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

124 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.

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