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.[1]
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 em-
- ↑ See Chungwang, Autobiography, p. 7. Also Meadows, p. 173. Lindley, I, 300 ff., states that except among the wangs monogamy was the rule, that no divorce save for adultery was permitted, and that women must either be married or a member of a family, or else be placed in an institution for unprotected women. These were presided over by matrons. Young women, those whose husbands were off on public service or those without relatives, were kept in these homes. Taiping T'ien-kuo Yeh Shi gives a table of the female officials in the state, showing four with the rank of dux or leader of 12,500 persons, and of officers of lower rank, thus indicating the organisation of four armies of women. But the author does not indicate whether these continued to exist very long. He also makes mention of forty regiments of 2,500 women soldiers each, or a total of 100,000 female warriors. I feel sure that there is something wrong about this, at least from the point of view of their actually serving with the colors. The nominal organisation might have been maintained. Mention is likewise made of 160 women who were superintendents of embroidery with fifty workers in each company, a total of 8,000. Ibid., II, 49 f.
