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238 a formidable organisation to deal with. Ma Te Sing, a learned man who had visited Mecca and Constantinople, became Dictator with full powers, and two generals, Ma Hsiu and To Wen Hsiu, took command of the southern and western troops respectively. The successes which they met with aroused no small measure of alarm in the breasts of those entrusted with the governance of the province, and when, in November 1860, the capital fell before the victorious soldiers of Ma Hsiu, it was realised that something definite must be done. The favourite method—ruthless repression by means of massacre and torture—had failed; there was only one alternative conceivable to the Chinese mind—purchase. Ma Hsiu, the captor of Yün-nan Fu, and Ma Te Sing, the Mohammedan Dictator, were approached, and a satisfactory bargain was struck, the former being granted the rank of Chen-t'ai (general of brigade) in the Imperial army, and the latter a pension of 200 taels a-month. With the conclusion of this deal, reports of great victories to the Imperial army were despatched to Peking,