The Taiping Rebellion
An often-forgotten war that killed millions
The Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864) was a civil war in China that began as a revolt against the Qing government of the time. The rebellion had an enormous death toll exceeding 20 million, which is comparable to that of World War One, and overlapped with the much smaller-scale American Civil War (1861–1865). Hong Xiuquan, the leader of the rebellion, believed he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ. Despite the bizarre beliefs of its ruler, the so-called Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was shockingly successful in the war and attracted millions of supporters.
“I slay evil, preserve justice, and improve the lives of my subjects. Eyes can see through beyond the west, the north, the rivers, and the mountains, Sounds can shake the east, the south, the Sun, and the Moon.”
Hong Xiuquan
Hong Xiuquan: The Heavenly King
Hong Xiuquan was born in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong on January 1st, 1814. Born to a poor family, Hong had few options for advancement as Imperial Chinese society had fairly limited social mobility. He hoped to enter the Imperial bureaucracy by passing the civil service exam but ended up failing the exam three times by 1837. Following his third failed attempt to pass the civil service exam, Hong suffered some kind of breakdown and had a vision of an old man and a middle-aged man who convinced him that the world was overrun by demons and taught him how to fight them.
Following a fourth and final failed attempt at the civil service exam in 1843, Hong converted to Christianity, coming to believe that the men in his vision were in fact, God and Jesus Christ. Somehow, Hong also came to the conclusion that he was God’s second son, making him the younger brother of Jesus. Unlike its contemporaries, Hong’s strange interpretation of Christianity rejected humility and emphasized destroying sin. Hong’s followers became known as the God Worshippers’ Society and began to spread their beliefs rapidly in southern China. On January 11th, 1851, Hong proclaimed himself the Heavenly King of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. While it sounds absurd that such a movement could gain traction at all, the God Worshippers’ Society became popular among the impoverished poor, both peasants and various workers, because of its opposition to the unpopular Qing dynasty and policy of sharing property among the common people. The Taiping also planned on redistributing land equally among the common people and declared equality between men and women.
Qing Dynasty Background
Before discussing the events of the war itself, it is important to have some context on China in this period. The ruling Qing Dynasty, although it ruled all of China, was not native to the country. Instead, the rulers were Manchus from Manchuria, today a northwestern region of China. Because of their Manchu heritage, the Qing were often seen as outsiders by many Chinese people. In the previous decade, the British decisively defeated the Qing in the First Opium War, showing that China, despite its enormous economy and population, was vulnerable to outside powers. The Qing ruler at the time, the Xianfeng Emperor, was also only just recently crowned in March of 1850 at the age of 19.
The Qing Army
In the mid-19th century, the Qing military was in a terrible state. Organized into two main sections, the elite banner armies, made up of Manchus and Mongols and severely out of practice, and the Green Standard armies, which were ethnically Chinese and ridiculously corrupt. These armies were enormous, around 130,000 strong for the banner armies and supposedly 600,000 soldiers in the Green Standard armies, although the numbers of Green Standard soldiers were heavily inflated because many commanders reported higher numbers of troops so they could embezzle these fake soldiers’ pay. The banner armies, although much better funded, hadn’t actually fought in a war in decades and were mainly garrisoned in the northern parts of the Qing Empire, close to the Emperor in Beijing. The Qing military, despite fielding what was likely the largest army on the planet at the time, was deeply corrupt, inexperienced, underfunded, badly equipped, too decentralized, and overall completely unprepared for the carnage that was to come.
“Even if Confucius himself came back to life, he could spend three years and still not manage to correct their (Green Standard soldiers) evil ways”
Zeng Guofan
In January of 1853, the Xianfeng Emperor sent Zeng Guofan, a scholar, to organize a militia in Hunan province to fight the advancing Taiping forces. Zeng understood the massive issues with the Qing military and the Green Standard armies in particular, so he began organizing his own disciplined and loyal militia from scratch. Zeng’s new Hunan Army took the fight to the Taiping in February of 1854. The Hunan Army had mixed results fighting against the Taiping, suffering terrible defeats and winning great victories throughout the war. Although the Hunan Army was unable to permanently defeat the Taiping forces, Zeng ultimately proved invaluable to the Qing war effort and likely saved the Qing Dynasty for the time being. By the end of the war, Zeng Guofan was the main commander of Qing forces fighting the Taiping and military governor of four provinces.
Foreign leaders also took part in the civil war on the side of the Qing, namely the American Frederick Townsend Ward and British Charles Gordon, leaders of the Western-trained Ever Victorious Army. While these Western-trained forces were small, they were well-trained and capable.
The Taiping Army
Unlike its Qing counterpart in the Green Standard armies, the army of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was united in its cause. The Taiping also managed to procure more modern weapons than their Qing enemies from Western black markets as well as building their own muskets and cannons based on Western designs. Through propaganda and genuine reforms which appealed to the impoverished masses, the Taiping Army grew to a staggering size of somewhere between one and two million zealous, disciplined soldiers. Additionally, the Taiping Army was more centralized than that of the Qing, allowing for easier coordination of campaigns.
The leadership of the Taiping was composed of the Heavenly King’s closest advisers, all also given kingly titles. The most important of these kings were the Shield King Hong Rengan, who was a cousin of the Heavenly King, and the Loyal King Li Xiucheng. While the Heavenly King retreated into his palace in Nanjing for most of the war, the other leaders of his kingdom were responsible for most of the war effort and running of the state.
Civil War
Under the leadership of Heavenly King Hong Xiuquan, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom began conquering territory in south-eastern China in early 1851. By mid-1853, the Taiping had taken the major cities of Anqing, Wuchang, and Nanjing. Following its capture, Hong Xiuquan declared the city of Nanjing the capital of the Heavenly Kingdom and renamed it Tianjing (translated as “Heavenly Capital”). In the city, Taiping forces massacred the Manchu people living in the city. This massacre shows that the Taiping were not only religiously and economically motivated but also inspired by anti-Manchu sentiments and ethnonationalism. Taiping forces were initially wildly successful against the Green Standard armies, defeating them on several occasions and seizing vast swathes of territory.
The beginning of the war was a brutal back and forth between the Taiping and Qing with the Qing forces slowly gaining ground. For example, Zeng Guofan’s Hunan Army recaptured the city of Wuchang in October of 1854, only to lose control of the city to the Taiping again in April of the following year, only to once again reclaim Wuchang for the Qing in December of 1856. The city of Wuchang alone was conquered four times during the war. In 1856, Taiping power was weakened when the Eastern King, who was in charge of administering the city of Nanjing, attempted a coup against the Heavenly King and was executed. By 1859, Qing forces surrounded Nanjing and hope seemed lost for the Taiping. To lift the siege, a small Taiping force led by Li Xiucheng cleverly slipped past the Qing armies besieging the city. This small army assaulted the Qing-controlled city of Hangzhou, making it appear as if it was a massive army assaulting the city by planting hundreds of Taiping banners around the city in a brilliant act of deceit. The Qing commanders besieging Nanjing, hearing that Hangzhou was under attack by a large Taiping army, split off a large part of their own army to save the city. Meanwhile, Li Xiucheng’s army had only destroyed the Qing garrison in Hangzhou and left the city, returning to Nanjing. With a weakened Qing force at Nanjing, the Taiping were able to destroy the imperial armies in the area one at a time, leaving Nanjing comfortably under Taiping control with few Qing forces in the area to challenge them.
In the Spring of 1860, the Taiping again began to rapidly expand with little Qing resistance to speak of, quickly conquering the cities of Danyang, Changzhou, Wuxi, and Suzhou. From there, the Taiping advanced towards Shanghai, a treaty port under British and French influence. In June 1861, the Taiping began their attack on the city. While the fighting was long and bloody, the Qing forces in the city came out victorious in November 1862. While they were outnumbered, the Qing imperial forces were able to win with the support of Frederick Townsend Ward’s Ever Victorious Army in addition to some British and French forces present in the city. Following their major defeat at Shanghai, the Taiping were on the back foot for the rest of the war. By March of 1864, the Hunan Army, under the leadership of Zeng Guofan and his brother, Zeng Guoquan, was at the gates of Nanjing with around 500,000 soldiers facing roughly 400,000 Taiping troops. Over the next five months, the brutal Third Battle of Nanjing resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, many of which were the civilians of the city. The Heavenly King himself was among the dead of the siege as he fell ill and died on June 1st, 1864. Despite the famous discipline of the Hunan Army, a massacre followed when they finally took the city on July 19th, 1864. It is estimated that 100,000 people died in the ensuing bloodbath as Zeng Guofan failed to rein in his troops for three days. Li Xiucheng, the Loyal King, was also captured and executed in the aftermath of the battle. Although Taiping resistance continued until 1866, the Third Battle of Nanjing and the death of the Heavenly King were the nails in the coffin of the Heavenly Kingdom and the Taiping Rebellion.
Taking place in the Century of Humiliation, the Taiping Rebellion left an undeniable mark on Chinese history by significantly weakening the Qing dynasty as well as spreading revolutionary ideas which would be incorporated into future movements such as the nationalist Kuomintang and the incumbent Chinese Communist Party. Although the Taiping came close to overthrowing the Qing Dynasty, their ultimate defeat came as the Qing military managed to improve its weapons and organization enough to deal with the rebellion. While it is often overshadowed in the West by events such as the Crimean War and American Civil War, the Taiping Rebellion was far more consequential to world history and fought on a scale, unlike any other war in history up until that point.
Sources
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Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Qing dynasty.” Encyclopedia Britannica, August 22, 2022. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Qing-dynasty.
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Stephen R. Platt. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom : China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War. Vol. 1st ed. New York: Knopf, 2012.
