The New Armies were highly successful, and the rebellion was finally defeated, although not without massive bloodshed: some 100,000 people were reported killed at the last Battle of Nanjing, in 1864. The Qing had also exacerbated another weakness in their rule. Although the immediate problem of the Taiping was solved, the devolution of military authority from the center to the provinces had laid the grounds for a culture where autonomous militarists, often known as “warlords,” rather than a central Chinese government could lay down the law.
