The Beiyang Army was created from Li Hongzhang's Huai Army, which first saw action during the Taiping Rebellion. Unlike the traditional Green Standard or Banner forces of the Qing, the Huai Army was largely a militia army based on personal, rather than institutional, loyalties. The Huai Army was at first equipped with a mixture of traditional and modern weapons. Its creator, Li Hongzhang, used the customs and tax revenues of the five provinces under his control in the 1880s and 1890s to modernize segments of the Huai Army, and to build a modern navy (the Beiyang Fleet). It is around this time that the term "Beiyang Army" began to be used to refer to the military forces under his control. The term "Beiyang", meaning literally "Northern Ocean", refers to the customs revenues collected in Nor