Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/86

68 proaches of Yang in the edict alluded to above. The desertions must have continued unchecked, very few of them being in the ranks when the city of Nanking was reached. One can explain so strange a defection only on some such hypothesis as that which is here advanced. It likewise helps us understand the eventual bitterness of the Taipings for the Triads. When Shanghai was in the possession of a branch of the latter and the Taipings might naturally have been expected to secure so rich a plum by an alliance, the bitterness was so deep that the two groups could not come to terms. Hung may have objected to them on religious grounds, as intimated by his cousin, but his canny followers would not have refused so powerful a help. But when they abandoned the Taiping group and went over to the enemy it was too much of a cleavage. In their success the Taipings carefully obliterated all traces of a Triad connection with the movement, and steadily refused to have any intercourse with them.

Another question that remains to be answered is the exact date of setting up the reign of the T'ienwang. Three dates and places are mentioned by three different sources. Hung Jin, after he had become the Kanwang and was captured at the collapse of the movement, asserts that the first organisation was effected at Kint'ien, where the congregations had their first general rendezvous prior to taking Yungan. The "Confession" of Hung Ta-ch'üan concurs to the extent of admitting that some form of government was in effect before the formal establishment of the Taiping T'ien-kuo at Yungan.