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Updated: June 1, 2025
An occasion soon offered to fan this feeling to a flame. A Chinese army under Li and General Ching advanced to attack a Taeping position near Tsingpu, at the same time that Burgevine at the head of his corps assailed it from the other side.
But with this success the Taeping tide of victory reached its end, for Chang Kwoliang arriving with the other imperialist army, the whole force fell upon Chung Wang and drove him back into the city with the loss of 700 of his best men, so that the result left of Chung Wang's campaign was the relief of Chankiang and the return to the status quo at Nankin.
Among all the deeds of his varied and remarkable career he never succeeded in quite the same degree in winning fame and in commanding success. At Khartoum the eyes of the world were on him, but the Mahdi was allowed to remain victorious, and the Soudan still awaits fresh conquest. But during the two Taeping campaigns he was completely successful, and closed his work with an unqualified triumph.
But from the growing Taeping Rebellion, which we have now followed down to the year 1856, our attention must be directed to the more serious and important foreign question which had again reached a crisis, and which would not wait on the convenience of the Celestial emperor and his advisers.
His energy and courage had already attracted favorable notice, and the manner in which he executed the difficult operation intrusted to him fully established his reputation. By a concerted movement with the Taeping commandant of Chankiang, he attacked the imperialist lines at the same time as the garrison made a sortie, and the result was a decisive victory.
All around it were waterways leading to the sea, but the Grand Canal itself, stretching away to the Yang-tse-kiang, was held by the Taeping general Chung Wang.
They made the admission that "there is properly no objection to the permanent residence at Pekin of a plenipotentiary minister of her Britannic Majesty," and they even spoke of sending a return mission to London; but they deprecated the proposal as novel and as specially risky at this moment in consequence of the formidable Taeping Rebellion.
Tien Wang, one of the Taeping commanders within the walls of Nankin, seeing that the cause was tottering to its fall, committed suicide in the manner proper to his rank by swallowing gold leaf. Shortly after the city itself was stormed, and Chung Wang, whose presence among the rebels was, said Gordon, equal to an army of five thousand men, fell into the hands of the victors.
He wrote his reply stating his reason on the back of the Imperial rescript itself; he rejected Li Hung Chang's flags, but he accepted the other two as being in no sense associated with the disgrace of the Taeping massacre. In this manner did Gordon show the Chinese what he thought of their conduct. His characteristic reply to the Imperial rescript read as follows:
Gordon his private journal of the Taeping rebellion, and then sent to have it printed for the other members of the Cabinet to read, that he rushed straight to the printers and insisted that the type should at once be destroyed. It was a very great loss to the world; but the minister had no business to act as he did without Gordon's permission, and had only himself to thank for what happened.
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