Osprey - Men-at-Arms 275 The Taiping Rebellion 1851-66 [Osprey MaA 275].pdf

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First published in Great Britain in 1994 by
Osprey, an imprint of Reed Consumer Books Ltd,
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London SW3 6RB
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ISBN 1 85532 346 X
Filmset in Great Britain by Keyspools Ltd
Printed through Bookbuilders Ltd, Hong Kong
Note on spelling
To avoid unnecessary confusion, I have opted to use the
same transliterations of Chinese words as were em-
ployed by 19th century authors. Readers will therefore
find Peking, not Beijing; Hung Hsiu-ch'uan, not Hong
Xiuquan; Kwangsi, not Guangxi; and so on.
Publisher's
note
Readers may wish to study this title in conjunction with
the following Osprey publications:
MAA 95
The Boxer Rebellion
MAA 198
The British Army on Campaign: 3
1856-1881
MAA 224
Queen Victoria's Enemies: 4 Asia
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THE TAIPING REBELLION 1851-66
THE TAIPING
REBELLION
1851-66
The Taiping Rebellion was only the first, albeit the
most dangerous, of a spate of insurrections against
the ailing government of China in the mid 19th
century. Between 1850 and 1877 the Moslems in the
west and north-west of the country, the Triads and
the aboriginal Miaou in the south, and the Nien and
the Taipings in the east all took up arms against their
Manchu overlords in a series of revolts that nearly
brought the Ch'ing dynasty to an end. The catalyst
for such widespread rebellion was China's humi-
liation by Britain in the Opium War of 1839-42,
which had highlighted the impotence of her anti-
quated army. However, the inefficiency of the Ch'ing
government had prepared the way, through a combi-
nation of overtaxation, corruption, official discrimi-
nation against minority groups and the administra-
tion's failure to match China's massive population
explosion (from 125 million in 1736 to 432 million by
1852) with a proportionate increase in arable land.
The Taiping movement began as the
Pai Shang-
ti Hui
(the Society of God-Worshippers), founded in
Kwangsi province in 1846 by Hung Hsiu-ch'uan. A
Taiping troops in action, from Augustus Lindley's
Ti-Ping Tien Kwoh.
Note the jingall crews at left.
sickly individual of questionable sanity, Hung had
become subject to visions which, having read a small
amount of Christian literature, he chose to interpret
as demonstrating that he was Jesus Christ's 'Divine
Younger Brother', with God's mandate to govern
China.
Hostilities between the God-Worshippers and
local militia units broke out in October 1850, when
the former took sides with the relatively newly-
arrived Hakka people of Kwangtung and Kwangsi
provinces (Hung was himself a Hakka) in a land-war
with the Pen-ti population. Early successes in this
local war, combined with an unsuccessful Imperialist
attempt to destroy the God-Worshippers' camp at
Chin-t'ien as a centre of local banditry, led to Hung's
proclamation in January 1851 of his
T'ai-p'ing T'ien-
Kuo
or Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace, with
himself as
T'ien Wang
(Heavenly King). His principal
lieutenants were installed in December as the
Tung
Wang
(Eastern King),
Si Wang
(Western King),
Pei
Wang
(Northern King),
Nan Wang
(Southern King)
and /
Wang
(Assistant King).
The ensuing civil war's first phase, lasting until
March 1853, saw the Imperialist armies depending
on the walls of their fortified cities for safety from
3
theTaiping forces, who remained highly mobile and
thereby retained the initiative. They advanced down
the Hsiang valley, capturing city after city but always
quickly abandoning their conquests and moving on.
(No attempt was made to occupy captured territory
permanently until much later.) Despite some set-
backs - the
Nan Wang
and
Si Wang
were both killed
during 1852 — the Taiping army had grown from
some 10,000 to perhaps half a million by the time it
arrived at Lake Tung-t'ing on the Yangtze. There the
Taipings captured a massive Imperialist flotilla, and
with this they were able to advance rapidly
downriver, capturing Wuchang, Anking and other
cities en route until on 20 March 1853 they took
Nanking, the old capital of Ming China. Nanking
became the capital of the nascent Taiping state.
The Taipings' seizure of Nanking may have been
symbolic, but it seems almost certain that its strategic
importance had also been recognised, since posses-
sion of Nanking and the debouchment of the Grand
Canal into the Yangtze nearby effectively blockaded
Peking by cutting it off from the fertile southern
provinces which fed it. Nevertheless, establishing
themselves here is generally regarded to have been a
strategic error. The consensus is that if the Taipings
had marched against Peking at once, the Ch'ing
dynasty would almost certainly have been over-
thrown. Instead, only a small contingent - perhaps
20,000 men - was sent on towards the capital in May.
Even this succeeded in coming within three miles of
Tientsin, before inadequate supply-lines, the severe
cold of the northern winter and the want of cavalry
(Taiping armies invariably consisting almost entirely
of foot soldiers) obliged it to fall back, in February
1854.
The failure to send sufficient forces to the north
resulted from the Taipings' need to defend their
conquests, in particular their new capital. This was
an onerous burden, which curtailed their earlier
mobility. Thereafter their field armies had to be
recalled to Nanking repeatedly to frustrate attempts
at encirclement mounted from two Imperialist head-
quarters that had been established north and south of
the Yangtze late in 1853, usually referred to as the
Northern or Kiangpei, and Southern or Kiangnan
Imperial Barracks. The Imperialist blockades were
broken in 1856, 1858, 1859, and twice in 1860 (the
Northern camp was overrun in September 1858, and
the Southern in 1856 and again, decisively, in 1860).
However, the Taipings' failure to break a renewed
blockade in 1862 was to result in Nanking's eventual
fall.
In the meantime the idealism and discipline of
the Taiping movement's early days ended in internal
strife. Recognised from the outset as military com-
mander-in-chief, the
Tung Wang
or Eastern King,
Yang Hsiu-ch'ing, steadily strengthened his position
by claiming visions akin to those of Hung Hsiu-
ch'uan. Eventually, in the summer of 1856, it became
apparent that preparations for the transfer of power
in the capital were afoot, but Yang's rival, the
Pa
Wang
or Northern King, moved first, surprising and
killing Yang and 20,000 of his supporters in a bloody
two-week purge. Alarmed at this, Hung recalled his
kinsman, the /
Wang
Shih Ta-k'ai, to the capital, but
the
Pei Wang
attacked Shih's family, forcing him to
flee for his life. It was not until November that
Hung's own troops were able to regain control in the
capital, defeating and killing the
Pei Wang
after two
days of street-fighting. Shih Ta-k'ai subsequently
China in the mid-19th century
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