other English
generals had been bitten with his madness."

Those who have thought that Gordon won his victories in China by sheer
personal gallantry, and nothing else, have taken a very shallow view
of the case, and not condescended to study the details. In his general
conception of the best way to overcome the Taepings he was necessarily
hampered by the views, wishes, jealousies, and self-seeking purposes
of his Chinese colleagues. But for them, his strategy would have been
of a very different character, as he himself often said. He had to
adjust his means to the best attainable end, and it must be allowed
that he did this with remarkable tact and patience--the very qualities
in which he was naturally most deficient. If we consider his strategy
as being thus fettered by the Chinese officials Li Hung Chang and
General Ching, whose first object was not so much the overthrow of the
Taeping Government as the expulsion of the Taepings from the province
for which they were responsible, it will be admitted that nothing
could be better than his conception of what had to be done, and how it
was to be effected. The campaign resolved itself into the cutting off
of all their sources of supply from the sea and Treaty ports, and the
shutting up of their principal force within the walls of Soochow. How
well and successfully that was accomplished has been narrated, but a
vainglorious commander could not have been held back after the fall of
Chanchufu from leading his victorious force to achieve a crowning
triumph at Nanking, which Gordon could easily have carried by assault
before the order in council withdrawing his services came into effect.

More frequent opportunity was afforded for Gordon to reveal his
tactical skill than his strategical insight, and in this respect the
only trammels he experienced were from the military value and
efficiency of his force, which had its own limitations. But still it
would be unjust to form too poor an estimate of the fighting
efficiency and courage of either Gordon's force or his Taeping
opponents from the miserable exhibition the Chinese recently made of
themselves during the war with Japan. The heavy losses incurred, the
several repulses Gordon himself experienced, would alone tell a
different tale, if there were not the obstinate resistance offered to
General Staveley and the French by the Taepings to show that they were
not altogether contemptible adversaries. Gordon himself thought that
hi