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Zuǒ Zōngtáng (左宗棠)
(November 10, 1812-September 5, 1885), spelled Tso
Tsung-t'ang in Wade-Giles and known simply as
General Tso to Westerners, was a gifted
China|Chinese military leader born in Wenjialong,
north of Changsha in Hunan province, during the
waning of the Qing Dynasty. He served with
brilliant distinction during China's most
important (and the world's largest) civil war, the
14-year-long Taiping Rebellion, in which at least
30 million people lost their lives.

Zuo's career got an inauspicious start when as a
young man he flunked the Imperial
examination|official court exams three times. All
but giving up on public life, Zuo returned to his
home by the River Hsiang in Hunan and resigned
himself to a quiet life farming silkworms and tea.
It was during the period that he first directed
his attention to the study of Western sciences and
political economy. 

When the Taiping Rebellion broke out in 1850, Zuo,
then 38 years old, was hired as an adviser to the
governor of Hunan. In 1856, he was formally
offered a position in the provincial government of
Hunan. In 1860, Zuo was given command of a force
of 5,000 volunteers, and in September of that year
he drove the Taiping rebels out of Hunan and
Guangxi provinces, into coastal Zhejiang. Zuo
captured the large city of Shaoxing, and from
there pushed south into Fujian and Guangdong
provinces, where the revolt had first begun. In
1863, Zuo was appointed Governor of Zhejiang and
Undersecretary of War. In August of 1864 Zuo,
together with Zeng Guofan, dethroned the Taiping
king, Hong Tianguifu, and brought an end to the
rebellion. He was created an Earl for his part in
suppressing the Rebellion.

In 1865, Zuo was appointed Viceroy and
Governor-General of Fujian and Zhejiang. As
Commissioner of Naval Industries, Zuo oversaw the
erection of China's first modern shipyard and
naval academy in Fuzhou the following year.

Zuo's successes would continue. In 1867, he became
Viceroy and Governor General of Shaanxi and Gansu
and Imperial Commissioner of the Army in Shaanxi.
In these capacities, he succeeded in putting down
another uprising, the Nian Rebellion
(捻軍起義) in 1868.  After
this success, he marched west with his
hundred-and-twenty-thousand strong army, winning
many victories against the Muslims of Northwestern
China including today's Shaanxi, Ningxia, Gansu
and Qinghai provinces and Xinjiang|Chinese
Turkestan in the 1870s. In 1878, he successfully
suppressed the Muslim uprising in Xinjiang and
helped to negotiate an end to Russian occupation
of the border city of Ili. For all his
contributions to his nation and monarch, Zuo was
appointed a Grand Secretary/Archchancellor of the
Cabinet in 1874 and created a Marquess in 1878.

Now in his seventies, Zuo was appointed to the
Board of War, the de facto Cabinet of the Chinese
Empire at the time, in 1880. Uneasy with
bureaucratic politics, Zuo asked to be relieved of
his duties and was appointed Viceroy and Governor
General of Jiangnan and Jiangxi instead in 1881.
In 1884, upon the outbreak of the Sino-French War,
Zuo received his fourth and last commission as
commander-in-chief and Imperial Commissioner of an
expedition force (this time Lord Admiral of the
Navy as well, as the war with the French was
fought in Fujian, a coastal province.) He died
shortly before a truce was signed between the two
nations, in Fuzhou (Foo-chow), 1885.
 
The Tso in General Tso is often mispronounced
"Cho".  This confusion arises because "Ts'" in
Postal Pinyin is pronounced as "Ch". The correct
pronunciation is "So".

==See also==
* General Tso's chicken
ja:左宗棠
zh:左宗棠