[ { "id": 208030, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 69, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "A JOURNEY TO YENAN 1946\n\n53\n\nit helped prevent disappearance of vital parts of the trucks (and also the precious cargo) and one did not have to contend with the intelligent West China bed bugs which were liable to infest the inns.\n\nReturn to Chungking\n\nComing through the passes and down into Szechuan the first signs of spring appeared, the delicate pale green of the young willow leaves and the rich red earth contrasting with the dry, dusty, harshness of the Shensi countryside. Most of our passengers had not, one gathered, been to Szechuan before and were seeing all this fabled richness of the province for the first time. Crossing the Fu River ferry at Mienyang brought us into the plains and we came next to Ching Mo Kuan (Green Pines Pass) where the main customs and control station for Chungking was situated. This was another place where we had anticipated difficulty, especially if the negotiations had taken a turn for the worse since we left Yenan two weeks before. We pulled up near the barrier and everyone stayed in the trucks. We kept the engines running while Yu Chin-lung and I took our documents for checking to the duty officer. When asked what passengers we had we truthfully replied \"Forty members of the 8th Route Army\" which he solemnly wrote down and then chopped our pass. We were in the trucks and handing this to the sentry before the officer could report to higher authority. So, much relieved, we drove on to Chungking, off-loaded our passengers outside the city and then returned, via the upper ferry, to our South Bank base. Distance covered about 3200 kilometres in a travelling time of 32 days and, apart from our initial crash, no accidents, and few roadside repairs.\n\nThree days after our return we were again entertained by the 18th Group Army and General Chou En-lai personally thanked us for what we had done. Later we were invited to send medical teams up into the Border Region working directly with the medical authorities there. The FAU/FSU continued after Liberation and the last member left China in 1952.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211668, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 83, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "58\n\nTaiwan is dedicated to General Su. He is worshipped by Lukang traders of Quemoy (Chinmen) stock for protection. Two images of him stand on the main altar, one being the main image (Su Fu Ta Wang Yeh *) and the other a secondary image (Erh Wang Yeh Em). According to the temple keeper the latter was carved to satisfy the demand of worshippers for a portable image to take home for private reverence. A third image known as the San Wang Yeh (=E) was placed on the altar of a nearby branch temple (Fen miao). A number of branch temples dedicated to Su as a Wang Yeh, a Ch'ien Sui and as a General or Marshal (Chiangchun and Yuanshuai é) are to be found in many places in central and northern Taiwan.\n\nHis image on the main altar of his temple in Lukang portrays him as black faced and black bearded, a standard carving of a seated dignitary wearing a scholar's gilded cap. Before him are seated five other images, one is the portable image of him in the centre, flanked by the four minor Ch'ien Sui, Chiu, Liang, Chin and Ts'ai,\n\nIt is interesting to note that the deities in the temple at Lukang are colloquially referred to as Su Fu San Wang Yeh, The Three Su Wang Yeh. This despite them being but one person, and there being only two images in the main temple whilst the third is in a temple nearby.\n\nFinally, some dozen or so small images of standing soldiers in a V formation together with their commander crowd a secondary altar in the temple. They represent the army of General Su.\n\nThese four are examples of non-pestilence protective deities referred to as Wang Yeh; there are a few other deities, not protective deities as such, who are also referred to as Wang Yeh in Taiwan. A good example is the T'ang emperor Ming Huang, patron of actors and actresses, known also as the Prince of the Western Ch'in (Hsi Ch'in Wang Yeh Еƒ). He fled to Szechuan province in the far west of China after he abdicated which led to him being given this title. T'ang Ming Huang is probably best known to foreigners for his infatuation with the concubine Yang Kuei-fei which nearly lost him his throne.\n\nTo conclude, the large cult of Pestilence Wang Yeh, almost exclusively worshipped nowadays by the Fukienese and referred to simply as Wang Yeh has been confused over the years with other cults whose individual deities have borne the same honorific which, despite being protective", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212715, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 24, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "9\n\nany newly-opened port for them to be snatched up and at almost any price by Chinese merchants..... until the Chinese purchaser came to close quarters with the English importer, eliminating middlemen at small ports and to transferring operations chiefly to the great emporiums of Hong Kong and Shanghai.'\n\nHankow was the other city in which, on and off, Mesny spent a dozen or so years and where eventually he died, a city on the north bank of the Yangtze, part of the three-city metropolis now known as Wuhan. It was the major commercial port in central China during the second half of the 19th century, containing British, German, Russian, Japanese and French settlements, known as Concessions. Hankow was opened as a treaty port in 1861, a year before Mesny arrived there and became famous abroad as the start of the annual tea-clipper race back to England.\n\nThe province of Kueichou in south-west China, where Mesny also spent a number of years was one of the most backward areas of China. It had been under Chinese rule since the Han at about the time of Christ, but only became a separate province during the Ming, in AD 1413. Waves of Chinese immigration, mainly from neighbouring Szechuan and Hunan provinces, forced the non-Chinese minority tribesmen out of the fertile valleys leading eventually to discontent and finally rebellion. Mesny's story is illuminating in a number of respects. There were always foreigners who took up minor posts with the Chinese bureaucracy, particularly during the modernisation campaigns which took place during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Old photographs exist showing foreigners in, for example, a Chinese arsenal beside foreign machinery or weapons, both as advisers and trainers, but few ever wrote of their experiences. The most interesting part of Mesny's life, however, standing out as a unique experience, was the short period of some five to six years when he served with two provincial forces of the Chinese Imperial Army on active service helping suppress a rising of the Miao, a subjugated minority race in a remote part of southern China. [See Appendix C for a summary of the first campaign against the Miao in which Mesny took part]. Probably the most interesting part of these narratives is the reasonably detailed description of Chinese soldiering during this relatively minor campaign. It is full of anecdotal descriptions of campaigning in central south China against a redoubtable foe, the Miao people, though regrettably Mesny fails to go into detail about such interesting subjects as how he was paid, how patronage worked up to him personally, etc. He does, however, cover a number of themes in his Notes on the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212719, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 28, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "13 \n\nimposes upon readers. He had joined the large skirmishing force led by General Liu Ho-ling, commander of the Ko-i Force of the Szechuan Army Corps and Mesny's immediate chief, to harry the Miao tribesmen. Mesny remarks that upon retiring the General and Mesny came under fire from a Miao ambush with hundreds of bullets whizzing close to them. Mesny quickly dismounted and soon cleared the wood [in which the ambushers were hidden] and the enemy fled leaving their dead and wounded. Some ten lines further on, after an anecdote about a splendid prize that he had captured, an eight foot long Miao rifle, he explained that the Miao-tzu had lost more men in and near that wood than they had all day as Mesny had laid an 'ambuscade' for them with two companies of General Liu's guards. If one bears with Mesny's usual hyperbolic claim that he had laid the successful ambush, one is left wondering what he was doing, alongside the General, when they fell into the ambush, which Mesny would appear from an earlier paragraph to have foiled alone with great success.\n\nAt another point in the narrative, when General Liu goes off leading a local attack, he leaves Mesny behind because 'the Commander-in-chief needed Mesny's advice more than he, General Liu, did.' Liu was defeated, 'badly' says Mesny, and one can sense the schadenfreude. Mesny added that one of the battalion commanders had commented that General Liu would appreciate Mesny's abilities better in future! It is not hard to imagine General Liu becoming more and more irritated by this young foreign whippersnapper who always knew best. General Liu has only to leave Mesny behind and, as luck would have it, be defeated.\n\nHis lengthy and often involved autobiographical essay in his Miscellanies only cover the period from 1861, when he was 19, to 1870 and the end of the first campaign in Kueichou to suppress the Miao tribesmen's rebellion, when he was still only 28. From 1870 on we are dependent upon the copious and varied snippets in his Miscellanies, both long and short, until the final publication of the Miscellanies in 1905 when he was 64. Dr Tiedemann of SOAS, University of London, has discovered that Mesny wrote at least a dozen letters from Kueichou from May 1872 to February 1874 published in the Shanghai newspaper, Shanghai Budget and perhaps even more in the Celestial Empire, the paper which took over the Shanghai Budget in 1874. No copies of these papers appear to be available though we can surmise that they probably covered Mesny's activities during that period. From 1905 until his death fourteen years later, in 1919, we have to rely on his obituary, admittedly", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212735, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 44, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "29\n\n1st Class in a sedan carried by four bearers.' This was probably no more than hyperbole. He stated in his Miscellanies that he had once possessed a very fine sedan-chair presented to him in Szechuan, with a magnetic compass let into the hand rest or bar which is placed across the chair in front of the rider to rest his hands on.\n\nImperial officials, and their principal wives, wore large embroidered square badges tacked across their surcoat's chest and back, which in addition to their hat buttons, denoted their rank. These were worn by all nine grades of civil officials and, according to Garret, by military officers of the Manchu army stationed in provincial garrisons and in Manchu quarters in large cities. This might explain why Mesny failed to mention squares, apart from five paragraphs describing them and their use, and a remark in passing that a Major-General, 2nd Class of the 2nd Degree would have a 'lion' breast badge. When he visited Amoy in 1879 he was reported in the local foreign press having worn western clothes but with the red button of mandarin rank on top of his foreign cap. As he never spelled out that he ever wore the badge and button commensurate with his military rank we shall probably never know whether he ever did wear such a badge.\n\nHe possessed a Chinese passport consisting of a large single sheet of printed white paper, usually endorsed with certain conditions but in Mesny's case it entitled him to protection in all provinces and beyond the Great Wall, unlimited as to a period of time. He was, he added, never asked for it. It called on all county officials to afford the traveller due protection, safe guidance and reasonable information. He also had at various times official Circular Dispatches [ch'uan-p'ai]. These, he explained, were issued to officials travelling on government service entitling them to named supplies of food, fodder, carts, chairs, pack mules, saddle horses, coolies and accommodation in official inns along the whole line of march.\n\nHe had an official seal when he was the General Superintendent of Foreign Ordnance for the whole of Kueichou province, an appointment he obtained during the Winter of 1875 and held until March of 1877. He explained that he observed all the due formalities of putting away his seal during the New Year annual rites and ceremonies. The seal, he claimed, bore his rank as Lieutenant-General, and Knight Ying of the Order of Pa-t'u-lu. We have no idea of the rank and grade of the Superintendent and as he does not refer to himself as Lieutenant-General", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212749, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 58, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "43\n\nespecially in water, He wrote that the Chinese generally assert that snakes and tortoises cohabit; he continued with a story with details at variance with his original version, “and I have seen paintings of turtles and tortoises,1 and metal castings also, with a snake wound about, the emblem of strength and longevity; and on inquiry, I have always been told the same story that it was the only way of multiplying both species. In the Miscellany he also wrote that he had seen a bronze image of a turtle and snake connected together in one of the taoist temples at Chi-nan Fu in Shantung.\n\nVery occasionally his stories verged on the salubrious but were never risqué. Describing his voyage up the Yangtze and passing Wu Shan he described an incident from Chinese mythology which led to a Chinese euphemism. The legend was about the 'pious and eccentric lady Yao-chi who lived before the Christian era immortalised by the ancient poet Sung Yü in an ode. She had entertained a princely guest in the Yang Tai Tower of Voluptuousness, and gratified him with the delights of Yün-yü, 'the Clouds and Rain,' hence the saying Yün-meng T'ai, 'Cloudy Dream of the Voluptuous Tower' which had become a synonym for excessive love and passionate desire for sexual intercourse. The name Yao-chi has in the same manner become the common appellation of renowned courtesans.\n\nSumming Up\n\nMesny's life in China falls neatly in two parts, the first thirteen years of excitement and adventure, followed by forty-five years living to a great extent on his 'bubble reputations', a spent force, living from day to day always in the hope of something turning up. It rarely does and on his own admission he fluctuated from comparative wealth to living hand to mouth.\n\nThere is however little doubt that at one period in his life at least, Mesny was trusted by his immediate Chinese superiors, as far that is as any Chinese official would have faith and confidence in a non-Chinese. These were the Chinese generals in the Imperial Army of Szechuan under whom Mesny served in Kueichou. Mesny seems to have spent the rest of his life trying, not all that successfully, to ensure that his ambitions were beneficial and to the best advantage of all, including himself. He made a great point about his ideas for the modernisation of China, each of them in turn rejected but then later put into practice without", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212750, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 59, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "44\n\nacknowledging the initial concept having been his, or so he claimed.\n\n+\n\nHe has been described as 'an adventurer and an explorer, a plant collector and a Chinese general. He was certainly an adventurer though nowadays he would be referred to as a soldier of fortune, an adviser, an opportunist, and even a mercenary.\n\nThe question remains, how successful was he? Money certainly came his way at times though judging from his Will, he was not a particularly successful businessman. He certainly collected plants and sent them back to the British Consul in Canton and has one specimen, Jasminum Mesnyii, named after him. He bore the brevet rank of Lieutenant General in the Chinese Imperial army but to what extent this was a genuine rank rather than an honour and a courtesy rank, though fully earned during his military service, is hard to judge. Again, though accurately described as an explorer, he was in fact much more of a traveller in parts of China already settled by Chinese and visited earlier by other foreigners. The trek he made, as recorded by Captain Gill, from Ch’eng-tu in Szechuan province to Burma through what was then called lower Tibet has a different slant to what would have been Mesny's account. In Gill's Mesny is scarcely mentioned and he would appear to have been taken along by Gill as his interpreter. It would have been interesting to have read what Mesny would have, and indeed may have written about his journey of very nearly four months with Gill.\n\nHe saw himself as what nowadays would be called a go-between, a consultant, and in those days regarded, perhaps, as a fixer. Mesny had a few major bees in his bonnet the most barefaced of which was the value he put on the advice he constantly proffered to every senior Chinese official whose ear he could reach on how to modernise China. He had, for example, prepared a list of some nineteen items, suggestions presented to the Viceroy Chang Chih-tung, and although Mesny assures us that Chang accepted the list there is no evidence that he did anything about it or if he did, that he even mentioned Mesny in any memorials to the throne. Mesny wrote indignantly at one point in his Miscellany about his list of suggestions to Chang having been ignored, or put into practice piecemeal and inexpertly, penny pinching and ineffectually without any reference whatsoever to Mesny.\n\nIn 1906 at the very end of his fourth and final volume of his Miscellany he prided himself on his advice with the words 'All those great industrial", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212772, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 81, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "66\n\nof An-shun Fu until, by 1867, the Imperial troops, who had first fought to suppress the major threat from the Taipings, were able to raise sufficient forces to recover the 'lost' lands. The two Kueichou campaigns dragged on for five or more years with, so some claimed, possibly only one tenth of the Miao population surviving. Mesny only describes the first campaign.\n\nThe story of the first campaign which took place in the northern part of the remote and mountainous province of Kueichou during the four years from 1868 as described by Mesny consists of episodes, incidents and background in a day by day or month by month description of one or two of the major skirmishes and assaults, victories and defeats of the one particular Chinese Imperial force, raised and funded by the province of Szechuan. Two other forces were involved, the armies of Hunan province and the internal force of Kueichou province whose army was combined with a force from Yunnan province [northern Kueichou being flanked by the provinces of Szechuan, Hunan and Yunnan]. Mesny's descriptions of the problems of military re-supply, funding, rewarding merit, the punishment of criminals both military and civilian, the treatment of prisoners and medical problems, as well as his descriptions of camp life and inter-officer relations, make the narrative a most interesting story.\n\nThe campaign has been hardly mentioned in histories of China and was probably of little interest in Peking at the time. However, here we had three Chinese Imperial forces operating far from supply bases, some with little incentive to do much more than draw their pay and keep their heads down, and a foreigner with a glorified opinion of his own importance, based in the heart of the Szechuan Force alongside the general in charge of the Central Army and not too far from the Commander-in-Chief [C-in-C]. Mesny's role, so he told us, was to advise his C-in-C and his general on modern foreign arms and their maintenance. We should however bear in mind that Mesny was but 26 at the start of the campaign, and had had no official military training other than having been a seaman and having learned something about the handling of artillery from British ex-servicemen whilst he had been a Customs Officer with the Chinese Imperial Customs on the Yangtze. Amongst his numerous claims to military fame one of the lesser ones was his successful organisation and training of a company of artificers for use at headquarters during the first Kueichou campaign.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212773, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 82, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "67\n\nMesny, writing in the first person some thirty years later, was not in any way slow in claiming that he played key roles in the campaign and frequently related how his improvements on the battle plans conceived by the Szechuan Force's senior officers were immediately adopted and were always successful. On the occasion when a general went ahead with his plan without Mesny, which ended in defeat and failure, Mesny made no bones about it; the failure was due to the lack of foresight of the general concerned for not first consulting Mesny!\n\nAlso of significance is the infrequent mention by Mesny of the Manchu Tartars. Considering that China was at this stage still under the rule of the Manchu dynasty, with the main forces of the Imperial Army in Manchu hands, and whose armies consisted to a considerable extent of Manchu bannermen, there is no indication from Mesny of Manchus being involved in the campaigns to suppress the Miao, and his only reference to the Manchus was the sighting of Manchu women in a town on his journey along the Yangtze. Manchu emperors had permitted only Manchus real power and had not allowed Chinese to hold independent commands until Tseng Kuo-fan was given a military command during the Taiping rebellion, in 1852. His army, called the Army of Hunan, won many of its battles leading to other Chinese armies being raised, one of which was the Army of Szechuan into which Mesny was recruited. How much Mesny understood the behind-the-scenes politics in play directing the control of the force in which he served is difficult to assess as, for example, he does not refer to the Manchus at any point. He would have us believe that he was frequently the confidante of Chinese senior military officers; logic, however, suggests that he, a foreigner in his twenties who had had no previous military experience, would be unlikely to be told anything of the more complex struggles and challenges for control and power within his or other Chinese forces.\n\nMesny's position within the Chinese Imperial military, as he described it, was complex. On joining the Szechuan Army Corps at Kuei-yang at the age of 26 in 1868, he was given a commission and brevet rank of Ch'ien-tsung +, which he equated on one page of his Miscellany to a First Class Warrant Officer or Sergeant Major, and on another page with a Company Commander or Captain.\n\nIn early 1870 he was awarded the rank and honour of ts'an-chiang hsien. The 'hsien', according to Hucker in his Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China, is a troublesome term. It is often", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212774, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 83, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "68\n\nrendered as brevet rank, which Mesny did. 'Ts'an-chiang is an assistant regional commander [tsung-ping kuan], rank 3a in the Chinese forces called the Green Banner. However, according to Brunnert and Hagelstrom, [Present Day Political Organisation of China [1911], translated from the Russian], it equated to Lieutenant Colonel. Mesny lists it as 'Colonel, the lowest grade of general.\n\nBy the latter days of the second Kueichou campaign he appears to have been promoted to the rank of Major-General, and some twelve years later was awarded the rank of Brevet Lieutenant-General, bearing the title for the remainder of his life. As he is portrayed in foreign-style uniform in a photograph in the Miscellany and yet occasionally refers to himself wearing Chinese attire with his Chinese buttons of rank, it is far from clear whether these were genuine ranks or honorary ones awarded to an attached civilian. It is noteworthy that he never refers to himself wearing a mandarin square [the chest badge], though he does mention his cap button. His uniform as an instructor in the army of Tso Tsung-tang consisted of a cap of the French kepi pattern, ornamented with the Chinese coat of arms [two dragons struggling for a burning globe], with a coat and trousers of dark blue navy cloth, ‘nicely braided front, back and sleeves.\n\nMesny explained that between 1868-1871 for two or more years he was in one corps of fifteen2 battalions styled the Ko-i Ch'üan-chün [brigade], part of the Shu-chün, the Szechuan Army Corps; and another for four years with a corps styled Wu-tzu Ch'üan-chün741, also in Kueichou, i.e. from 1871-1874. The latter corps was also in the original Hsiang-chün, [the Hunan Army]. Regrettably this confuses his story rather than clarifying it, as we do not know when he served with the Hsiang-chün unless he means the Wu-tzu corps which in another part of his Miscellany he noted to have been part of the Hunan Force.\n\nAs far as can be ascertained from the jigsaw pieces he has supplied us with, Mesny, when he was with the Szechuan Army Corps in the first campaign in Kueichou province from 1868-1871, and again during the second campaign from 1871-1876 with the Wu-tzu Hunan Army Corps, almost certainly served with one of the new provincial armies which he refers to in his Miscellany as Disciplined Army Battalions.3 At no point does he actually say so in so many words, but bearing in mind the grades he gave for the ranks and styles of the senior officers in his Force and as he was particularly scathing about the proficiency of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212775, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 84, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "69\n\nGreen Standard forces and not so about the Lien-chün, we can assume that he was a member of, or attached to one of the Lien-chün.\n\nMesny wrote relatively short explanatory notes in the first volume of his Miscellanies on the three armies, the Army of the Huai River, the Army of the Hsiang River and the Army of Ch'u, about which he felt he had unique knowledge having served with the Chinese military.\n\n'The Huai Army, an important Field Force raised in the area drained by the River Huai, did such good service to the Imperial cause under the C-in-C Li Hung-chang, who had been wise enough to advocate and introduce the use of foreign weapons. The Ever-victorious Army, styled Chang-sheng Chün, first organised and disciplined in a foreign manner by General Ward and subsequently rendered so famous under the command of General Gordon, was the principal corps of this army, and consisted of 5,000 men all told. The Ming-tzu Ying, another corps of the same army, raised by General and later Governor Liu Ming-ch'uan, and disciplined by General Pinel and Colonel Lucas, though senior to the Ever-victorious was, however, secondary in importance at the time' [but still existed when Mesny was writing this in 1895].\n\nAt no time did Mesny allude to a general staff in the sense we understand it today. This raises the question what did the Force have by way of what we now call an operations staff or department? Nor did Mesny refer to staff officers responsible for the organisation of manpower or materials; and although he mentioned procurement officers and a staff of officers surrounding the General commanding to carry out his bidding, 'operations' as such, the most crucial aspect of an army's functioning was kept strictly in the hands of the Szechuan force C-in-C. It would appear that military operations in their wider sense were directed by civil mandarins who were more interested in cost cutting than in the direction of the campaign, whereas the military officers, who grade for grade were very much the juniors to the civil mandarins, were responsible for the day to day running of the various forces.\n\nForward planning was always limited by financial constraints. Arms and ammunition, rations and reinforcements had to be reviewed and planned well in advance, but with the attitude of the Viceroy in Ch'eng-tu [according to Mesny] and the restraints imposed by him little could ever be expected to be achieved.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212776, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 85, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "70\n\nOne of the problems faced by the Szechuan Force commander was the distance between his headquarters and the Viceroy's Yamen in the Szechuanese capital at Ch'eng-tu and the time it took for orders and reports to be carried between them. The length of time between reporting back to Ch'eng-tu and receiving instructions either encouraged the Force commander to take too much upon himself or to sit and wait for further intelligence or instructions. When the Hunanese Force was defeated on its way to take part in a joint operation with the Szechuan force, communications were such that the first the Szechuanese general knew that the plan had gone wrong was from stragglers from the defeated Hunanese Force and from captured Miao. Considering the terrain the commanders had no real choice as communications relied upon runners who had to cross enemy country where the Miao who knew the country well were in full control.\n\nWhilst Mesny did not provide any evidence of the consultative procedure, if indeed there was one, between the Viceroy of Szechuan and the Szechuan Force commander, we do know from Mesny that the military commander in Ch’eng-tu, the Tartar General Chung-shih, was visited by the Szechuan Force commander when the Szechuan Force commander returned to the provincial capital to pay his respects to the visiting Li Hung-chang.\n\nAn Outline Description of The First Campaign against the Miao: 1868-1871\n\nThe first campaign by the Chinese Imperial Forces in Kueichou to suppress the rebellious Miao tribesmen, as seen through Mesny's eyes, began with a thrust by the major element of the Szechuan Force into the heartland of Miao territory during the late summer of 1868. The Kueichou provincial Force and the Hunan Force, two other separate armies under their own commanders, paid and supported by their own provinces, flanked the Szechuan Force though, as we hear little about them and their activities from Mesny, we are led to believe that they were relatively inactive. The interesting point about the forces used to suppress this local rebellion of Miao tribesmen [which was minor on the scale of events], was that each of the Chinese Imperial forces was controlled unilaterally and led by Chinese officers from the contiguous provinces of Kueichou, Hunan and Szechuan without any senior general empowered to command all three forces. Until relatively recently senior military commanders in the Chinese Imperial Army had in the main been Manchus and not native Chinese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212778, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 87, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "72\n\nbasic elements of the social network and were such obvious facts of life that Chinese took them for granted and did not think of them as in any way unusual.\n\nThe Army of the Hsiang was an important Field Force raised in Hunan, especially in the area of the Hsiang River, a sort of counter-balance to the Huai River Army, raised about the same time for the suppression of the Taiping rebellion in the valley of the Yangtze and elsewhere. The Marquis Tseng Kuo-fan was the C-in-C of the Hsiang-chün consisting of Hunan troops which had at first been designated as the Ch'u-chün or Army of Ch'u, a name derived from the ancient state of Ch'u, which comprised the provinces of Hunan and Hupei, as well as other provinces including the whole or part of Anhui and Honan. The Ch'u-chün was commanded by Tso Tsung-t'ang. The Hsiang Army was divided into several army corps or divisions, each numbering from ten to twenty, or even thirty battalions each of five hundred men. Each corps had a distinct designation or appellation, derived from the locality where it was actually organised or from the name or part of the name of the commander of the particular corps. One corps however, the principal one, was styled the Hsiang-ying from its having been organised in the prefecture of Changsha Fu on the banks of the Hsiang River. When more corps were required, however, the name Hsiang-chün was brought into use as with the Huai-chün, to represent all the corps of each army.”\n\nAlthough Mesny obliquely mentioned a higher command, the Ministry of War in Peking, regrettably he did not offer any information which would explain the subordination and chain of command other than telling us that the commander of the Szechuan Force, General T'ang, took his orders from the Viceroy of Szechuan and obtained supplies and funding, when they were forthcoming, from the Szechuanese provincial authorities in Ch'eng-tu.\n\nThe plan now was for the main body of the Ko-i Brigade to advance and occupy the city of Chung-an [Szu] on the Chung-an River by way of Ta-ngai and Chung-pai (later renamed Chung-sheng), whilst another element of the brigade would advance and occupy Huang-p'ing Hsin-chou [New Town].\n\nThe advance began on 18 March 1869. Several days later Chung-an had been occupied and fortified, as had Huang-p'ing New Town. Chung-an was overlooked by hills and mountains occupied by", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212781, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 90, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "75\n\nof the Szechuan Force under the C-in-C had been badly defeated and had left him in the lurch without support. However, the other half of the fourteen battalions remained in Ch'ing-p'ing Hsien and stood firm, and even recovered much of the abandoned equipment. This was not reported to Kuei-yang and Ch'engtu in Szechuan in time to benefit the C-in-C of the Szechuan Force, the story put about by the commander of the seven battalions who had evacuated Ch'ing-p'ing Hsien being believed and acted upon. The C-in-C, T’ang, was therefore degraded and posted to Szechuan,\n\nThe story, according to Mesny's narrative, ended with the demobilisation of several units of the Szechuan Force, the C-in-C's guards and the Ko-i Brigade in particular, and with Mesny settling into life as an adviser to the new supreme commander of all the Imperial forces in Kueichou, Chou Ta-wu; leaving us in anticipation of the next and successful campaign to suppress the rebel Miao, beginning later the same year, 1871, to be published by Mesny. Regrettably it never seems to have got beyond either Mesny's pencil jottings or good intentions.\n\nThe Organisation of the Szechuan Force\n\nIn his Notes on Chinese Military Services Mesny explained that there were several branches of the Army, the Manchu Banner Corps, the Mongol Banner Corps and the Chinese Banner Corps, each with eight banners. There were also the Chinese militia called Chih-ping; volunteer troops raised during the Taiping Rebellion and on many other occasions of emergency, called Yung-ying or simply Yung i.e. braves [known to Mesny as the Mobile Volunteer Force], and the local train bands\", Tuan-lien [known to Mesny as the Sedentary Volunteer Force]; armed peasants trained in the use of weapons for the defence of their homes in both town and country.\n\nMesny appears to have used notes written during the early 1870s to compile his descriptions of the Chinese Imperial forces and seems not to have taken much advantage of the benefit of hindsight to amend them prior to going to press in 1895. It had proved difficult to differentiate between Mesny's personal knowledge and his accuracy in recording detail, and information he acquired from other non-Chinese sources. Many of his notes on the Manchu Army and the Green Standard Regiments have been taken from Mayers'\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212782, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 91, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "76\n\nThe Chinese Government, Mayers does not refer to the Lien-chûn Ying. Mesny's ambiguous descriptions are confusing though it would seem that there were four separate bodies, the Banner Forces, the ill-trained Green Standard armies under provincial control, the Disciplined Battalions formed from the Green Standards forces, and the local defence train bands.\n\nThe standing army was divided into two great classes, the Banner Forces, [Ch'i-ping], and the Militia Forces (Chih-ping]. The real Chinese National Army also called Ying-ping generally styled by foreigners as the Green Banner Force [Lu-ch'i Ying'] derived its title from the colour of their triangular standard, green satin with a red satin scalloped border and a golden dragon embroidered in the centre. Each province had a separate army corps under a C-in-C styled Ti-tu Chün-men [one such force was the Kueichou Provincial Force operating alongside the Szechuan Force in which Mesny served]. The forces consisted entirely of Chinese and were, in fact, a part of the local militia. Three centuries ago, wrote Mesny, it was the finest military force in the world: as it was in 1895, he added. The force was beneath criticism.\n\nThe Disciplined Army battalions, the Lien-Chün Ying [troops trained by and after foreign advisers], was a new organisation instituted by Ts'en Yü-ying, formerly Governor of Yunnan, Kueichou, Fukien and subsequently Governor-General of the Yun-kuei provinces. It consisted of detachments from the various Territorial Green Regiments formed into battalions and bearing the same territorial name as the regiment from which they had been detached and of which these detachments actually formed or constituted a fighting or field battalion. The Disciplined Battalions were armed with obsolete rifles but far superior to anything opposed to them in Yunnan or Kueichou. These Disciplined Armies, often referred to as the Anhui and Hunan Armies, were originally privately raised and financed by Tseng Kuo-fan and Li Hung-chang to combat the Taiping rebel armies and were under the personal command of Han Chinese generals. Later, they employed westerners such as Mesny to assist China's programme of 'self-strengthening', primarily in the sphere of armaments.\n\nAlthough Mesny explained that there was a lack of uniformity in organisation throughout the whole of China he went into some detail, and added that each provincial army corps was considered a regular", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212783, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 92, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "77\n\narmy in itself, especially organised to meet the requirements of its own territorial demands or necessities. The various provincial army corps [chün] consisted of two or more territorial divisions called chen besides several [from 3-10] territorial brigades called hsieh. The divisions consisted of several regiments and battalions, both of which were called ying; the regiments were commanded by ts'an-chiang [colonels] or yu-chi [lieutenant-colonels], and battalions by tu-ssu [majors]. Most regiments and battalions were divided into two or more companies, shao; however, a few regiments and battalions were not divided at all, with the officers in each regiment or battalion holding common authority over all portions of the regiment or brigade.\n\nMesny frequently referred to individuals as holding the rank of lieutenant-colonel in one context whilst elsewhere describing them as generals. This was finally clarified in a throwaway line buried in other text when he wrote, 'In China Brigadier-Generals, Colonels and Lieutenant-Colonels in command were all considered to be General officers, that is Chiang-Chün.' General officers, chiang-kuan, in the territorial army were those brigadiers, colonels and lieutenant colonels in command. In field forces the commanders of battalions were also so styled by courtesy irrespective of rank. The same courtesy was extended to the chief of battalion, ying-kuan, in field forces where many of them had only permission to wear a button sometimes of the lowest civil rank and degree.\n\nMesny summarised the order of battle including the Chinese naval forces, with two provinces, Kuangtung and Fukien each having a naval force, and another stationed on the Yangtze. Finally, with the northern steam fleet of iron-clads there was a total of twenty-one army corps, i.e. provincial forces, and four naval corps for the whole Chinese empire. To these had to be added the Tartar Banner forces forming the garrisons of several important towns, Canton, Foochou, Hangchou, Cha-pu, Chinkiang, Nanking, Peking and elsewhere. Also the numerous regular field troops denominated Yung or Lien-chün which had been kept under arms in various parts of the empire since the Taiping Rebellion (which, he added, were a great deal more formidable in numbers as well as effectiveness than the whole of the sedentary garrisons or ordinary chün or army).\n\nIt was not until, literally, the latter days of the first campaign that an overall commander was appointed, with the Szechuan Force commander", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212788, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 97, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "82\n\nof 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.\n\nA 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.\n\nThe Miao Rebels\n\nAccording to Mesny the enemy, during the mid-nineteenth century, consisted of four separate and individual groups.\n\n1. Remnants of the Taiping reformers detached from Shih Ta-kai's Second Army (Hung-ping chün)\n\n2. Two local factions of local rebels\n\nA. Huang-hao The Yellow 'Signals'\n\nB. Pai-hao The White 'Signals'\n\n3. Mohammedan rebels: Hui-fei, called Pai-ch'i- White Flags\n\n4. The Miao-tzu aboriginals Miao-fei (83 different tribes)\n\nThe Szechuan Force had suppressed the first three groups before beginning the campaign to suppress the fourth, the Miao.\n\n83", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212789, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 98, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "83\n\nFrom Mesny's various descriptions of the Szechuan Force with which he served the following, extracted from numerous items within his Miscellanies, is a considered view of the Order of Battle of the Force:\n\nSzechuan Army Corps\n\nKueichou\n\n(1868-1872)\n\nCommander-in-chief [tsung-t'ung]: T'ang Chiung\n\nThe Szechuan Army Corps consisted of\n\ntwo self-contained rifle brigades of Chinese forces\n\ni.e. Field Force Units (Lien-chün Ying)\n\nthe An-ting Ch'ũan-chün and the Ko (or Kuo)-i Ch'ũan-chün\n\n安定全軍\n\n果義全軍\n\nunder the direct\n\ncommand of the C-in-C\n\nconsisting of ten battalions\n\nunder command of General Liu\n\nHo-ling consisting of fifteen\n\nbattalions", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212792, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 101, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "86\n\nNOTES\n\nIn one of the notes written by Mesny in his Miscellany, [Volume 4 page 34], he listed the various classes and degrees of military rank in what he terms the Chinese Militia Service. A marshal or general was a T'i-tu Chün-men, a lieutenant-general was a Tsung-ping Kuan, a major-general a Fu-chiang; and a colonel a Ts'an-chiang.\n\n2 Mesny gives various totals for the number of battalions serving with the Szechuan Force and in particular with the Ko-i Brigade, with a grand total of thirty-three battalions in the whole Force. These vary from eight to fifteen and a half operating with the Ko-i Brigade. Presumably the explanation lies in the arrival of new battalions to support the Force from time to time, though we are unable to be certain how many battalions were serving at any one particular moment.\n\nMesny states at the beginning of Volume 1 of his Miscellanies that in 1861 General Ward had organised a disciplined force for the Chinese Government, at first locally styled \"Ward's Force\" and later as the 'Ever-victorious Legion'.\n\n4 Mesny later keeps referring to thirty-five battalions.\n\nThe I-ho-t'uan, the \"Patriotic Train Band\", was the official title of the Boxers, of ill-repute.\n\n6 Mesny too had been a member of a train band, the volunteer force in Hankow between 1863-67, under arms several times during the approach of the Nien-fei rebels, when he wore the uniform of the Queen's Western Rifles [sic].\n\n7 Mesny goes into some detail providing recruitment policy, promotion schemes, ranks and titles, training and duties.\n\nUse of the term Disciplined Force was a contemporary fashion. It later became popular to refer to the Lien-chun Ying as Field Forces.\n\n9\n\nMost of the ranks of unit commanders given by Mesny do not tally with those given by Hucker in his Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China.\n\n10 All commanders of divisions and corps had one or more battalions, regiments or brigades, serving a sort of staff brigade and forming the headquarters of that particular army corps. It was popularly designated the Body Guard Battalion or Regiment.\n\nPresumably Han Chinese rebels such as the Huang-hao or the Pai-hao, the remnants of the Taipings or even the Moslem rebels.\n\n12 This is the same title as the Force previously operating under the command of General Gordon during the Taiping Rebellion. Either Mesny has incorrectly recalled the title of the new Force or the new Force continued to bear the former title.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212796, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 105, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "90\n\nThree Bold Adventurers to fight alongside the Nien rebels. After being captured and carried to Chin-chiang in a cage, he was saved by two British artillery officers serving with the Taiping forces.\n\nThe third time was in Hankow when Mesny took Damström along with him as a heavy-weight. The incident occurred after Mesny 'arrested' the dishonest Chinese merchant who had swindled Dupuis. [These incidents are probably not in temporal order].\n\nDupuis, Jean\n\nA French merchant born ca. 1828, who arrived and lived in Hankow in about 1860. He built up a thriving trade in armaments. Fluent in Chinese, he introduced Mesny to the Szechuanese officials whose invitation to serve with the Szechuan Force changed his life. Mesny remarked that Dupuis was a distinguished explorer and 'conqueror of Tonkin.'\n\nGill, William J: born Bangalore 1843\n\nServed in India after being commissioned into the Royal Engineers. Inherited a fortune and indulged his passion for exploration. One of his travels was through north Szechuan province, where first he travelled alone and then later with Mesny to Burma. He wrote The River of Golden Sand in 1880, and after several other travels, in Tripoli and Afghanistan, he was murdered by Bedouins in 1882.\n\nGiquel, Prosper M. [1835-1886]\n\nA French naval officer who arrived in China during the Second China War. Formerly Commissioner of Imperial Maritime Customs at Ningpo and Hankow. He assisted the Sino-French 'Ever Triumphant Army' that fought alongside Tso Tsung-t'ang's force in Chekiang province to recapture Hangchow and Ningpo, and later commanded the force in operations that led to the recapture of Hangchow, for which he received high rank and honour from the Ch'ing government. His principal achievement was the construction and administration of the Foochow Arsenal in 1866, and dockyard with its fleet of warships. He was the only foreigner besides Gordon to receive the honour of the Yellow Riding Jacket.\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212801, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 110, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "Terminology\n\n95\n\nButton : The knobs used by the Manchu dynasty to indicate rank, worn on top of caps. They were either transparent or opaque and, depending on rank, red, blue, white or plain gold.\n\nCash: the only coin cast in Imperial China prior to modernisation in the early twentieth century; a crude copper disk each with a square hole in the centre for convenience in carrying a large quantity, hence the expression ‘strings of cash'. Cash, like taels [see below] lacked uniformity in value, and strings, normally a thousand cash, often were composed of 700 pieces or even 1100 according to the regulations prevailing in the locality at the time. Giles claimed that the name was derived from Caixa, the Moorish name for the coin found at Malacca by the Portuguese in AD 1511.\n\nCh'al-kuan : Orderly Officers. These were men of all ranks, risen from the lowest grades, and were the operative staff of any commander.\n\nChai-tzu #7: a common term for a stockade or more commonly in southern Chinese rural areas, the village outer stockade.\n\nChen-t'ai #✩ : General of Division and an Area Commander\n\nChiang-chün #: General, a rank in the Chinese Imperial army used for commanders of reasonably substantial bodies of men be they regular forces or forces recruited for a specific campaign. Mesny explained that any commander lieutenant-colonel and above was referred to as general, and provided a good example with General Hsieh, the adopted son of General Liu, a major commander in the Szechuan force in which Mesny served. Hsieh was only 22 at the time of the campaign, some four years younger than Mesny. He had been the orderly to General Liu and had been adopted by him as his son after Hsieh had carried Liu off the battlefield, saving his life. General Hsieh's command in the Kueichou campaign consisted of the Left-wing Regiment and its second battalion; he could therefore be a regimental commander equating to a full colonel or brigadier at the most in western parlance. Another example is the \"solitary battalion' under command of General Ho Te-wu, the Chung-tzu Ying, with Ying being a 'force of a number of battalions' or ‘a lone battalion'.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 } ]