But, brilliant as these operations were, Gordon's military genius
showed itself no less unmistakably in other directions. The Ever
Victorious Army, recruited from the riff-raff of Shanghai, was an
ill-disciplined, ill-organised body of about three thousand men,
constantly on the verge of mutiny, supporting itself on plunder,
and, at the slightest provocation, melting into thin air. Gordon,
by sheer force of character, established over this incoherent
mass of ruffians an extraordinary ascendancy. He drilled them
with rigid severity; he put them into a uniform, armed them
systematically, substituted pay for loot, and was even able, at
last, to introduce regulations of a sanitary kind. There were
some terrible scenes, in which the General, alone, faced the
whole furious army, and quelled scenes of rage, desperation,
towering courage, and summary execution. Eventually he attained
an almost magical prestige. Walking at the head of his troops
with nothing but a light cane in his hand, he seemed to pass
through every danger with the scatheless equanimity of a demi-
god. The Taipings themselves were awed into a strange reverence.
More than once their leaders, in a frenzy of fear and admiration,
ordered the sharp-shooters not to take aim at the advancing
figure of the faintly smiling Englishman.
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