GENERAL STAVELEY.

373 braves, who had seen considerable service in the interior of China, and it was proposed that they should garrison the towns of Kiangsu accordingly as they were taken from the rebels. The period of preparation about these matters was marked by several further raids on the part of the Taepings which led to no important event, and by an attempt to seize Chusan from Ningpo which was repulsed with loss. The arrival of General Staveley from Tientsin at the end of March with portions of two English regiments (the 31st and 67th) put a new face on affairs, and showed that the time was at hand when it would be possible to carry out the threat of clearing the country round Shanghai for the space of thirty miles.

The first place to be attacked towards the realization of this plan was the village of Wongkadza, about twelve miles west of Shanghai. Here the Taepings offered only a brief resistance, retiring to some stronger stockades four miles further west. General Staveley, considering that his men had done enough work for that day, halted them, intending to renew the attack the next morning. Unfortunately Ward was carried away by his impetuosity, and attacked this inner position with some 500 of his own men. Admiral Hope accompanied him. The Taepings met them with a tremendous fire, and after several attempts to scale the works they were repulsed with heavy loss. Admiral Hope was wounded in the leg, seven officers were wounded, and seventy men killed and wounded. The attack was repeated in force on the following day, and after some fighting the Taepings evacuated their stockades on finding that Ward's men had got in their rear, and were threatening their line of retreat.

The next place attacked was the village of Tsipoo; and notwithstanding their strong earthworks and three wide ditches, the rebels were driven out in a few hours. It was then determined to attack Kahding, Tsingpu, Nanjao, and Cholin, at which places the Taepings were known to have mustered in considerable strength. Kahding was the first attacked by General Staveley in person at the head of a very strong force. The stockades in front of it were carried with comparatively little loss, as the English commander

resorted to the sure and safe principle in dealing with an Asiatic army of turning its flank. At Kahding itself, a strong walled city, the resistance was not as great as had been expected, the Taepings beginning to be seriously discouraged by the formidable enemies whose hostility they had aroused.

The capture of Kahding was followed by preparations for the attack on Tsingpu, which were hastened rather than delayed by a desperate attempt to set fire to Shanghai. The plot was fortunately discovered in time, and the culprits captured and summarily executed to the number of 200. Early in May a strong force was assembled at Sunkiang and proceeded by boat, on account of the difficulties of locomotion, to Tsingpu. The fire of the guns, in which the expedition was exceptionally strong, proved most destructive, and two breaches being pronounced practicable, the place was carried by assault. The rebels fought well and up to the last, on discovering flight to be impossible. The Chinese troops slew every man found in the place with arms in his hands. A few days later Nanjao was captured, but in the attack the French commander, Admiral Protet, a gallant officer who had been to the front during the whole of these operations, was shot dead. The rebels, disheartened by these successive defeats, rallied at Cholin, where they prepared to make a final stand. The allied force attacked Cholin on the 20th of May, and an English detachment carried it almost at the point of the bayonet. With this achievement the operations of the English troops came for the moment to an end, for a disaster to the Imperial arms in their rear necessitated their turning their attention to a different quarter.

The Chinese troops summoned from Ganking had at last arrived to the number of five or six thousand men ; and the Futai Sieh, who was on the point of being superseded to make room for Li Hung Chang, thought to employ them before his departure on some enterprise which should redound to his credit and restore his sinking fortunes. The operation was as hazardous as it was ambitious. The resolution he came to was to attack the city and forts of Taitsan, a place north-west of Shanghai, and not very distant from Chung

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Wang's head-quarters at Soochow. The Imperialist force reached Taitsan on the 12th of May, but less than two days later Chung Wang arrived in person at the head of 10,000 chosen troops to relieve the garrison. A battle ensued on the day following, when, notwithstanding their great superiority in numbers, the Taepings failed to obtain any success. In this extremity Chung Wang resorted to a stratagem. Two thousand of his men shaved their heads and pretended to desert to the Imperialists. When the battle was renewed at sunrise on the following morning this band threw aside their assumed character and turned upon the Imperialists. A dreadful slaughter ensued. Of the seven thousand Honan braves, and the Tartars from Shanghai, five thousand fell on the field. The consequences of this disaster were to undo most of the good accomplished by General Staveley and his force. The Imperialists were for the moment dismayed, and the Taepings correspondingly encouraged. General Staveley's communications were threatened, one detachment was cut off, and the general had to abandon his intended plan and retrace his steps to Shanghai.

Desultory operations followed, but Kahding was abandoned to Chung Wang, who naturally claimed it as a decisive victory over "the foreign devils." After this success Chung Wang hastened to blockade both Tsingpu and Sunkiang, where Ward's contingent was in garrison. Almost at the same date as the defeat at Taitsan the Taepings had been expelled from Ningpo, after having offered many provocations to the English commanders. They made a desperate defence, several officers were killed in the attack, and the affair at Ningpo was described by one who had a right to express an opinion as altogether "the fiercest thing" during the course of our Chinese campaign.

Chung Wang laid regular siege to Sunkiang, where Ward was in person, and he very nearly succeeded in carrying the place by escalade. The attempt was fortunately discovered by an English sailor just in time, and repulsed with a loss to the rebels of 100 men. The Taepings continued to show great daring and activity before both Sunkiang and Tsingpu ; and although the latter place was bravely defended, it became

clear that the wisest course would be to evacuate it. A body of troops was therefore sent from Shanghai to form a junction with Ward at Sunkiang, and to effect the safe retreat of the Tsingpu garrison. The earlier proceedings were satisfactorily arranged, but the last act of all was grossly mismanaged and resulted in a catastrophe. Ward caused the place to be set on fire, when the Taepings, realizing what was being done, hastened into the town, and assailed the retiring garrison. A scene of great confusion followed; many lives were lost, and the commandant who had held it so courageously was taken prisoner. Chung Wang could therefore appeal to some facts to support his contention that he had got the better of both the Europeans and the Imperialists in the province of Kiangsu.

In the valley of the Yangtsekiang the cause of Tien Wang had not fared equally well. There one disaster had followed another. Not merely were the Imperialists successful in most of the open encounters, but they obtained, by a stratagem or act of treachery, possession of Ying Wang and some of the chief officials. An ex-rebel who had gone over to the Imperialists induced him to trust himself within the walls of Chuchow, where he and his followers were at once arrested and executed by Shingpao, the same officer who had commanded in the battle at the Palikao bridge, and who, it was confidently believed, had caused Captain Brabazon and the Abbé de Luc to be decapitated. The Taepings had also lost the position known as the Western Pillar, which is between Woohoo and Taeping. An army of 40,000 men under Tseng's brother encamped on the south-west side of the city. Tien Wang was smitten with panic by these dangers at his very door, and he sent off express messengers, three in one day, to Chung Wang to return to Nankin without a moment's waste of time. Chung Wang was highly displeased at being thus called away from the scene of his successes, but he had no choice save to obey. He left the command at Soochow to Mow Wang, and hastened back himself to Nankin.

By this time Ward's force had been raised to 5000 men, and another contingent known as the Franco-Chinese had

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been organized in Chekiang. Tso Tsung Tang had also resumed action in that province. He had recaptured the town of Yenchow, and had succeeded in drawing up a force of 40,000 men with which to oppose the chief Taeping leader in that part, the She Wang, or Attendant King. His operations were extremely deliberate, but he was steadily bringing up the fresh levies of Fuhkien and Chekiang for the purpose of driving the Taepings into a corner at Hangchow Bay. Chung Wang found himself reduced to inaction at Nankin from want of good troops, without which he did not dare attack the strong positions of the Imperialists. Tien Wang, as a sign of his displeasure and disappointment, deprived him of his title, and ordered him to proceed to the province of Anhui.

Meantime Ward and his force were showing increased activity. One attempt to recover Tsingpu was indeed repulsed with loss, but the second attack succeeded. Skirmishes were of daily occurrence, and when Ward proceeded to Ningpo to superintend the operations for the recovery of Tzeki, which had been lost, the fortune of war had again veered round to the side of the Government. Tzeki was retaken, but Ward was wounded in the attack, and died the following morning, September 22, 1862. Ward was only thirty-seven, and although not a skilful soldier, his energy and promptitude had made him a very efficient leader of an irregular force. He deserves to be specially remembered as the original organizer of the body to be known in history as "the Ever-Victorious Army." It was something significant of the difficulties of the commander of this force that Colonel Forrester, the second officer and the defender of Tsingpu who had been taken prisoner, and then ransomed, should decline it, which afforded Burgevine the opportunity of coming to the front.

The recapture of Kahding, specially ordered by the Home Government, was the first operation in which the disciplined Chinese served under their new commander, although the attack on Kahding was conducted by General Staveley in person, and there were more than 2000 British troops present. place offered only slight resistance, and was recaptured with

The