Just four months after the first outbreak, and four months previous to the capture of Yung-gnan, the Manchoo governor of the province (Kwang-si), whose letter is translated and quoted by Consul Meadows, wrote as follows:—
"Both Hung-sui-tshuen and Fung-yun-san are skilled in the use of troops. Hung-sui-tshuen is a man of dangerous character, who practises the ancient military arts. At first he conceals his strength, then he puts it forth a little, then in a greater degree, and lastly comes on in great force. He constantly has two victories for one defeat, for he practises the tactics of Sun-pin (an ancient Chinese warrior and celebrated tactician). The other day I obtained a rebel book, describing the organization of one army. It is the Sze-mar system of the Chow dynasty. A division has its general of division; a regiment has its colonel; an army consists of 13,270 men, being the strength of an ancient army, with the addition of upwards of a hundred men. * * *
"The rebels increase more and more; our troops—the more they fight the more they fear. The rebels generally are powerful and fierce, and they cannot by any means be likened to a disorderly crowd, their regulations and laws being rigorous and clear."
Thus it appears that even before the rebellion attained a political status, its organization was perfect, and that, too, within four months of its commencement. In spite of the mass of trustworthy evidence on this point, and the latterly improved constitution of the Ti-pings, some persons have foolishly declared the Ti-pings possess no organization whatever. The partisan spirit of such people carries them altogether beyond their mark; for any one, not totally ignorant of Chinese character, is perfectly well aware that for any body of Chinese to exist without organization is impossible. We have only to look towards Java, Australia, California, India, or wherever a body of Chinese may be found separate, to see they are invariably organized. The colonies formed in the above countries are all governed by chiefs of their own electing. At Batavia and various other parts of Java, Borneo, &c., these chiefs and their inferior officials, hold a recognized position in the Dutch administration. From their very cradles precepts of order and submission are so well engrafted and inculcated, that no nature is so amenable to control as a Chinaman's.[4]
Hung-sui-tshuen, previous to the capture of Yung-gnan, issued the following reply to the celebrated Commissioner Lin's summons to surrender:—
"The Manchoos who, for two centuries, have been in hereditary possession of the throne of China, are descended from an insignificant nation of foreigners. By means of an army of veteran soldiers well trained to warfare, they seized on our treasures, our lands, and the government of our country, thereby proving that the only thing requisite for usurping empire is the fact of being the strongest. There is, therefore, no difference between ourselves, who lay contributions on the villages we take, and the agents sent from Pekin to collect taxes. Why, then, without any motive, are troops dispatched against us? Such a proceeding strikes us as a very unjust one. What! is it possible that the Manchoos, who are foreigners, have a right to receive the taxes of the captured provinces, and to name officers who oppress the people, while we Chinese are prohibited from taking a trifling amount at the public cost? Universal sovereignty does not belong to any one particular individual, to the exclusion of all the rest. And such a thing has never been known, as one dynasty being able to trace a line of a hundred generations of emperors. The right to govern consists in possession."
In this manifesto the insurgents claim the throne, from the fact that, being Chinese, to them by right it belonged.
This document, from which the above is an extract, proved such an effective and injurious one to poor Commissioner Lin, that he never rallied from the shock. Before dying, he memorialized his Emperor, informing him the rebels professed Christianity, and derived their origin from the hated "barbarians" (Europeans).
Hung-sui-tshuen effected the capture of the city of Yung-gnan by a very extraordinary stratagem:—