Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/98

78 West, South, and North and the Assistant king. Their appointment was earlier than his own assumption of imperial honors. When he had finished inaugurating his seal, he again attacked the city but failed to take it. He planned therefore to move his camp, intending to go through Yiyang, along the shore of the Tungting Lake to Changteh, being desirous of making Hunan his home."

A small force was dispatched towards the city of Siangtan with instructions to circle around the hills and join the main body, which, on the night of November 30, crossed the river on a pontoon bridge and marched westward to Yiyang. Their simple ruse had sent the imperialists scurrying along the east bank to Siangtan, thus permitting the rebels to escape without molestation. They had beleaguered Changsha since the tenth of September.

At Yiyang they found thousands of boats in the river in which they proceeded, past Lintzuk'ow and across the Tungting Lake, to Yochow. In this city had been stored the great magazine of munitions formerly in the possession of Wu San-kwei, leader of the San Fan rebellion under K'anghsi. Pour days after their arrival, on December 13, they captured the city, from which most of the defenders had fled before their arrival. Enriched by the capture of Wu San-Kwei's munitions and five thousand additional boats, they sailed down the Yangtse River to Hanyang, which fell on the nineteenth of December, 1852. After burning the great commercial city of Hankow, they crossed the river to attack Wuchang. On the pretence of defending Hunan the viceroy was absent. The governor did the best he could, and the soldiers who, under Hsiang Yung, were arriving from Hunan, were