The Farmer Paradise

The Taiping Rebellion, also known as the Taiping Civil War or the Taiping Revolution, was a massive rebellion or total civil war in China that was waged from 1850 to 1864 between the established Manchu-led Qing dynasty and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom under Hong Xiuquan. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was an oppositional state based in Tianjing with a Christian millenarian agenda to initiate a major transformation of society. A self-proclaimed convert to Christianity and brother of Jesus Christ, Hong Xiuquan led an army that controlled a significant part of southern China during the middle of the 19th century, eventually expanding to command a population base of nearly 30 million people. Devolving into total war—with any and all civilian-associated resources and infrastructure as legitimate military targets—the conflict was the largest in China since the Qing conquest in 1644, and it also ranks as one of the bloodiest wars in human history, the bloodiest civil war, and the largest conflict of the 19th century, with estimates of the war dead ranging from 20–70 million to as high as 100 million, with millions more displaced.The war was mostly fought in the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi and Hubei, but over 14 years of war the Taiping Army had marched through every province of China proper except Gansu. The Taiping Rebellion began in the southern province of Guangxi when local officials launched a campaign of religious persecution against a millenarian sect known as the God Worshipping Society led by Hong Xiuquan, who believed himself to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ. The goals of the Taipings were religious, nationalist, and political in nature; they sought the conversion of the Chinese people to the Taiping's version of Christianity, the overthrow of the ruling Manchus, and a wholesale transformation and reformation of the state. Rather than simply supplanting the ruling class, the Taipings sought to upend the moral and social order of China.Hostilities began on January 1, 1851, when the Qing Green Standard Army launched an attack against the God Worshipping Society at the town of Jintian, Guangxi. Hong declared himself the Heavenly King of the Heavenly Kingdom of Peace , from which comes the term Taipings that has often been applied to them in the English language. The Taipings began marching north in September 1851 to escape Qing forces closing in on them. On March 19, 1853, the Taipings captured the city of Nanjing and Hong declared it the Heavenly Capital of his kingdom. For a decade the Taiping occupied and fought across much of the mid and lower Yangtze valley, some of the wealthiest and most productive lands in the Qing empire. The Taiping nearly managed to capture the Qing capital of Beijing with a northern expedition launched in May 1853, and were successful in capturing large parts of Anhui, Jiangxi and Hubei provinces with the concurrent Western Expedition. Qing imperial troops proved to be largely ineffective in halting Taiping advances, focusing on a perpetually stalemated siege of Nanjing. In Hunan, a local irregular army called the Xiang Army or Hunan Army, under the personal leadership of Zeng Guofan, became the main armed force fighting for the Qing against the Taiping. Zeng's Xiang Army proved effective in gradually turning back the Taiping advance in the western theater of the war. In 1856 the Taiping were weakened after infighting following an attempted coup led by its East King, Yang Xiuqing. During this time the Xiang Army managed to gradually retake much of Hubei and Jiangxi province. In May 1860 the Taiping defeated the imperial forces that had been besieging Nanjing since 1853, eliminating them from the region and opening the way for a successful invasion of southern Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, the wealthiest region of the Qing Empire. While Taiping forces were preoccupied in Jiangsu, Zeng's forces moved down the Yangzi River, capturing Anqing on September 5, 1861. In May 1862 the Xiang Army began directly besieging Nanjing and managed to hold firm despite numerous attempts by the numerically superior Taiping Army to dislodge them. Hong died on June 1, 1864, and Nanjing fell shortly after, on July 19. After the fall of Nanjing, Zeng Guofan and many of his protégés, such as Li Hongzhang and Zuo Zongtang, were celebrated as saviors of the Qing empire and became some of the most powerful men in late-19th-century China. A small remainder of loyal Taiping forces continued to fight in northern Zhejiang, rallying behind Hong's teenage son Tianguifu, but after Tianguifu's capture on October 25, 1864, Taiping resistance was gradually pushed into the highlands of Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Fujian and finally Guangdong, where one of the last Taiping loyalist, Wang Haiyang, was defeated on January 29, 1866. In 1871 former Taiping general Li Fuzhong was defeated in the border region of Hunan, Jiangxi, and Guangxi.
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