Surviving the Taiping Rebellion, 1850–1864

Chapter 9 Surviving the Taiping Rebellion, 1850–1864

In late 1849, reports began appearing in the Peking Gazette about a rebellion led by Li Yuanfa, a member of the Heaven and Earth Society millenarian sect, who was operating in Guangxi province. More than forty other bandit and rebel groups, like the red-turbaned followers of Chen Yagui or the Cudgel Society of Yao tribesman Lei Zaihao, were also spread across the same province. Local Qing officials described these groups as “Guangxi bandits,” suggesting some- thing distinctively local about their origins. In the aftermath of the Opium War, Guangxi became notorious as a “bandit lair” because of its endemic poverty, lax administration, and constant ethnic violence. Out of that chaotic environ- ment would come the greatest challenge to the Qing empire and the bloodiest civil war in world history—the Taiping Rebellion. Hong Xiuquan, the charismatic leader of the Taiping Rebellion, was not interested in toppling the Qing to establish another typical dynasty. His goal was nothing less than the violent overthrow of the entire traditional order. The inspiration for Hong’s messianic visions first came to him in 1837 when, after failing the civil service examinations for a third time, he fell into a forty-day delirium. After being ritually baptized, Hong was escorted into the presence of an old man with a blonde beard. The old man vehemently lamented worldly corruption and charged his son Xiuquan with cleansing the earth by extermi- nating the demons; in other visions Hong also met his wise “elder brother,” who gave him many instructions. A few years after recovering, Hong Xiuquan hap- pened to read a selection of Biblical translations by Liang Afa, one of the first Protestant converts, in a book entitled “Good Words to Admonish the Age.” Hong now interpreted his visions as coming directly from God, his “father,” and Jesus Christ, his “elder brother.” As the youngest son of God, Hong’s task was to exterminate the Manchu “demon imps” and establish the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace, God’s kingdom on earth. Hong Xiuquan’s first followers were some of his Hakka family members, like his distant cousin Feng Yunshan, whose poor treatment as a subethnic group fostered widespread dislike of Han majority culture. By the late 1840s, Hong and Feng had established the Society of God Worshippers, a puritanical reli- gious community, among the Hakka living near Thistle Mountain in central Guangxi. Over the next several years, local subsistence farmers, unemployed charcoal burners, and even whole villages joined the Society to escape their oppressive neighbors and rapacious officials. As local conditions worsened in

1850, Hong called his followers together at the base of Thistle Mountain. When local military forces tried to break up the well-armed community of 20,000 God Worshippers, Hong Xiuquan defiantly declared the establishment of the Kingdom of Great Peace on January 11, 1851. Hong Xiuquan and the Taiping Rebellion changed everything in the Qing empire. Over the next fourteen years, some twenty million or more people would die across seventeen provinces; tens of millions more were displaced; and hundreds of millions more were spent to defeat the rebellion. Perhaps more importantly, the Qing government’s desperate survival strategy—to au- thorize gentry to mobilize militia, to grant extraordinary powers to governors- general to create regional armies, to permit local officials unusual executive powers, and to launch military self-strengthening reforms—fundamentally altered the structure of the Qing empire. Many of these themes can be found in the sources below, but even more remarkable is the anxious and exasper- ated tone among the Taiping generation of officials and military generals who fought so desperately to preserve the empire and their way of life.

October 18–19, 1850

The banditti in Guangxi have multiplied exceedingly…that portion of the country has been so trampled under foot by their predatory bands, that its inhabitants have ceased to value life. Their case has excited our deepest commiseration. We have already in previous Decrees directed Xu Guangjin, Viceroy of the Guang Provinces, to pass over into Guangxi with a large body of troops, and called upon Zhang Bilu in Sichuan to despatch Xiang Rong as Commander-in-chief to cooperate with the Governor of Guangxi in taking immediate steps towards their extermination. Not only this, but we have also commanded our Viceroys of Huguang and Guizhou to assist in the operations with picked troops. But Guangdong is we find likewise harassed by similar rebels, against whom the Authorities of the Province are at this moment ac- tively engaged; were we under these circumstances to detain Xu Guangjin in Guangxi, he might neglect the one Province in watching the interests of the other. This consideration fills us with anxiety for the Peace of our Southern frontier, the happiness of the inhabitants of which is identical with our own Peace of mind. Lin Zexu, ex-Viceroy of Yunnan and Guizhou, has again and again been summoned into our presence, but has not yet arrived at the capital. Let him nevertheless at once be created Imperial Commissioner, and invested with the necessary credentials, and let him proceed forthwith by special stages