Nor does a closer examination of the system of administration set up at Nanking by the leader Tien Wang raise one's opinion of the cause or its promoters. The foreign missionaries long thought that the Taepings were the agents of Christianity, and that their success would lead to the conversion of China. That faith died hard, but at last in 1860 a missionary had to confess that after visiting Nanking "he could find nothing of Christianity but its name falsely applied to a system of revolting idolatry," and out of that and other irresistible testimony resulted the conclusion that the conversion of China by the agency of the Taepings was a delusion. The missionaries were not alone in their belief among foreigners. The Consuls and their Governments entertained a hope that the Taepings might establish an administration which would be less difficult to deal with than they had found the existing one at Peking. They attempted to, and did in an informal manner, establish some relations with Tien Wang. They acquainted him with the articles of the Treaty of Tientsin, and they requested him to conform with its conditions. On a second occasion Sir George Bonham, our head representative in China, even honoured him with a visit; but closer acquaintance in the case of our diplomatists, as of the missionaries, stripped the Taepings of the character with which interested persons would wish they had been invested. From the first feeling of friendship and sympathy there consequently ensued a slow but steady revulsion, until at last the general feeling was that the Taepings were little more than marauders, and as such a scourge to the country and a standing injury to the trade and interests of Europeans. Then came the desire to see the rising suppressed, and finally the disillusionment culminated in active measures being taken to assist the Imperial Government in suppressing a rebellion which had defied all its efforts for more than ten years. Of these measures the appointment of Major Gordon to the command of the Ever Victorious Army was both the last and the most effectual in producing the desired result. CHAPTER V. THE EVER VICTORIOUS ARMY.