THE HEAVENLY KING. 215 fame, he would then have won the reputation of a good soldier. An outbreak at Lienchow, near the small port called Pakhoi, recalled the Canton mandarins from the pleasing dream that their efforts were crowned with complete success, and that the rebels were on the eve of returning to their duty. The importance of this movement consisted in the soldiers sent to restore order joining the rioters, and when a fresh force came from Hainan they combined and succeeded in inflicting a defeat upon it. It was said that not a single Imperalist soldier escaped alive from the fray. Some of the insurgents made overtures to the mandarins, and signified a desire to return to their duty if only the Government would give them some certain employment and a small official rank. This was no doubt a feeler or a blind; for almost at the very same time the main body of the insurgents had agreed upon the choice of a single leader, to whom they gave the royal title of Tien Wang, or the "Heavenly King." With this act their political significance greatly increased, and it became impossible to treat them any longer as being destitute of real importance. The strongest of monarchs cannot afford to ignore the presence of a competitor to his throne. To Hienfung, whose embarrassments were from every point of view grave as well as numerous, the elevation of Tien Wang was a direct menace as well as a warning. It was only safe to treat him as an audacious adventurer on the assumption that no time was to be lost and no effort spared in crushing his hostile movement, and in putting an end to his personal pretensions. Tien Wang was, after all, only one of the principal chiefs of the Kwangsi rebels. The people followed him with steady faith because they believed in his miraculous powers and in his capacity to earn success; but his colleagues chose him as their ostensible leader in order that they might have one, and thus derive all the strength to be acquired from * For a long time this chief was thought to be styled Tienteh, or "Heaven's virtue"; but subsequent inquiries showed that such was not the case, and that his true title was Tien-kwoh. We use that by which he was best known. placing before the people a man alleged to be capable of redressing wrongs, and of attaining undefinable ambitions. There was nothing in the person of the individual selected to lead the disaffected that entitled him to seek the suffrages of the Chinese people, or to assume the responsibilities of governing the Empire. The missionaries, over-anxious to secure the long-anticipated prize of their individual labours and exertions-the conversion of the Chinese people to Christianity-were led at an early point to see in Tien Wang a possible regenerator of his country, and the certain recipient of the true religion. For ten years the hope was indulged that the Taepings were to prove the agents of the Cross, and that Tien Wang was to be to the Celestials what Ethelbert had been to the Saxons. There was nothing in Tien Wang's character or surroundings to justify these hopes and speculations. The Taeping leader was little better than a brigand. The talked of regeneration of his country was only the excuse for pillaging its villages and depopulating its provinces. Who then was Tien Wang, stripped of his celestial title? Hung-tsiuen was the son of a small farmer who lived in a village near the North river, about thirty miles from Canton. If he was not a Hakka* himself, he lived in a district which was considered to be their almost exclusive property. He belonged to, or was closely associated with, a degraded race, therefore, and it was held that he was not entitled to that free entrance into the body of the civil service which is the natural privilege of every native of China. His friends declared that he came out high at each of the periodical examinations, but their statements may have been false in this as in much else. The fact is clear that he failed to obtain his degrees, and that he was denied admission into the public service. Hung was, therefore, a *The term hakka means "a guest." They are tramps who roam over the country, settling in vacant places and then encroaching on their neighbours. Never heartily addicted to sedentary pursuits, they generally took to marauding after a brief spell of settled life. (Wells Williams.) A large colony of the Hakkas were sent from Canton to Formosa, where they were established in the hills between the Chinese and the aboriginal tribes. The Hakkas have also been called the squatters. THE TAEPING LEADER. 217 disappointed candidate, the more deeply disappointed, perhaps, as his sense of injured merit, and the ill-judging flattery of his friends, made his chagrin the keener.* Hung was a shrewd observer of the weakness of the Government, and of the popular discontent. He perceived the opportunity of making the Manchu dynasty the scapegoat of national weakness and apathy. He could not be the servant of the Government. Class contempt, the prejudice of his examiners, or it may even have been his own haughty presumption and self-sufficiency, effectually debarred him from the enjoyment of the wealth and privileges that fall to the lot of those in executive power in all countries, but in Asiatic above every other. To his revengeful but astute mind it was clear that if he could not be an official he might be the enemy of the Government, the declared subverter of order and the law. The details of his early career have been mainly recorded by those who sympathized with the supposed objects of his operations, and while they have been very anxious to discover his virtues, they were always blind to his failings. The steps of his imposture have therefore been described with an amount of implicit belief, which reflected little credit on the judgment of those who were anxious to give their sanction to the miracles which preceded the appearance of this adventurer in the field. Absurd stories as to his dreams, allegorical coincidences showing how he was summoned by a just and all-powerful God to the supreme seat of power, were repeated with a degree of faith so emphatic in its expression as to make the challenge of its sincerity appear extremely harsh. Hung, the defeated official candidate, the long deaf listener to the entreaties of Christian missionaries, was thus in a brief time metamorphosed into Heaven's elect for the Dragon Throne. Whether Hung was merely an intriguer, or a fanatic, he could not help feeling some gratitude to those who so conveniently echoed his pretensions to the throne, at the same time that they pleaded extenuating * Mr. Meadows, in his "Chinese and their Rebellions," says that he was born in 1813, and that his failure must not be attributed to his fault, but to the excessive number of candidates competing. circumstances for acts of cruelty and brigandage often unsurpassed in their infamy. If he found the foreigners thus willing to accept him at his own estimate, it would have been very strange if he had not experienced still greater success in imposing upon the credulity of his own countrymen. To declare that he had dreamt dreams which left little room to doubt that he was selected by a heavenly mandate for Royal honours was sufficient to gain a small body of adherents, provided only that he was prepared to accept the certain punishment of detection and failure. If Hung's audacity was shown by nothing else, it was demonstrated by the lengths to which he carried the supernatural agency that urged him to quit the ignominious life of a Kwantung peasant for the career of a pretender to Imperial honours. The course of training to which he subjected himself, the ascetic deprivations, the loud prayers and invocations, the supernatural counsels and meetings, was that adopted by every other religious devotee or fanatic as the proper novitiate for those honours based on the superstitious reverence of mankind which are sometimes no inadequate substitute for temporal power and influence, even when they fail to pave the way to their attainment. Yet when Hung proceeded to Kwangsi there was no room left to hope that the seditious movement would dissolve of its own accord, for the extent and character of his pretensions at once invested the rising with all the importance of open and unveiled rebellion. After the proclamation of Hung as Tien Wang the success of the Kwangsi rebels increased. The whole of the country south of the Sikiang, with the strong military station of Nanning, fell into their hands, and they prepared in the early part of the year 1851 to attack the provincial capital Kweiling, which commanded one of the principal high roads into the interior of China. So urgent did the peril at this place appear, that three Imperial Commissioners were sent there direct by land from Pekin, and the significance of their appointment was increased by the fact that they were all Manchus. Their names were Saichangah, Tatungah, and Hingteh. They were instructed to collect as many troops as they could en route; and, THE ART OF WAR. 219 whether owing to this fact or to reluctance to meet the enemy, they did not reach Kweiling until some weeks after they were expected and sorely needed. Indeed, they would have arrived much too late to protect the small remaining portion of Kwangsi had it not been for the valour and military capacity exhibited by Wurantai, chief of the Bannermen at Canton, to whom in their distress Viceroy Su and Governor Yeh consigned the defence of the western limits of the province. Yet even he had to admit that he could devise no adequate plan for the danger, and that "the outlaws were neither exterminated nor made prisoners." * The growth of the rebellion proved steady, but slow. Reinforcements were sent constantly to the Imperial army without producing any decisive result. Fresh levies were hard to obtain and harder still to keep in the field, although volunteers for the war were well paid and promised generous treatment. The expenses of the war were enormous. The resources of the Canton exchequer were strained to the uttermost to provide the bare expenses of the army in the field; and although 30,000 troops were stated to be concentrated opposite the positions of the Taepings, fear or inexperience prevented action, and the numbers and courage of the Imperialists melted away. Had the Chinese authorities only pressed on they must have swept the rebels into Tonquin, and there would have been an end of Tien Wang and his aspirations. They lacked the nerve, and their vacillation gave confidence and reputation to an enemy that need never have been allowed to become formidable. While the Imperial authorities had been either discouraged or at the least lethargic, the pretender Tien Wang had been busily engaged in establishing his authority on a sound basis, and in assigning their ranks to his principal followers, who saw in the conference of titles and posts the recognition of their past zeal and the promise of reward for future service. The men who rallied round Hung-tsiuen were schoolmasters and His official report to the Emperor is chiefly remarkable for containing a direct reference to the Europeans. "The outer barbarians say," he wrote, "that of literature China has more than enough, of the art of war not sufficient." |