armies submitted or even fully joined the Taipings remained rare, as most remained bandit armies that were only interested in imminent profit and survival. In 1855, Zhang Lexing took direct action by launching attacks against government troops in central China. By the summer, the fast-moving Nian cavalry, well-trained and fully equipped with modern firearms, had cut the lines of communication between Beijing and the Qing armies fighting the Taiping rebels in the south. Qing forces were badly overstretched as rebellions broke out across China, allowing the Nian armies to conquer large tracts of land and gain control over economically vital areas. The Nian fortified their captured cities and used them as bases to launch cavalry attacks against Qing troops in the countryside, prompting local towns to fortify themselves against Nian raiding parties. This resulted in constant fighting which devastated the previously rich provinces of Jiangsu and Hunan. In 1856, several Nian bands formed an alliance led by Zhang Lexing, organizing themselves into a loose confederation of five armies. Each army was identified by a colored banner, operated largely autonomously, and recruited mostly people belonging to a single clan. As result, each banner army had a core area which consisted of a number of villages whose inhabitants were related to each other. Due to the widely differing numbers of the involved clans, the banner armies were accordingly smaller or bigger: the yellow banner army, led by Zhang himself, drew its forces from 18 villages; the white banner army of Kung Teh from 13; the red banner army of Hou Shih-wei from 12; the blue banner army of Han Lao-wan from just six; and the black banner army of Su T'ien-fu from one hundred villages. Though Zhang tried to impose more order and coordination upon the alliance, he enjoyed only limited success in this regard. Internal differences caused the alliance to quickly fall apart, and by 1858 it was effectively dissolved. In early 1856, the Qing government sent the Mongol General Senggelinqin, who had recently crushed a large Taiping army, to defeat the Nian. Senggelinqin's army captured several fortified cities and destroyed most of the Nian infantry, and killed Zhang Lexing himself in an ambush in 1863. However, in late 1864, the Nian movement survived as skilled Taiping commanders Lai Wenguang (賴文光) (1827–1868) and Fan Ruzeng (1840–1867) arrived to take control of the Nian forces, and the bulk of the Nian cavalry