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of the Anhui troops made much more. In the Wu-tzu Hunan Army Corps in which Mesny served during the second campaign in Kueichou, twenty battalions were farmed out to their respective chiefs who were each paid monthly two thousand eight hundred and forty taels to find pay and rations for their men. Those chiefs of battalions cleared about one thousand taels a month. The men usually got one tael a month mess money and about thirty catties of rice, for which sixty tael cents was deducted from the men's pay, even when they ate rice that had been obtained by capture from the enemy.
A soldier's uniform consisted of a long shirt worn over his undershirt; a long robe or coat, split before and behind, for riding; a short over coat with a round patch on the breast and shoulders on which was inscribed the name of his division or brigade as well as the name of his regiment and company, also his own name. The riding coat was dark blue with green or red facings, the long coat was grey; he also wore a sash, hat and boots. The price for this outfit was deducted by small instalments from the soldier's regular pay, so that it took one a year or two to get out of debt on the Adjutant's books.
The Miao Rebels
According to Mesny the enemy, during the mid-nineteenth century, consisted of four separate and individual groups.
1. Remnants of the Taiping reformers detached from Shih Ta-kai's Second Army (Hung-ping chün)
2. Two local factions of local rebels
A. Huang-hao The Yellow 'Signals'
B. Pai-hao The White 'Signals'
3. Mohammedan rebels: Hui-fei, called Pai-ch'i- White Flags
4. The Miao-tzu aboriginals Miao-fei (83 different tribes)
The Szechuan Force had suppressed the first three groups before beginning the campaign to suppress the fourth, the Miao.
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