pinch of poverty and was only kept alive by the incessant activity of his scattered armies which continued to send in from Anhui and Kiangsi plunder which was sometimes kept out of Nanking by the besieging armies. That this was not always enough is proved by the necessity he was under, on October 19, 1854, of driving out of Nanking all the women who had been retained as prisoners, those especially strong or beautiful alone excepted, in order to conserve food.[1] Furthermore, the soldiers on that side were growing definitely inferior to the imperialists as now organised, and far inferior to the earnest, dashing troops that had broken through the imperialist lines in Kwangsi to the terror of official China.
But there was no way to mobilise the finances of the nation without revolutionising the entire system of checks and balances between provincial and national authorities. The Taiping rebellion of itself was more of a problem than Hsienfung's advisers and administrators could meet; complete administrative readjustment was not practicable, if it ever occurred to their minds. They must "muddle through" as best they could with the cumbrous machinery devised for another purpose, which was, however, the only kind that functioned at all.
This point is worth dwelling on, because the rebellion was as good as crushed if only the strength of the nation could have been brought to bear on the Taiping forces. The latter had not and — except in a few regions in the central provinces where they had control for several years, and possibly not even there — apparently did not establish any sort of permanent civil government, but, to the end of their activities, derived a large portion of their revenues from plunder.[2] With the decentralisation
