or did they join as a body just before the fighting commenced, late in 1850, as Hung Jin asserts? And whether they came early or late, did they leave in the first fiush of victory merely because of strict discipline in the army? And one particularly wonders why they should embitter the Taipings and prove false to their oaths by deserting, as some did, to the imperialists, thus abandoning the cause of a native prince to which, as Tang rightly reminds them, they were bound by bloody oaths.

This again raises the question about the identity of this Chu, the lost leader. His surname Chu suggests at once a connection with the Ming Dynasty, which was founded by a priest named Chu Yuan-chang. There may have been no direct connection of T'ienteh with the Ming Dynasty, but the name suggests a possibility. His entry into the priesthood and study of military tactics also suggest the desire to restore the Ming Dynasty in the same manner in which it had arisen at first. Add to these possibilities the fact that there was a widespread rumor at the beginning of the Taiping uprising that a scion of the Mings remained in the background to be revealed at the proper time, also the further fact that the term "Later Ming Dynasty," coupled in a very confusing way with references to the emperor "Taiping" and later to "Our Emperor T'ienteh," actually appeared in a docu-