Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/144

that at least five of these principal armies had been organised on the same model as the first, but they could not have been as well drilled and were lacking in military supplies.^[1]

There was little uniformity of dress among the privates, not even in the cloth around the head, and there was nothing equivalent to our systematic forming, wheeling and marching in regular bodies; but the strictest discipline is maintained in so far as prompt obedience to orders and signals is concerned. Of guns [cannon] there was abundance, of matchlocks and musquets but few; the arms being chiefly spears, halberds and swords. A few bows were noticed.^[2]

All of the females have been quartered in separate buildings where they work and receive rations under the superintendence of the seniors; and while all have been told that this measure is but temporary, to prevent abuses otherwise sure to ensue in the existing confusion, it is for the present certain death for any male to enter these establishments, even as husband or father.^[3]

Later armies were organised on the same model. They continued their religious observances even down to the end of the war, though we cannot say whether it was with the same conviction as that which animated the earlier members. Discipline continued to be strict, promotion was granted on the basis of merit; on the whole, the ranks seem to have been filled with an unusually intelligent set of men. To the end they remained deficient

1. Trip of H. B. M. Plenipotentiary, Sir George Bonham, Bart., to Nanking in the Hermes, April 22, 1853. Extracted from the N. C. Herald, May 7, 1853, pp. 15 f. That report mistakenly supposes that all five of the original kings were alive at the time, each in command of one of the armies. Two had fallen on the way, though the Autobiography of the Chungwang indicates (p. 5) that their titles continued.
2. Ibid, p. 16.
3. Ibid., p. 19. He goes on to observe that the whole character of relations was better and that the usual "obscenities that garnished the ordinary language of both sexes" were not heard.