On June 10 Tsêng was appointed acting viceroy of the Two Kiang, with orders to relieve the pressure on Kiangsu.[1] Since he was unable to leave Anking it was necessary for the governor to manage affairs in that province. From this time are dated two events which led eventually to intervention. Of these, the first was the employment of Frederick T. Ward, probably by Chinese merchants of Shanghai, who, shortly after the capture of Sungkiang by the Chungwang in 1860, promised him 30,000 taels to retake that city.[2] After failing once, Ward employed one hundred Manila-men and white officers, Forrester and Burgevine, and took the city on July 17. Sungkiang now became Ward's headquarters, whence he led his force to the attack of Tsingpu. He found this place defended by adventurers in Taiping employ, and failed in his attempt (August, 1860). He was eventually compelled to abandon the effort and return to Sungkiang, where he occupied the next few months in drilling a force of Chinese troops, his expenses being met in a roundabout way by revenues from the Shanghai customs.[3]
The appearance of the Chungwang in Kiangsu threw Shanghai into consternation, for from the interior thousands of refugees came streaming into the settlement; the Chungwang himself reached the outskirts of the
- ↑ Dispatches, XI, 41 f.
- ↑ Morse, II, 69 ff.; A. Wilson, The Ever Victorious Army, pp. 63 f.
- ↑ On this point the foreign writers (except Williams, The Middle Kingdom, who says that it was the taotai) agree that a Chinese firm, "Takee," employed Ward and that the funds came from Chinese merchants. On the contrary, the Chungwang says that the governor employed foreign devils (Autobiography, p. 35), and a small popular Chinese account of operations in Kiangsu (Wu-chung P'ing K'uo Chi, I, 1a) states that the acting provincial treasurer and taotai Wu employed them. Since strict neutrality had been enforced up to that time I surmise that both are right and wrong — the government actually employing the men and furnishing the funds from the customs revenues, but acting through merchants who, presumably, had no connection with offcialdom, for fear of foreign complications.
