How A Man Who Thought He Was Christ’s Younger Brother Led The Bloodiest Civil War in History

In 1851, the Qing dynasty was becoming concerned about the number of followers that Hong was gathering. And in January, they launched an attack to crush the growing sect at the city of Jintian. But after a fierce battle, Hong’s forces came out on top, and the Qing’s commander was publicly beheaded. This early victory made Hong a symbol that everyone opposed to the Qing government could rally around. Many of his new followers came from the native Hakka ethnic group, which had always hated the Qing dynasty, which was founded by foreign Manchus.

Hong’s followers began to symbolically reject Manchu dominance. They began cutting off their queues, a traditional Manchu hairstyle where the front of the head is shaved and the hair in the back grown into a long ponytail. The Manchu had required their Han Chinese subjects to grow their hair this way, and it was always seen as a symbol of the Manchu rule over China. Now, Hong’s followers began to grow their hair out. Many also began wearing red turbans as a symbol of their allegiance to Hong. Hong, meanwhile, began preaching that the Manchu were demons and that it was the duty of his followers to kill all of them.

Within two years, Hong’s followers captured the city of Nanjing. By now, the rebellion was hundreds of thousands strong. Soon, the rebels managed to capture the major city of Nanjing. With an earthly kingdom now established, Hong began trying to make it into a heavenly one. At first, Hong’s reforms were fairly normal as far as revolutionary governments go. He began by deciding to do everything differently than the hated Qing Dynasty. The calendar was changed, and the imperial bureaucracy in the city was stripped down and replaced by Hong’s followers. Opium was outlawed once again with strict penalties for selling or using it.

But Hong also claimed to speak for God on Earth. And “after speaking with God,” he began making proclamations about how the Almighty wanted Chinese society to change. First, all the traditional beliefs of the Chinese were banned. The Confucian texts Hong had once memorized were burned. Traditional statues of gods and spirits were destroyed. Women and men were to be strictly segregated. Hong and his closest followers, however, kept large numbers of the most beautiful women in their homes as concubines. As the younger brother of God, the rules didn’t apply to Hong.

Meanwhile, outside the city of Nanjing, the war continued. As Hong’s army attracted more followers, they managed to expand their kingdom to cover large parts of Southern China. Eventually, more than 30 million people lived inside the “Taiping Heavenly Kingdom,” as Hong’s followers began to call their new territory. If there was any doubt about the threat the Taiping Kingdom posed to the ruling Qing, it was now gone. And the Qing emperor began raising troops in a desperate fight for survival. The next stage of the war was about to begin. And it would prove to be one of the most deadly conflicts in history.

By 1860, the Taiping were at the height of their power, smashing Qing armies besieging Nanjing and capturing the cities of Hangzhou and Suzhou. In 1861, the same year that the Americans began their own civil war, the Taiping launched an attack on the major port city of Shanghai. But Shanghai had long been a center of trade with Western powers, and the British and French weren’t eager to see it fall into the hands of a rebel army. As the Taiping laid siege to the city, the Europeans began to bring in their own forces to protect the city.

Though the number of European troops was small, they had access to the latest military technology, and their cannons began tearing through the ranks of the Taiping rebels. At the same time, the Qing launched a major counterattack, eventually shattering the Taiping army and sending them into a retreat from the city. The Taiping suffered major losses and were forced onto the defensive. The Qing, now better organized and receiving support from the West, began pushing the borders of the Heavenly Kingdom back to Nanjing. Now the Taiping were fighting for survival.

Both the Qing and the Taiping were fighting a total war in one of the most densely populated areas of the planet. And the war quickly began to take a toll on the civilian population. The endless demands of an army for food meant that both sides began stripping the countryside of anything edible and seizing harvests. The people of China soon starved in massive numbers, and the competing armies began to massacre cities and villages that they captured from the enemy, assuming that the local population had been on the other side. Within a few years, this brutal combination led to millions of deaths.

Hong, meanwhile, was becoming increasingly unstable. He withdrew from actively running his kingdom and retreated into his palace in Nanjing, where he spent his days with his concubines and taking advantage of earthly pleasures. His competing generals began filling the vacuum of power like miniature kings, which quickly led to the fracturing of the kingdom. Despite the fanatical resistance of the rebels, by 1864 the Qing were at the gates of Nanjing. Hong’s general, Li Xiucheng, demanded that Hong abandon the city. Hong refused, saying that anyone who disagreed with him- and thus God- would be executed. But as the Qing cut off the supply of food to the city, people began to starve.

Hong declared that the people of the city would eat manna from Heaven, which meant weeds plucked from the ground. To prove it, Hong publicly picked some weeds and ate them. Unfortunately, the weeds he picked were poisonous. Hong died soon after and was replaced by his teenage son. But within weeks of his death, the Qing broke into the city, and a massacre followed. The battle effectively brought an end to the Heavenly Kingdom but at a great cost. The final death toll for the war is estimated at 20-30 million dead, making it the bloodiest civil war in history.

Where did we find this stuff? Here are our sources:

“Taiping Rebellion”. Editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Britannica. July 2017.

“Hong Xiuquan”. Lee Nathan Feigon, Encyclopedia Britannica. May 2015.

“Third Battle of Nanjing”. Editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Britannica. April 2017.