Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/49

Rh To this foreign war and its influence on thinking men, on peasants near Canton, and on secret brotherhoods, we must add a series of calamities in the years 1846 and 1847. The failure of the crops in portions of Hunan and Kwangsi led to the rise of robber bands from among the distressed people. In some oases these were small and inconsequential, but in others large bodies of men numbering hundreds and even thousands, under influential leaders, gave to district magistrates and even to provincial authorities, much anxiety.

Against these quasi rebels, the drill and even organisation into armies of the country militia had been directed. The adoption on a large scale of this type of militia, organised into armies similar to that first led by Kiang Chung-yuan, enabled Tsêng Kuo-fan to put down the