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.