In 1856 three years after the
establishment of the Taiping Heavenly
Kingdom, Hong Xiuquan, supreme heavenly king,
had enforced many new social policies.
Women in the kingdom were equal to men,
which drastically reduced female
infanticide, that was quite prevelant in
the Qing Empire. They were also allowed
to partake the Imperial civil service
examinations, otherwise reserved to men.
Foot binding was banned. Women could
serve in the Taiping army or even become
officers.They were directly commanded by
Hong Xuanjiao, who was trained in the
martial arts, the sister of Hong Xiuquan
and wife of Wei Changhui, the North King.
Augustus Lindley, a British
adventurer and military man, who was in
Nanjing to train the Taiping soldiers,
commented on how progressive the Taiping society
was towards women.
Hong Xiuquan even wrote a letter to
the United States president, Franklin
Pierce, to congratulate the equality men
and women shared in the American society.
Other Taiping policies, however, were more
restrictive. Men and women had to live
separately, and adultery or prostitution
were punished by death.
Meanwhile, the Qing authorities prepared a
counter-attack. The Imperial Army
attempted to recapture Nanjing in a
four-month battle that began in May 1856. The Taipings held up firmly and defeated
the Qing, who retreated north. However,
internal conflicts gradually arose Yang Xiuqing, the East King, started to have
delusions of grandeur. He did not
hesitate to harshly punish those who
offended him, and even had Wei Changhui
the North King, and Qin Rigang flogged.
He was therefore both feared and
hated by many in the Taiping.
Yang Xiuqing constantly requested new
titles from Hong Xiuquan. To confirm his
control he had Wei Changhui, Qin Rigang
and Shi Dakai, the Flank King, and
a cunning general, dispatched to other
provinces.The heavenly King, realising
the situation, and the desires of treason of
Yang Xiuqing, immediately ordered the
three generals to come back. Qin Rigang
arrived first, followed by Wei Changhui
They agreed not to wait for the
Flank King's return, and took action.
In September 1856, they invaded Yang's
palace during the night and massacred
him and his family. However, a few
thousand soldiers hidden within the army
still remained loyal to Yang. In a cunning
idea, the Taiping leaders agreed to
invite all of Yang's followers to a
public punishment of Wei and Qin. This
was of course a ruse, and the men that
came were executed. In October 1856, Shi
Dakai, the Flank King, finally arrived. When
he discovered the news, he denounced the
excessive violence, accusing Wei Changhui.
In response, Wei accused Shi Dakai
of being a traitor. Losing face, the
flanking realised these accusations
shredded his influence, and decided to
escape Nanjing immediately. The same
night, his family and followers were
slain, similarly the Yang's. Shi Dakai, in
exile, assembled a hundred thousand men,
and marched towards Nanjing, demanding
the heads of Wei Changhui and Qin Rigang
be brought to him. Wei dispatched troops to
stop the approaching army, and plotted to
capture and overthrow the supreme
heavenly King. Hong Xiuquan, however, had
developed a dense network of spies, and
was informed of this. Hong ordered his
bodyguards to execute Wei, and Qin was
called back and killed too. Due to these
events, the popularity of Hong and his
remaining generals plummeted. The Army's
morale was also very low. Shi Dakai
became on the contrary quite popular. To
regain him and his men, the heavenly king
appointed the FlankKing supreme commander
of the Taiping army. The delegates of the
Taiping heavenly kingdom realised the
situation was unstable,
and tried to gain the aid of Europeans and
wealthy Chinese people, without any
success. The former were too busy for the
Taipings, mainly because they had engaged
in the Second Opium War, fighting the
Qing Empire, but they would later be
forced to join the conflict against the
Taipings. The latter preferred to stay
uninvolved.
Nonetheless, the heavenly kingdom's Army
won more battles against the overrun
Qing. In August 1858, Chen Yucheng, a
Taiping general nicknamed "the four-eyed
dog", captured the town of Luzhou.The
Imperial governor, in response, ordered
Li Xubin, commander of the Xiang army
that had been specially raised to fight
the rebellion, to counter-attack. Leading
10,000 men armed with rifles,
Li Xubin was able to achieve small
victories against the Taipings. In
November 1858, the Battle of Sanhe took
place.The reinforcements of 15,000 men
that the Xiang army awaited were late.
Furthermore troops from the Nian
rebellion, another rebellion in the same
area, aided the Taipings by sending
40,000 men.The rebels easily crushed the
Xiang Army and killed Li Xubin. They
later recaptured the lost territories.
The Taipings still held on. in 1859 Hong
Hong Rengan, the heavenly King's cousin, and one
of his first converts, with whom he had
studied from the American missionary
Issachar Jacox Roberts, came back
into the picture. Shortly after the
beginning of the rebellion, he had gone
to Hong Kong to study Christianity and
many other subjects with European
missionaries. The Taiping leader called
him back to Nanjing, to help him
administer the kingdom, and he was given
strong power. Hong Rengan had a
military ambitious spirit. In early 1861;
a hundred and eighty thousand Qhing
Imperial soldiers led by the chief
commander Zhang Guoliang,
an ex gang member, marched towards Nanjing,
in an attempt to crush the rebellion.
Rengan ordered "The four eyed dog" to
deploy more than a hundred thousand men
alongside the nearby river.
Other typing leaders commanded two hundred and sixty thousand troops. When the moment was
optimal, Chen Yucheng
attacked.The Taipings fought for weeks,
and crushed the Imperial forces, killing
both the Imperial chief commander Zhang Guoliang,
an imperial chief commissioner Her Chyun.
The Ching had to completely
reorganise their army. Zeng Guofan, a
promising commander was promoted to
general. This would change the course of
the war. In early 1861, Li Xiucheng ,
another Taiping general, decided to
capture the city of Shanghai, leading
600,000 men. Hong Rengan was opposed to
this decision, especially due to the
presence of Western nations in the town.
Li Xiucheng did however get the
promise from the British and the French
not to get involved. The battle began in
July. The Qing authorities held on, and
reinforcements arrived regularly from
Beijing,and other towns. Zeng Guofan
told his student Li Hongzhang to bring
some of the Xiang army back to Anhui
province, to train and reorganiee an
independent force under Li Hongzhang's
command, that would later become the
Anhui army. In the weeks that followed, an
american-born military commander named
Frederick Townsend Ward, who had assembled
a force of Western mercenaries and
Chinese troops to fight piracy, the
Shanghai Foreign Corps, started to
defender city too. The British and the
French withdrew their promise when
Western inhabitants asked for the Taiping
threat to be removed.
Sir James hope of the Royal Navy
commanded three thousand men and Auguste-Léopold Protet, a French admiral and
founder of the town of Dakar in Senegal,
also defended Shanghai with his four
thousand troops. He was however killed
during the conflict. Frederick Townsend
Ward's corps was reformed. Due to poor
discipline of the Western mercenaries,
great numbers of Chinese soldiers were
enlisted, until the Corps became the Ever
Victorious army, that had been co-founded
with a French officer.
At the Battle of Cixi in September
1862, Ward was hit and killed by a musket
shot. More and more different armies
started to stack up against the Taiping.
they now faced a newly commanded Ever
Victorious army, now led by the
British Major General Charles George
Gordon, or "Chinese Gordon". They also faced the
Royal Navy and French Infanterie de Marine, the
Qing Imperial forces, composed of the
Anhui army led by Li Hongzhang, and the
Green Standard army led by Huang Yisheng.
In November 1862, Hong Xiuquan ordered
the offensive to be stopped, and the
Taiping army withdrew, ending the battle.
In the months that followed, the Taipings
lost more and more lands and towns. In
November 1863, the Ever Victorious army
recaptured the strategic town of
Suzhou. The next month the Taiping General
Li Xiucheng retreated to Nanjing and
told the Hong Xiuquan to leave the
Taiping capital immediately. The heavenly
king refused, and took command of all of
the Taiping army. He declared that anyone
who disobeyed him, and God, would be
immediately executed.
However, the combined effect of
restrictive measures, and the stress of
the approaching Qing forces eventually
led to 200,000 Taiping troops fleeing out
of Nanjing, and surrendering to the
Imperial Chinese army. Many others just
abandoned their arms and fled to the
countryside. In early 1864, Zeng Guofan had
planned out the siege of Nanjing. The
Taiping capital was besieged as from the
14th of march. The battle lasted for four
months, and food shortages soon
affected the Taipings. The Heavenly king
ate weeds that grew around his palace,
stating that they were "holy food".
Ironically, he poisoned himself, and died
on the 1st of June 1864. He was buried in
yellow silk. His 14 year old son Hong Tianguifu
was coronated five days later.
His reign was short, and in the last days
of the siege, he
escaped with the help of Hong Rengan and
a few other Taipings. The most important
Taiping generals were unable to escape, and
executed. Li xiucheng had fled too, but he
was tracked by 700 cavalry men, found and
executed. One Taiping general, Lai Wenguang,
managed to escape and joined the Nian
rebellion. Overall, the Qing easily
captured Nanjing. The battle ended in
July. It had also been a testing ground
for the first modern Chinese firearms.
Hong Tianguifu and Hong Rengan were
eventually discovered in November, and
executed. Although some isolated Taiping
troops remained in several provinces, and
continued to fight up to 1871, the
Taiping heavenly kingdom was over.
Approximately 30,000,000 men and
women died due to this conflict,
including many important officers both
from China and Western countries. The
Taiping rebellion certainly was the
deadliest rebellion in world history, and
it forever marked the Qing dynasty.
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