| Taiping Rebellion | |||||||
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Battle of the Yangtze |
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| Belligerents | |||||||
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Taiping Heavenly Kingdom | ||||||
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| Strength | |||||||
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1,000,000–3,000,000 regulars | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| Over 50,000 soldiers killed | Around 75,000 soldiers killed | ||||||
| Total dead~20,000,000 including civilians and soldiers (best estimate) | |||||||
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The Taiping Rebellion was a widespread civil war in southern China from 1850 to 1864, led by heterodox Christian convert Hong Xiuquan against the ruling Manchu-led Qing Dynasty. About 20 million people died, mainly civilians, in one of the deadliest military conflicts in history.[1]
Hong, who had received visions and maintained that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ,[2] established the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom with its capital at Nanjing. The theocratic and militaristic regime instituted several social reforms, including strict separation of the sexes, abolition of foot binding, land socialization and common property,[2] suppression of private trade, and the replacement of Confucianism, Buddhism and Chinese folk religion by a form of Christianity. The Kingdom's army, nicknamed "Longhairs" (simplified Chinese: 长毛; traditional Chinese: 長毛; pinyin: Chángmáo) by the Qing government, controlled large parts of southern China, at its height containing about 30 million people.
The Taiping areas were besieged by Qing forces throughout most of the rebellion. Eventually the Qing government crushed the rebellion with the aid of French and British forces.
In the 20th century, Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Chinese Nationalist Party, looked on the rebellion as an inspiration, and Chinese paramount leader Mao Zedong glorified the Taiping rebels as early heroic revolutionaries against a corrupt feudal system.[3] Today, artifacts from the Taiping period can be seen at the Taiping Kingdom History Museum in Nanjing.
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China, under the Qing Dynasty in the mid-19th century, suffered a series of natural disasters, economic problems and defeats at the hands of the Western powers; in particular, the humiliating defeat in 1842 by the United Kingdom in the First Opium War. The Qing government, ethnically Manchu, were seen by much of the Chinese population, who were mainly Han Chinese, as ineffective and corrupt foreign rulers. Anti-Manchu sentiment was strongest in the south among the laboring classes and it was these disaffected who flocked to join the charismatic visionary Hong Xiuquan, a member of the Hakka, a subgroup of the Han which had emigrated to the south in the Song Dynasty. Having arrived too late to acquire the best land, they were engaged in constant conflicts.[4] Among the serious problems in the area at the time was the prevalence of female infanticide, creating massive imbalances with shortages of women.
At the age of thirty-seven, after failing on multiple occasions to pass the imperial examinations (only about 5 percent of those who attempted the examinations passed them), which would have allowed access to the ranks of the ruling scholarly elite, Hong experienced a lengthy illness. After spending many days in bed, he recovered with a changed personality. He had received a pamphlet from a Protestant Christian missionary in 1836 after his last failed attempt at the imperial examination, and his cousin Li Ching-fang noticed the pamphlet on a bookshelf inside Hong's house. After reading it Li suggested that Hong should read the material. After studying the material, Hong Xiuquan claimed that the illness he had following his imperial examinations was in fact a vision to the effect that he was the younger brother of Jesus, who was sent to rid China of the "devils," including both the corrupt Manchu rulers and Confucius. After this vision, he felt it was his duty to spread Christianity (in the form that he developed) and overthrow the foreign rule of the Qing government. Hong's associate Yang Xiuqing was a former firewood merchant from Guangxi, who claimed to be able to act as a voice of God, in order to direct the people and gain political power.[5]
The sect's power grew in the late 1840s, initially by suppressing groups of bandits and pirates; persecution by Qing authorities spurred the movement into a guerrilla rebellion and then into widespread, bloody civil war.
The revolt began in Guangxi province. After a previous small-scale battle resulting in a rebel victory in late December 1850, in early January 1851, a ten thousand-strong rebel army organized by Feng Yunshan and Wei Changhui routed government troops stationed in the town of Jintian (present-day Guiping, Guangxi). Taiping forces successfully drove back the imperial reprisal against the Jintian Uprising. Subsequently, in August 1851, Hong declared the establishment of the Heavenly Kingdom of Peace (Taiping Tianguo) with himself as absolute ruler.
The revolt rapidly spread northward. In March 1853, between 700,000 and 800,000 Taiping soldiers directed by commander-in-chief Yang Xiuqing took Nanjing, killing 30,000 Imperial soldiers and thousands of civilians.[6] The city became the movement's capital and was renamed Tianjing (‘Heavenly Capital’). Hong built his Palace of Heavenly King there by converting the former residence of ruling Qing officials.
At its height, the Heavenly Kingdom encompassed much of south and central China, centered on the fertile Yangtze river valley. Control of the river meant that the Taipings could easily supply their capital at Nanjing. From there, the Taipings continued their assault. Two armies were sent west, to secure the upper reaches of the Yangtze. Two more armies were sent north to take the Imperial capital, Beijing. Potentially, these two expeditions could have acted as a giant pincer movement across the country. The western expedition met with some mixed success, but the attempt to take Beijing failed.
The Taiping Rebellion was the first instance of total war in modern China. Almost every citizen of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was given military training and conscripted into the army to fight against Qing imperial forces. During this conflict both sides tried to deprive each other of resources to continue the war and it became standard practice to destroy agricultural areas, butcher the population of cities and in general exact a brutal price from captured enemy lands in order to drastically weaken the opposition's war effort.
In 1853 Hong Xiuquan withdrew from active control of policies and administration, ruling exclusively by written proclamations that often had religious content. Hong disagreed with Yang Xiuqing in certain matters of policy and became increasingly suspicious of Yang's ambitions, his extensive network and spies, and his declarations when "speaking as God". Yang and his family were put to death by Hong's followers in 1856, followed by the killing of troops loyal to Yang.[7]
With their leader largely out of the picture, Taiping delegates tried to widen their popular support with the Chinese middle classes and forge alliances with European powers, but failed on both counts. The Europeans decided to stay neutral. Inside China the rebellion faced resistance from the traditionalist middle class because of the rebels' hostility to Chinese customs and Confucian values. The land-owning upper class, unsettled by the Taipings' peasant mannerisms and their policy of strict separation of the sexes, even for married couples, sided with government forces and their Western allies.
In 1859 Hong Rengan, a cousin of Hong Xiuquan, joined the Taiping forces in Nanjing and was given considerable power by Hong Xiuquan. He developed an ambitious plan to expand the Kingdom's boundaries. In 1860 the Taiping rebels were successful in taking Hangzhou and Suzhou to the east (see Second rout of the Jiangnan Daying), but failed to take Shanghai (Battle of Shanghai (1861)), which marked the beginning of the decline of the Kingdom.
An attempt to take Shanghai in August 1860 was repulsed by a force of Qing imperial troops and European officers under the command of Frederick Townsend Ward.[8] This army would later become the "Ever Victorious Army", led by "Chinese" Gordon, and would be instrumental in the defeat of the Taiping rebels. Imperial forces were reorganized under the command of Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang, and the imperial reconquest began in earnest. By early 1864 imperial control in most areas was well established.
Hong Xiuquan, who had declared that God would defend Nanjing, abdicated early in 1864 in favour of Hong Tianguifu, his eldest son who was then 15 years old. In June 1864, with Qing imperial forces approaching Nanjing, he died of food poisoning as a consequence of eating wild vegetables when the city ran low on food supplies. A few days after his death, in July 1864, Qing forces took the city after vicious street-by-street fighting, and the Kingdom was quickly destroyed. Most of the princes were executed by Qing forces in Jinling, Nanjing.
Hong Xiuquan's body had been buried in the former Ming Imperial Palace and was exhumed by Zeng Guofan to verify his death, and then cremated. Hong's ashes were later blasted out of a cannon in order to ensure that his remains have no resting place as eternal punishment for the uprising.
Although the fall of Nanjing in 1864 marked the destruction of the Taiping regime, the fight was not yet over. There were still several hundred thousand Taiping rebel troops continuing the fight, with more than a quarter-million Taiping rebels fighting in the border regions of Jiangxi and Fujian alone. It would take more than half a decade to finally put down all remnants of the Taiping Rebellion: it was not until August 1871 that the last Taiping rebel army led by Shi Dakai's commander, General Li Fuzhong (李福忠) was completely wiped out by the governmental forces in the border region of Hunan, Guizhou and Guangxi.
Most accurate sources put the total deaths during the 15 years of the rebellion at about 20-30 million civilians and soldiers.[1][9] Most of the deaths were attributed to plague and famine. At the Third Battle of Nanking in 1864, more than 100,000 were killed in three days.
The rebellion happened at roughly the same time as the American Civil War. Though almost certainly the largest civil war of the 19th century (in terms of numbers under arms), it is debatable whether the Taiping Rebellion involved more soldiers than the Napoleonic Wars earlier in the century, and so it is uncertain whether it should be considered the largest war of the 19th century.
The Nien Rebellion (1853–1868), and several Muslim rebellions in the southwest (Panthay Rebellion, 1855–1873) and northwest (Dungan revolt, 1862–1877) continued to pose considerable problems for the Qing Dynasty.
The Panthay Rebellion's leader Du Wenxiu was in contact with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. He was not aiming his rebellion at the Han Chinese, but was anti-Qing and wanted to destroy the Manchu government.[10][11] Du's forces led multiple non-Muslim forces, including Han Chinese, Li, Bai, and Hani peoples.[12] They were assisted by non-Muslim Shan and Kakhyen and other hill tribes in the revolt.[13]
The other Muslim rebellion, the Dungan revolt was the reverse: It was not aimed at overthrowing the Qing Dynasty since its leader Ma Hualong accepted an imperial title. Rather, it erupted due to inter-sect fighting between Muslim factions and Han Chinese. Various groups fought each other during the Dungan revolt without any coherent goal.[14] According to modern researchers,[15] the Dungan rebellion began in 1862 not as a planned uprising, but as a coalescence of many local brawls and riots triggered by trivial causes. Among these were false rumours spread that the Hui Muslims were aiding the Taiping rebels. However, the Hui Ma Hsiao-shih claimed that the Shaanxi Muslim rebellion was connected to the Taiping.[16]
The rebels announced social reforms, including strict separation of the sexes, abolition of foot binding, land socialization and "suppression" of private trade. In religion, the Kingdom tried to replace Confucianism, Buddhism and Chinese folk religion with a form of Christianity, holding that Hong Xiuquan was the younger brother of Jesus. Troops were nicknamed "Longhairs", as they sported a traditional Confucian hairstyle different from the Qing queue. Qing government papers refer to them as "hairy rebels" (simplified Chinese: 发贼; traditional Chinese: 髮賊, pinyin: fàzéi).
Within the land it controlled, the Taiping Heavenly Army established a theocratic and highly militarized rule. However, the rule was remarkably ineffective, haphazard and brutal; all efforts were concentrated on the army, and civil administration was non-existent. Rule was established in the major cities and the land outside the urban areas was little regarded. Even though polygamy was banned, Hong Xiuquan had numerous concubines. Many high-ranking Taiping officials kept concubines as a matter of prerogative, and lived as de facto kings.
The army was the rebellion's key strength. It was marked by a high level of discipline and fanaticism. They typically wore a uniform of red jackets with blue trousers, and grew their hair long so in China they were nicknamed "Longhairs". The large numbers of women serving in the Taiping Heavenly Army also distinguished it from other 19th-century armies.
Combat was always bloody and extremely brutal, with little artillery but huge forces equipped with small arms. The Taiping Army's main strategy of conquest was to take major cities, consolidate their hold on the cities, then march out into the surrounding countryside to recruit local farmers and battle government forces. Estimates of the overall size of the Taiping Heavenly Army varied from 1,000,000 to 3,000,000.
The organization of a Taiping army corps was thus:
These corps were placed into armies of varying sizes. In addition to the main Taiping forces organized along the above lines, there were also thousands of pro-Taiping groups fielding their own forces of irregulars.
Ethnically, the Taiping Heavenly Army was formed at the outset largely from these groups: the Hakka, a Han Chinese subgroup, the Cantonese, another Han Chinese subgroup that were the local residents of Guangdong province and the Zhuang (a non-Han ethnic group), which were minority groups as compared to the Han Chinese subgroups that form dominant regional majorities across south China. It is no coincidence that Hong Xiuquan and the other Taiping royals were Hakka.
As a Han sub-group, the Hakka were frequently marginalized economically and politically, having migrated to the regions they inhabit only after other Han groups were already established there. For example, when the Hakka settled in Guangdong and parts of Guangxi, speakers of Yue Chinese (Cantonese) were already the dominant regional Han group there and had been for some time, just as speakers of various dialects of Min are locally dominant in Fujian province. The Hakka settled throughout southern China and beyond, but as latecomers they generally had to establish their communities on rugged, less fertile land scattered on the fringe of the local majority group’s settlements. As their name ("guest households") suggests, the Hakka were generally treated as migrant newcomers, often subject to hostility and derision from local majority Han populations. Consequently, the Hakka, to a greater extent than other Han Chinese, have been historically associated with popular unrest and rebellion.
The other significant ethnic group in the Taiping army were the Zhuang, an indigenous people of Tai origin and China's largest non-Han ethnic minority group. Over the centuries Zhuang communities had been adopting Han Chinese culture. This was possible because Han culture in the region accommodates a great deal of linguistic diversity, so the Zhuang could be absorbed as if the Zhuang languages were just more Han Chinese dialects. As Zhuang communities were integrating with the Han at different rates, a certain amount of friction between Han and Zhuang was inevitable, with Zhuang unrest on occasion leading to armed uprisings.[17] The second tier of the Taiping army was an ethnic mix that included many Zhuang. Prominent at this level was Shi Dakai, who was half-Hakka, half-Zhuang and spoke both languages fluently, making him quite a rare asset to the Taiping leadership.
In the later stages of the Taiping Rebellion, the number of Han Chinese in the army from Han groups other than the Hakka increased substantially. However, the Hakka and the Zhuang (who constituted as much as 25% of the Taiping Army), as well as other non-Han ethnic minority groups (many of them of Tai origin related to the Zhuang), continued to feature prominently in the rebellion throughout its duration, with virtually no leaders emerging from any Han Chinese group other than the Hakka.
Socially and economically, the Taiping rebels came almost exclusively from the lowest classes. Many of the southern Taiping troops were former miners, especially those coming from the Zhuang. Very few Taipings, even in the leadership caste, came from the imperial bureaucracy. Almost none were landlords and in occupied territories landlords were often executed.
Taiping generals included:
Early (1851–1854): Xiao Chaogui, Wei Changhui, Shi Dakai, Qin Rigang, Lin Qirong, Lai Hanying, Zeng Tianyang, Li Kaifang, Luo Dagang, Tang Zhengzai
Middle (1855–1859): Li Xiucheng, Chen Yucheng, Yang Fuqing, Wei Jun, Li Shixian, Ye Yunlai, Huang Chengzhong, Liu Chunlin
Late (1860–1864): Li Rongfa, Lai Wenguang, Chen Kunshu
Opposing the rebellion was an imperial army with a size of two to five million regulars along with hundreds of thousands of regional militias and foreign mercenaries operating in support. Among the imperial forces was the elite Ever Victorious Army, consisting of Chinese soldiers led by a European officer corps (see Frederick Townsend Ward and Charles Gordon), backed by British arms companies like Willoughbe, Willoughbe & Ponsonby. A particularly famous imperial force was Zeng Guofan's Xiang Army.
Although keeping accurate records was something imperial China traditionally did very well, the decentralized nature of the imperial war effort (relying on regional forces) and the fact that the war was a civil war and therefore very chaotic meant that reliable figures are impossible to find. The destruction of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom also meant that any records it possessed were destroyed.
Zuo Zongtang from Hunan province, who was also known as General Tso, was another important Qing general who contributed in suppressing the Taiping Rebellion.
The rebellion is featured on the Tiananmen Square's Monument to the People's Heroes and many other public places in Beijing and Nanjing.
| “ | On the pedestal of the tablet there are eight huge bas-reliefs carved out of white marble covering the revolutionary episodes, which are depictions of Chinese struggle from the First Opium War in 1840 to the founding of the People's Republic in 1949. The reliefs can be read in chronological order in a clockwise direction from the east: 1) Burning opium during the Opium War in 1840. 2) The Jintian Uprising during the Taiping Rebellion in 1851. | ” |
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