"I hope you do not think that I have got a magnificent army," he wrote to a soldier friend. "You never did see such a rabble as it was; and although I think I have improved it, it is still sadly wanting. Now, both men and officers, although ragged and perhaps slightly disreputable, are in capital order and well disposed."
Before his arrival, the soldiers had had no regular pay. They were allowed to "loot," or plunder, the towns they took, and for each town taken they were paid so much.
At once Gordon began to get his ragamuffin army into shape.
He arranged that the soldiers were to get their pay regularly, but were to have no extra pay for the places which they took. Any man caught plundering a town that was taken was to be shot. He replaced the adventurers of all nations, many of them drunken rogues, who were the army's officers, by English officers lent by the British Government. He drilled his men well. He practised them in attacking fortified places, and he formed a little fleet of small steamers and Chinese gunboats. The chief of these was the _Hyson_, a little paddle steamer that could move over the bed of a creek on its wheels when the water was too shallow to float it.
The army, too, was given a uniform, at which not only the rebels but the Chinese themselves at first mocked, calling the soldiers who wore it "Sham Foreign Devils."
But soon so well had Gordon's army earned its name of "The Ever-Victorious Army," that the mere sight of the uniform they wore frightened the rebels.
In one month Gordon's army was an army and not a rabble, and the very first battles that it fought were victories.
With 3000 men he attacked a garrison of 10,000 at Taitsan, and after a desperate fight the rebels were driven out.
From Taitsan the victorious army went on to Quinsan, a large fortified city, connected by a causeway with Soochow, the capital of the province.
All round Quinsan the country was cut up in every direction with creeks and canals. But Gordon knew every creek and canal in that flat land. He knew more now than any other man, native or foreigner, where there were swamps, where there were bridges, which canals were choked with weeds, and which were easily sailed up. He made up his mind that the rebels in Quinsan must be cut off from those in Soochow.