Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/22

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TSENG KUO-FAN

without Banner troops, while the garrisons in Honan, Shantung, and Ssuch'uan were relatively small. At K'aifeng the total was less than a thousand officers and men; in two camps in Shantung, one at Tsingchow and another at Tehchow, were stationed about 2,600, and the whole vast province of Ssuch'uan contained but 2,528 men and 222 officers in the camp at Chengtu.[1]

Along the Yangtse River it was somewhat different. Realising the need for controlling that great waterway, garrisons were placed in Hupeh at Kingchow, where the outlet from Ssuch'uan could be controlled and Hukwang overawed, at Nanking, and at Kingkow. The totals for these places were: Kingchow, 6,292 men and 516 officers, Nanking, 3,122 men and 369 officers, and Kingkow, 1,596 men and 147 officers.

The two coast provinces, Chekiang and Fukien, were under two Tartar generals, one at Kangchow with 1,970 men and 270 officers, supplemented by a marine garrison having 1,526 men and 104 officers at Chapu; the other similarly had a land garrison of 2,000 men with 209 officers and a small marine camp with 39 officers and 475 men. The province of Kwangtung had a total of 4,599 men and 249 officers, all of them at Canton.[2]

The command of all these Banner troops in the provinces was, except in the case of Shantung and Honan, lodged in the Tartar general who ranked above the viceroy and was directly responsible to the capital, although the support of his troops had to be furnished by the province in which they were stationed. The two provinces having no Tartar general, Honan and Shantung, had

  1. All these figures are those given by Wade, in 1850, from records of 1825.
  2. Parker in his China gives different totals: Honan, 820, Shantung, 2,926, Ssuch'uan, 1,500, Hupeh, 5,168, Kiangsu, 4,000, Chekiang, 5,700, Fukien, 3,060, and Kwangtung 6,400. Map opposite p. 256. He does not cite his authorities.