eir little
children away from them. They flayed people alive; they pounded them
to death. Ruin and death were left behind them as they marched on.
Those who escaped were left to starvation. In some places so terrible
was the hunger of the poor people that they became cannibals, for lack
of any other food.

In one city which they destroyed, out of 20,000 people not 100 escaped.

"We killed them all to the infant in arms; we left not a root to sprout
from; and the bodies of the slain we cast into the Yangtse,"--so
boasted the rebels.

A march of nearly 700 miles brought this great, murdering, plundering
army to Nanking, a city which the Wangs took, and made their capital.
The frightened peasants were driven before them down to the coast, and
took refuge in the towns there. Many of them had crowded into the port
of Shanghai, and round Shanghai came the robber army. They wanted more
money, more arms, and more ammunition, and they knew they could find
plenty of supplies there. So likely did it seem that they would take
the port, that the Chinese Government asked England and France to help
to drive them away.

In May 1862 Gordon was one of the English officers who helped to do
this. For thirty miles round Shanghai, the rebels, who were the
fiercest of fighters, were driven back. In his official despatch
Gordon's general wrote of him:--"Captain Gordon was of the greatest use
to me." But he also said that Gordon often made him very anxious
because of the daring way in which he would go dangerously near the
enemy's lines to gain information. Once when he was out in a boat with
the general, reconnoitring a town they meant to attack, Gordon begged
to be put ashore so that he might see better what defences the enemy
had.

To the general's horror, Gordon went nearer and nearer the town, by
rushes from one shelter to another. At length he sheltered behind a
little pagoda, and stood there quietly sketching and making notes.
From the walls the rebels kept on firing at him, and a party of them
came stealing round to cut him off, and kill him before he could run
back to the boat. The general shouted himself hoarse, but Gordon
calmly finished his sketch, and got back to the boat just in time.

The Tae-Pings used to drag along with them many little boys whose
fathers and mothers they had killed, and whom they meant to bring up as
rebels. After the fights between the English troops and the Tae-Pings,
swarms of those lit