244 Back to Burma 
confusion and butchery the merchant, Chiang by name, 
now emerged at the head of affairs, and being a man of 
cowardly violence he proceeded to establish his authority 
by murdering in the most arbitrary and brutal manner any- 
one who stood in his way or denounced his methods. His 
assurance was positively amazing, and finally he had taken 
it into his head that T‘eng-yueh, with himself at the helm, 
was destined to be the independent capital of western 
Yunnan, and had called first upon Tali to acknowledge his 
authority. 
But Tali, being the military centre of western Yunnan, 
and possessed of at least three times as many troops as 
T‘eng-yueh could put in the field, not only rejected such a 
preposterous demand with the scorn it merited, but prepared 
an army to sally forth and smash this audacious autocrat ; 
upon hearing which news Chiang despatched a thousand 
troops to stop them. 
The T‘eng-yueh men marched to within two days of 
Tali, where they met the troops from that city, and owing, 
it was said, to the indiscretion of the leaders, who might 
well have patched things up, a fight ensued, in which the 
T‘eng-yueh troops were worsted, a result which was only 
to be expected, seeing that they were for the most part raw 
recruits pitted against trained soldiers. 
The main road to Tali being thus barred, the T‘eng-yueh 
troops now made a detour to the south, but again encoun- 
tered the defending force, and a desperate battle was fought 
in which the T‘eng-yueh army was almost annihilated, the 
soldiers even fighting amongst themselves in their panic. 
On this occasion there were a few field guns in action, but 
the Tali men alone seem to have known how to handle 
these weapons, which they did with considerable effect. 
While accepting native reports with due reservation, 
I have reason to think that Kin, who obtained his informa- 
tion almost on the spot, gave a fairly accurate account of 
what really took place, and he assured me that the T‘eng- 
yueh troops with their allies from Yung-chang, two thousand 
men in all, had lost more than five hundred killed in three 
engagements with the thousand trained troops sent from 
Tali! The provincial capital also, he said, hearing that 
Tali was in danger of succumbing to the rebels, sent eight 
