mere handful of men,
captured three more stockades and a stone fort that he said could have
held out after all the other positions had fallen. The loss of the
corps in this severe but decisive engagement was heavy, amounting to 6
officers killed, and 3 wounded; 50 men killed, and 128 wounded,
besides 5 Europeans of the Bodyguard. But this assault was decisive,
inasmuch as it was the last that had to be made on the defences of
Soochow before the fall of that place.

At this point it will be appropriate to say something about Gordon's
relations with his own officers, many of whom contemplated, whenever
dissatisfied with their treatment or at prolonged inaction, selling
their cause and services to the Taepings. During the siege he
discovered that Captain Perry had written a letter giving the enemy
information, but Gordon agreed to look over the offence on the
condition that Perry led the next forlorn hope, which happened to be
the affair at the Leeku stockades. Gordon had forgotten the condition,
but Perry remembered it, and led the assault. He was shot in the
mouth, and fell into the arms of his commander, ever at the point of
danger. Perry was the first man killed, and Gordon's epitaph was that
he was "a very good officer." Although Gordon was a strict and even
severe disciplinarian, he was always solicitous of the interests of
the officers who worked under him, and he set apart the greater
portion of his pay in the Chinese service, which had been fixed at
L1,200 a year, for their benefit, more especially for the purchase of
medicine and comforts for the ill or wounded. There was no
exaggeration at all in the statement that he left China without any
savings and as poor as when he reached it.

From the gallant deeds of Gordon and his corps the course of the siege
passes to the intrigues and negotiations between General Ching and Lar
Wang. These had made so much progress that Lar Wang's troops abandoned
the formidable stockades in front of the North Gate, which were
occupied without the least attempt at resistance. Several interviews
took place with the Taeping leaders, and Gordon was present at some of
these, but Li Hung Chang asserts that he was not present at the most
important of them; and that he was not a signatory of the convention
of surrender. He was strongly in favour of good terms being granted to
the rebels, and impressed his views on both Li Hung Chang, who had
come up to the camp to be present at the fall