Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/147

Rh quarters of their own, where they were rigidly secluded even from the men of their own families. Suitable duties were then assigned to both sexes — the men going forth to do battle, while the female camps were assigned to tasks more befitting their sex, such as the making of clothing, ammunition, banners, and similar necessaries of war. It is not quite clear whether these camps included the wives of soldiers or officials on duty in Nanking, though in the later years it appears certain that membership in these camps was confined to the women whose husbands were absent, or to young, unmarried women without homes.

Nor is it at all clear why, contrary to the usual Chinese practice, women were engaged as soldiers. It may be a very early manifestation of the same spirit that led women in the first days of the Chinese Republic (1912) to drill and fight for the new cause, or that led to the employment of Russian women in certain famous battalions during the World War more recently. The adherence of female chiefs who came begging admittance to the new movement lends color to that view. Yet the contrary is implied in the fact that they were no longer thus