# Tsêng Kuo-fan and the Taiping Rebellion/Introduction

INTRODUCTION
Many careful observers of world events believe that no calamity of the nineteenth century approached the Taiping rebellion in the total of misery and destruction. Several hundred district cities were taken and retaken, with looting and slaughter on both sides. Great cities became wildernesses; fruitful fields, deserts. Sanguinary battles and still more bloody massacres marked its progress. It threatened disruption to the empire and downfall to the emperor. In his Middle Kingdom, as late as 1882, S. W. Williams says of this group of insurgents:
Their presence was an unmitigated scourge, attended by nothing but disaster from beginning to end, without the least effort on their part to rebuild what had been destroyed, to protect what was left, or to repay what had been stolen. Wild beasts roamed at large over the land after their departure, and made their dens in the deserted towns; the pheasant's whirr resounded where the hum of busy populations had ceased, and weeds or jungle covered the ground once tilled with patient industry. Besides millions upon millions of taels irrecoverably lost and destroyed, and the misery, sickness, and starvation which were endured by the survivors, it has been estimated by foreigners living at Shanghai that, during the whole period from 1851 to 1865, fully twenty millions of human beings were destroyed in connection with the Tai-ping rebellion.
That it was allowed to spread so far and wide was due to Chinese decentralisation and official incompetence; that the fanatical insurgents did not win was due to their lack of leadership from 1853 to 1858, and to the ​emergence of Tsêng Kuo-fan. Chinese modern history awards this man the honor that is his due, but foreign observers were so dazzled by the fame of the valuable little force of foreign-trained soldiers organised by Frederick Townsend Ward and eventually led by "Chinese" Gordon, that they have immortalised the "Ever Victorious Army" of three thousand men, almost canonised Gordon, and relegated the real hero of the Taiping rebellion to oblivion.
Seldom has a greater injustice been done than that which filched from Tsêng Kuo-fan his dearly earned fame and enshrined Gordon and Li Hung-chang in the temple of history. Against difficulties woven together out of the practices of Chinese government for centuries; with far too little coöperation; lacking funds to secure armies—his total expense for more than ten years being limited to slightly more than a paltry 21,300,000 taels—and without any military skill whatever; Tseng eventually performed the miracle of suppressing this immense rebellion. This he did through clear thinking, unfailing patience, prudence, and common sense. He never feared that others would eclipse him, he begrudged no man his fairly earned laurels; and gathered able men around him through whose talents he made up for his own lack of military skill. Taking Confucius seriously, and attempting to put into his own conduct the qualities of the Princely Man, Tseng was never willing through danger or loss of "face" to swerve from the line of duty. He was plainspoken, straightforward, and, in a time when dishonesty was usual, honest.
A Japanese biographer has, I learn, preceded me in comparing him, not to Napoleon,—whom he did not in the least resemble,—but to George Washington. He was indeed the Washington of the Far East, who through his personal worth and his adherence to the path marked ​out by reason and conscience, preserved China from division or destruction through years of uncertain struggle against overwhelming odds. A Chinese essayist of today, Liang Ch'i-ch'iao, claims that he was not merely a man whose like has been seen but a few times in the whole long history of the Middle Kingdom, but a man "of whom the whole world has produced but a handful." If that praise is too high, we may at least rank him amongst the great characters of the nineteenth century and do no injustice to the rest.
The strident voice of youthful China finds fault with him as the upholder of the alien Manchu Dynasty and of absolute monarchy. So he was. Monarchy and all forms of imperialism are as unpopular in China today as in Europe, but is it fair to judge a great hero by ideals that first entered the minds of his countrymen a full generation after he had been gathered unto his fathers? Must we not rather place ourselves in the surroundings of the age in which Tsêng lived and labored, when he uttered the voice of the universal conviction of the nation? In addition to their pre-dating a disdain for monarchy, these youthful critics fail to consider that if no one had then been found strong and faithful enough to hold the empire together it would, in all probability, have been cut to pieces through civil war, eventually to have fallen into foreign hands—for strong nations were at that moment building empires. That China continued in unity and independence until another mood came over the Western lands is a result of the successful suppression of this and other insurrections by Tsêng and the able men who coöperated with him.
This study was first presented as a dissertation in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the doctor's degree in Yale University, and covered the Taiping period alone. To render it more complete I have added a short ​sketch of the last seven years of Tsêng's life. This includes chiefly his preparations for the suppression of the Men rebels, which made possible Li Hung-chang's rapid conquest of the troublesome horde, and the service as viceroy in Nanking and Chihli. From the superabundant materials found in his letters I have gathered together what seem to he the most significant principles by which his life was inspired. It seemed desirable also to insert the chapter on the government of China under the Manchu Dynasty, so that the rise of such a movement as the Taiping Rebellion from such small beginnings might be more intelligible. In order to make these changes possible, much detail regarding the different campaigns has been omitted.
Chinese names of persons and places are hard to romanise. There are several systems by which this is done. For places I have tried as far as possible to follow the post office lists. For other names I have taken the Wade system. But there are some exceptions in each group. Some names are so generally written in one manner that it would seem pure pedantry to change them.
If in some way this study will serve to bring before Westerners a fair understanding of the great rebellion, and of the man to whose devotion and loyal services its suppression is due, the writer will feel amply rewarded. It is only a beginning, however, and there is need for more careful study from Chinese materials of the whole period covered here when foreign relations were becoming constantly more important in Chinese history. We have seen far too much of the period through Western eyes alone, and it is not thus that history can be properly understood.
May I record my profound gratitude to Professor F. W. Williams of Yale University under whose direction the study was made, whose suggestions have guided ​the revision, and the loan of whose rare pamphlets and books supplied very valuable material; also to Professor E. Asakawa for suggestions and help in some of the translations, to the Reverend G. G. Warren of Changsha for useful advice in recasting some of the chapters, and to Tso Fu and other members of the faculty of Yale-in-China for help with the Chinese texts.
W. J. H.
Changsha, China, November, 1926.