Opium Wars
In 1773 the British East India Company began a monopoly on Patna opium, which was of higher quality than the Malwa opium the Portuguese traded. In 1796 the Company began selling opium at public auctions in Calcutta to private traders who sold it in Macao. The opium traffic through Macao in the first two decades of the 19th century was about 300 tons a year. Competition lowered prices and increased consumption, doubling imports in the 1820s. China's trade imbalance turned negative in 1826, and from 1828 to 1836 China lost 38 million taels of silver. About one in five government officials smoked opium, twice as many in the provinces as in the capital. Estimates vary, but the total number of addicts in China was probably around four million.
The British Parliament ended the Company's monopoly in 1833, and private trade quickly increased. Foreign secretary Palmerston appointed William John Napier as superintendent of trade at Guangzhou in 1834, but Napier ignored Governor-General Lu Kun by going from Macao to Guangzhou without permission and by trying to contact the Emperor directly. His letter was rejected, and Lu imposed an embargo with a military blockade. The arrogant Napier had to retreat to Macao, where he died of malaria in October. Quiet John Francis Davis became superintendent, but British merchants began demanding warships and reparations. In 1835 James Matheson went to London to lobby. Navy captain Charles Elliot became superintendent in 1836 and was more diplomatic, as 1,820 tons of opium were imported into China. One silver tael had been worth one thousand copper cash, but by 1838 the exchange rate had increased to 1,650 copper cash. The copper mines of Yunnan were being depleted, and the government debased the copper coins such that during Daoguang's reign the rate would reach 2,700.
This huge opium business was illegal, and Guangdong had a fleet of patrol boats to catch opium-runners since 1826; but they began collecting fees of 36,000 taels a month to let them alone, and in 1832 the patrols were cancelled until Deng Tingzhen's effort to stop smuggling five years later. Efforts to suppress the drug traffic by using the baojia system of informing failed. In May 1836 Xu Naiji suggested making opium legal as a medicine. This was discussed at court and approved by Guangzhou authorities in September, but after four months the Emperor decided to try to end the opium trade. In 1837 the provincial judge closed down the smoking rooms and had two thousand dealers arrested. Local traffic slowed, but the smuggling still flourished along the coast. In 1838 imports reached a high of 2,800 tons. In June, Beijing official Huang Jue-zi proposed punishing addicts with the death penalty.
In July 1838 the experienced and respected governor Lin Zexu wrote a memorial that outlined a comprehensive program in which the state would offer addicts rehabilitation and implement increasing enforcement in four stages. While governing Hubei and Hunan, he had confiscated 5,500 pipes and 12,000 ounces of opium. Emperor Daoguang appointed Lin imperial commissioner, and he arrived at Guangzhou on March 10, 1839. He hired translators to develop his own intelligence service, and he gave the local gentry more power to stop the use of opium. In the next two months more than 1,600 Chinese were arrested, and 35,000 pounds of opium and 42,741 pipes were confiscated. Lin ordered foreigners to turn in their chests of opium and declare in writing what weapons they owned. He offered tea as a reward but never mentioned compensation. When the traders only turned over 1,036 chests, Lin ordered Lancelot Dent arrested; but the traders refused to surrender him. Two leading Hong merchants were made hostages and had to wear chains around their necks.
On March 24, 1839 Lin Zexu ordered all foreign trade stopped and the foreigners in the thirteen factories blockaded. Three days later he explained in writing four reasons why the foreigners must surrender their opium. First, he considered it unethical for them to be trading poison to millions of victims for silver. Second, China has made it a capital crime to ship opium in the future. Third, if the foreigners do not stop the opium trade, then China will stop all trade. Fourth, because China is forgiving the past, they should stop the crime in order to be honest. Not having sold a chest of opium in the past five months, Elliot turned over 21,306 chests of opium in May, and the blockade was removed. Three million pounds of opium were mixed with water, salt, and lime in three huge trenches and then washed down to the sea. Matheson commented that the Chinese had fallen into the snare of British power. Lin found an argument for a nation's right to control its foreign trade in Vattel's Law of Nations, and he wrote two letters to Queen Victoria, asking how she would feel if foreigners were imposing such a drug on her people.
When drunk English sailors killed a Chinese man in July 1839, Charles Elliot refused to submit them to Chinese jurisdiction. Under Chinese pressure, the British retreated to Macao. Lin pressured the Portuguese to make the British leave, and in August they occupied barren Hong Kong (Xianggang), which had a good harbor and became a base for fifty British vessels. Americans exported tea for the British, and the coast trade of opium continued. William Jardine went back to London with $20,000 for lobbying, and three hundred firms in London, Manchester, and Liverpool demanded action. Elliot fired on a Chinese fleet that would not submit in September. He refused to sign the bond promising not to engage in the opium trade because of the death penalty, but some British traders signed against his orders. The captain of the Royal Saxon was one, and in November 1839 he tried to trade with the Chinese at the Bogue and was attacked by the HMS Volage. In the battle with the British, four Chinese junks were destroyed. As Lin arrested dealers and addicts in Guangdong, the price of opium went from $500 per chest to $3,000.
In April 1840 William Gladstone made a passionate speech in the House of Commons, suggesting that they could simply stop the illegal smuggling of the opium; he said he knew of no war more unjust and warned that it would be a "permanent disgrace." However, the Tory resolution censuring the war was defeated 271-262. On the China coast the British navy enabled the merchants to sell opium, and the price went down to $350 per chest. A British fleet arrived at Macao in June 1840, left a blockade around Guangzhou without attacking its defenses, and moved north. They blockaded Ningbo and seized Zhoushan (Chusan) in July 1840. Although Admiral George Elliot forbade the sale of opium, smugglers unloaded it for only $100 per chest. Lin collected sixty warjunks, fortified the Bogue with newly purchased foreign guns, and blocked the river with iron chains.
Governor-General Qishan from the capital province of Zhili began negotiations and persuaded the British to return to Guangzhou. Emperor Daoguang appointed Qishan governor-general of Guangxi and Guangdong, and he banished Lin Zexu to Ili for having failed to suppress the opium trade and for causing troubles. In January 1841 Qishan signed the Chuanbi Convention, agreeing to cede Hong Kong, pay $6,000,000 indemnity, allow the British direct contact with the Qing empire, and reopen trade at Guangzhou within ten days. Daoguang disliked this agreement so much that he ordered Qishan executed and confiscated his immense fortune that included 425,000 acres, 135,000 ounces of gold, and ten million pounds of silver, but later the Emperor commuted his sentence to exile. Palmerston was also upset by the agreement and replaced Elliot with Henry Pottinger in May, the month the British destroyed 71 warjunks and sixty shore batteries at Huangpu (Whampoa). General Fang broke a truce, and about 20,000 peasants attacked the foreigners with spears, knives, and hoes; but the Guangzhou prefect ordered the gentry to stop this and keep the truce so that Elliot would not bombard the city. Guangzhou officials then agreed to pay a $6,000,000 ransom.
Pottinger arrived in August with ten warships. He went north with an armada of 32 ships and 27,000 men, and their forces surrounded Xiamen (Amoy) before taking it in October, losing only two killed and fifteen wounded. Two more were killed as they recaptured Zhoushan, but General Gough was wounded. Chinese troops fled from Ningbo before it was taken. The Chinese military had become very weak and corrupt; many of the troops smoked opium and robbed the people. Wherever they were defeated, local mobs looted. The new iron steamers of the British were superior to the Chinese junks, and the British flintlocks were much more effective than the antiquated matchlocks the Chinese used.
Yijing tried to attack Ningbo in March 1842 at the tiger-hour on the tiger-day in the tiger-month during the tiger-year; but the vanguard was left to 700 aborigines from Sichuan armed with knives, and they were slaughtered by English guns. The Chinese chief of staff was distracted smoking opium, and the Zhoushan marines sailed along the coast sending in false battle reports. In the spring 25 warships and 10,000 men arrived from India. The British stormed into abandoned Shanghai in June and seized 360 guns with nine tons of gunpowder, accepting a $300,000 bribe not to loot. They entered Zhenjiang in July, blocking the Grand Canal at the Yangzi River. General Gough tried to prevent looting and raping, and some Indians were executed by their own officers. At Zhenjiang 1,600 Manchu bannermen refused to surrender; instead they killed their own children and cut their wives' throats before hanging themselves from their barracks' rafters.
When the British besieged Nanjing in August 1842, the Chinese could raise only half the $600,000 the English demanded. Nanjing's viceroy Yilibu surrendered; then he and imperial commissioner Qiying negotiated with the British and the Emperor to achieve the Treaty of Nanjing. The Chinese agreed to pay the British $12 million for military expenses, $6 million for the destroyed opium, and $3 million for the Hong merchants' debts. The Cohong monopoly was abolished. Hong Kong was ceded to the British, who were allowed to trade and reside at Guangzhou, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo, and Shanghai. Official correspondence was to be on equal terms, and a fixed tariff was to be established. The treaty was approved by the Emperor in September and by Queen Victoria at the end of the year. Pottinger was ordered to prohibit opium traffic in Hong Kong, and he warned British subjects with contraband that they would not be protected from Chinese edicts. The Treaty of the Bogue was signed in October 1843 and set reasonable import and export tariffs. The British were exempt from Chinese law and had their own criminal jurisdiction. Opium was still illegal even though it was not mentioned in the treaty. In gaining a "most-favored nation" clause, any concessions, privileges, or immunities China gave to another country were to apply also to the British. China made treaties with the United States in July 1844 and with France in October; these allowed Christian activity in the five cities. The US, France, and Russia also became most-favored nations. Because China made most of the concessions under military pressure, these treaties have been called unequal and semi-colonial.
After Qiying and Pottinger signed the 1843 treaty, they became close friends. They worked to resolve conflicts, though Qiying was fiercely criticized for favoring the foreigners. The British foreign office approved of Pottinger's policy that the English should not take advantage of the Chinese. However, when John F. Davis replaced Pottinger in 1844, he disparaged the Chinese and would not cooperate with Qiying. Residents of Guangzhou refused to let the British inside the city. Exports from Guangzhou fell sharply as Shanghai gained most of the trade. British consuls facilitated trade, and they were ordered to take no legal action against opium smuggling. Eighty clipper ships were transporting opium to and from Hong Kong by 1845. Shanghai was soon importing 20,000 chests of opium annually.
When Qiying proclaimed that Guangzhou was open to the British in January 1846, mobs attacked the prefect and burned his yamen (office). In April, Qiying relieved British fears of French encroachment when he conceded that no other power would be given the Zhoushan Islands; Davis agreed to postpone British entry into Guangzhou. Rural militias and urban mobs rioted against the British, and Davis ordered a retaliation that spiked 827 cannons in the Bogue forts. In April 1847 Qiying promised that the British could enter Guangzhou within two years. Qiying lost credibility and was recalled to the capital in 1848. His replacement, Xu Guangjin, and Guangdong governor Ye Mingchen took a hard line. After demonstrations with a hundred thousand Chinese, Hong Kong governor George Bonham agreed to a postponement.
Emperor Daoguang died in 1850 and was succeeded by his 19-year-old son Xianfeng. He dismissed the moderates Qiying and Muchanga and promoted xenophobic officials. Ye Mingchen replaced Xu Guangjin and refused to meet with western diplomats. In the 1850s opium smuggling reached 60,000 chests a year. The poppy was also cultivated in China, and this production would eventually replace the imports from India. Applying the agreement to revise the treaties after twelve years, in 1854 the two British ministers demanded tariff revision, legations in Beijing, access to Tianjin, the right to buy land in the interior, legalizing opium imports, and abolishing inland transport dues. The imperial court rejected all these demands and in 1856 denied even minor changes.
On October 8, 1856 Chinese soldiers boarded the Arrow to search for a pirate, and they arrested the Chinese crew. The ship had been registered with the British, but this had lapsed. Harry Parkes, the British consul at Guangzhou, claimed the British flag had been insulted. Ye Mingchen released the crew but refused to apologize. On October 23 British gunboats began bombarding Ye's yamen every ten minutes except on Sunday. Ye ordered an attack on October 28, and the British captured the yamen the next day. In December the angry Chinese burned down the foreign factories in Guangzhou. In March 1857 Gladstone criticized the military action, and Palmerston lost a vote of confidence. After Palmerston's party won a majority in the general election, Lord Elgin led the expedition to China that was joined by French forces because of the execution of missionary Abbé Auguste Chapdelaine. Elgin's objectives were reparations, treaty fulfillment at Guangzhou, compensation for British subjects, diplomatic access to Beijing, and treaty revision to extend trade up the rivers. The French also wanted treaty extension and diplomatic representation, and they added freedom for religious propagation. William B. Reed of the United States communicated that it had no territorial designs on China, and Russia's Admiral Putiatin acted as a mediator in order to keep the northern Manchus in power during the Taiping revolution. When Elgin arrived at Hong Kong in July 1857, his troops were immediately diverted to help put down the Sepoy Mutiny in India.
In December 1857 Elgin and Baron Gros demanded that Ye Mingchen negotiate and pay an indemnity. Ye refused and was captured when the Anglo-French forces stormed Guangzhou. Ye was shipped to Calcutta and died there a year later. Parkes took control, and the Manchu Bogui was a puppet governor for the next three years. Elgin and Gros went north and took the Dagu forts and Tianjin while looking for someone with the power to negotiate. Half-blind Qiying was sent but was embarrassed by a memorial he had written in 1844. Qiying left without authorization, and he was tried and sentenced to death by the imperial court. In June 1858 the Chinese made treaties at Tianjin with the British, France, the United States, and Russia. British diplomats were allowed permanent residence in Beijing, and the French, American, and Russian envoys could visit. As most favored nations, they all gained the following concessions: ten new ports were opened; foreigners could travel in China with passports; inland transit dues were limited to 2.5 percent; Britain received an indemnity of four million taels and France two million; and Catholic and Protestant missionaries were allowed to move freely anywhere in China. The British were no longer to be called barbarians. Opium importation was legalized by the setting of a tariff, but only the Chinese were allowed to carry it in the interior. The British agreed to withdraw from Tianjin and the Dagu forts.
In June 1859 British envoy Frederick Bruce demanded the right to go from Shanghai to Beijing by ship. Marines sent to remove the blockade got stuck in the mud and suffered 434 casualties as four ships were sunk. The British attacked the Dagu forts again and were supported by the American naval commander Josiah Tattnall, who cried, "Blood is thicker than water." The American envoy, John E. Ward, agreed to travel by cart, but the British and French ministers went back to Shanghai. Bruce was criticized in England, and Elgin was sent again with 41 warships and 11,000 soldiers along with 6,700 French troops. In August 1860 they landed and captured the Dagu forts, threatening Beijing. Ten miles from there during a negotiation, Parkes insulted the new imperial commissioner, Prince Yi, and was arrested. Twenty men with him died in captivity before Parkes was released. Russia's Nikolai Ignatiev urged a hard line and gave British general Hope Grant a map of Beijing. The Anglo-French forces invaded the capital, but the Emperor fled to his summer palace in Jehol (Rehe). Ignatiev and France's Baron Gros persuaded Elgin not to burn the Forbidden City, but instead he burned the Yuan Ming Yuan summer palace in Beijing that Castiglione had designed. Ignatiev persuaded Prince Gong not to flee but to accept the European terms in order to avoid worse destruction.
On October 24, 1860 Elgin dictated the terms for the Convention of Beijing, and Prince Gong agreed on behalf of the absent Qing court. The indemnity to England and France was raised to eight million taels each; Tianjin was opened to trade with residence; and the British acquired the Kowloon (Jiulong) Peninsula next to Hong Kong. Ignatiev also persuaded the allied troops to depart before the rivers froze. Then the Russians made a supplementary treaty that certified their territorial acquisitions east of the Ussuri River and those mentioned in the 1858 Treaty of Aigun that Muraviev had negotiated. The Russians had already secured part of Xinjiang in the 1851 Treaty of Ili. All together Russia had gained about 350 million square miles of new territory, and they established the port of Vladivostok on the Pacific coast. In 1862 Russia signed a trade treaty with Prince Gong, giving Russian merchants one-third less duties imported overland from the north than those Europeans paid on goods they imported by sea.
Taiping Revolution and Other Rebellions
While population was growing rapidly, the arable land in China had actually decreased since 1812. More than half of the land was owned by the rich. Rent was half the yield, and the loss of silver from increasing opium imports made the rent payments thirty percent higher. In 1836 Lan Zhengzun led Yao tribes in a White Lotus revolt in southern Hunan that was suppressed. Many workers on the Grand Canal lost their jobs when grain shipments shifted to the sea route. Government was corrupted by the selling of offices, and salt smuggling caused disruptions and conflicts for officials. Lin Zexu had urged the Triad lodges to fight the British, and in May 1841 they won a battle against a British patrol at Sanyuanli. As trade shifted away from Guangzhou to Shanghai, the bandit gangs became larger. Rebellion erupted again in 1847 under Yao chief Lei Zaihao, but it was crushed by militias led by local gentry. Silting in the Grand Canal caused the Yellow and Huai rivers to flood, resulting in a famine in Guangxi province in 1849. Lei's Triad follower Li Yuanfa led a siege of Xinning that failed.
Hong Xiuquan was born on January 1, 1814 into a family of the Hakka minority that had migrated south centuries before. He studied, but four times he failed the exam for a degree. In 1836 he met the Protestant missionary, Edwin Stevens, and was given the Christian tracts by Liang Afa (Fa) in Good Words to Admonish the Age that emphasized the Old Testament. Two utopian essays by the Confucian Zhu Ciqi also influenced him. The next year after his third exam failure he had a series of visions in which a woman washed him and took him to see his father, a man with a beard, who gave him a sword, and a younger man, who told him how to overcome evil spirits; he also saw Confucius confessing to the old man. Hong worked as a school teacher for the next six years and then failed the shengyuan exam again. He began reading the Bible and the Christian tracts, coming to believe that the two men in his vision were God and Jesus, whom he called his older brother.
Hong first converted his cousins, Li Jingfan and Hong Ren'gan, and then his schoolmate Feng Yunshan. Hong preached, baptized, and destroyed Confucian shrines, for which he lost his teaching job in 1844. Feng organized the Society of God Worshippers, and in eastern Guangxi they gained many converts among the Hakka and mountain tribes. In 1847 Hong and Ren'gan studied the Bible with an American southern Baptist named Issacher Roberts, who refused to baptize Hong because other jealous converts had tricked him into offering money. Wang Zuoxin had Feng arrested for destroying an idol, but Lu Liu and a group of followers forced his release. Then Wang had the constable detain Feng and Lu by using bribery. Lu died in jail before the charcoal workers could gather the money to liberate Feng.
In 1848 the uneducated Yang Xiuqing claimed that God possessed him, that he could speak for God, and that sickness could be transferred to his body. The 1849 famine in Guangxi stimulated Triad members to revolt against the rich, and Hong Xiuquan soon had ten thousand followers. Hong, Feng, and Yang were joined by Wei Changhui and farmer Xiao Chaogui, who claimed to speak for Jesus Christ and became Hong's brother-in-law. Shi Dakai was from a wealthy family and brought in others with money. Many miners, who were skilled in using explosives, joined the movement. Ex-soldiers and legal clerks joined along with bandits and pirates. They were called "long-haired" because the men stopped shaving the front of their heads and cut off their queues. Hong emphasized the ten commandments and was very puritanical, banning opium, alcohol, prostitution, dancing, gambling, and contact with women, who were considered equal but were separated. Taiping society outlawed footbinding, concubinage, and the purchase of wives, and they created six grades of nobility for women. In June 1850 the God Worshippers were urged to sell their property and put their money in one public treasury to share with all. Food and clothing were provided for everyone, and they lived in collective camps.
Hong had organized 20,000 people by the time the Qing government attacked them at Thistle Mountain in December 1850. The Manchu commander was killed, as the local Qing forces dissolved. While celebrating his birthday in 1851, Hong was proclaimed Heavenly King of the Heavenly Kingdom of the Great Peace (Taiping Tianguo). Yang became East King, Feng the South King, Xiao the West King, Wei the North King, and Shi the Assistant King. The women were governed by Hong's sister. Hong accepted members of anti-Manchu secret societies if they renounced idol worship. Yang and Xiao issued a proclamation accusing the Manchus of various crimes that included forcing men to wear "animal tails" (queues) and barbarian clothes, debauching Chinese women and adulterating the race, imposing Manchu laws and the Mandarin language, subjugating the Chinese, withholding relief from natural disasters to reduce the Chinese population, tolerating corrupt officials, allowing bribery, and killing relatives of rebel leaders. Written Taiping laws were very strict with decapitation as the punishment for various infractions.
The Taiping army seized the city of Yongan and grew to 60,000. In 1852 Hong began his own solar calendar with a year of 366 days and a seven-day week. In February 1852 King Hong ordered that the commandment against adultery and licentious behavior be enforced by beheading; at the same time he was decreeing how his imperial consorts were to be addressed. In the spring of 1852 the Taiping army failed to capture the Guangxi capital of Guilin despite the heroic efforts of the women's battalion, and in Hunan the South King Feng and the West King Xiao were killed. However, in December the Taiping occupied the wealthy town of Yuezhou, gaining 5,000 boats and weapons that had been abandoned by the rebel Wu Sangui in the 1670s.
Zeng Guofan was away from the Qing court mourning his mother in 1852 when he was ordered to recruit militia in Hunan. He also organized a naval force on the Yangzi River and raised money for his Xiang army by charging lijin transit dues. In January 1853 the Taiping army gained more boats and silver from the provincial treasury at Wuchang. The next month they took silver, cannons, and food from Anqing. Then in March 1853 they stormed into Nanjing and made it their capital for eleven years. They slaughtered all of the 40,000 Manchus they could find. British envoy George Bonham visited Nanjing in April; after being treated as inferior, he advised England to remain neutral. Yet both sides bought weapons from European arms dealers.
A Triad society called Small Swords rose up and took over Shanghai in September 1853. They claimed to be part of the Taiping revolution, but King Hong sent a commissioner to investigate and eventually rejected them for having immoral habits. The foreigners in Shanghai kept to their neutral policy as the Qing forces besieged the city. When in April 1854 an imperial squad killed two Englishmen and attacked other foreigners, a force of 400 British and American troops landed from ships and drove the imperial troops from the foreigners' settlement. In December, French troops allied with the Qing army in an attack on the insurgents that resulted in the death of 1,200 imperial troops and 64 French casualties. Bombardment caused the evacuation of the city in February 1855; most of the rebels escaped, but 300 who surrendered were beheaded. The imperial troops looted the city and decapitated 1,500 people alleged to be rebels. As a reward the French were given a larger settlement. Trade was disrupted during this rebellion; but while imports such as cotton languished, growing opium sales provided cash that helped exports from Shanghai increase in 1855.
In 1854 Zeng Guofan led his Xiang army of 17,000 from Hunan into Hubei, proclaiming that the Taiping rebels disrupted villages, abolished private property, destroyed temples, and violated Confucian propriety. The rebels had occupied Wuchang in June, but Zeng regained it in October. Hong sent an army into northern China; but they failed to win support, and the two leaders were captured and executed in 1855. That year the Taiping community abandoned the policy of separating men and women. The Taiping army cut the Hunan army into two parts and in April 1855 conquered Wuchang for the third time. Taiping forces in Nanjing attacked the imperial camps on the Yangzi River in 1856, and the imperial commissioner committed suicide.
Yang Liuqing had been going into his own trances and claiming that he was the Holy Ghost. He took operational control of the government and military while Hong was secluded with his many concubines. Money was kept in a common treasury and was supposed to be shared by all. They devised their own examinations based on the Bible and Hong's literary works. Women could take the exams and serve in administrative positions. Most of those taking these exams passed. Every 25 families had a sergeant who settled disputes, supervised their education, and preached to them every Sunday. They proclaimed complete equality and promised that all would be fed and clothed. All men and women over sixteen years were to receive one share of land, and dependents under that age counted as a half share. Yet Taiping efforts to implement land reforms affected very few places, as their armies usually foraged for food during the continuing civil war.
Yang Liuqing treated other Taiping kings arrogantly and almost had King Hong himself caned for having in his palace four female officials who were relatives of ministers. In 1856 Yang was planning to depose Hong on Yang's birthday in September. King Hong sent for the North King Wei; he and Qin Rigang assassinated Yang and had thousands of his followers slaughtered. Fearing revenge, they had King Hong invite Yang's supporters to witness the beating of Wei; 5,000 were let into a palace without weapons and were massacred. The bloody civil strife went on for days in the streets. Assistant King Shi arrived and tried to mediate. When Wei became angry and threatened him, Shi fled. After Wei had Shi's family murdered, Shi marched on the capital with an army of nearly 100,000. Wei had King Hong's palace surrounded but was defeated by the forces combined against him. Then King Hong had Wei beheaded and turned over the government to his two brothers.
Hong promoted Assistant King Shi Dakai to Righteous King, but Hong's brothers formed a clique against Shi. He left the capital with an army of 200,000 and declined Hong's invitation to return in 1857. Shi's army grew to 300,000 and was difficult to support. Many left, and at one point he had only 20,000; but he invaded Sichuan in 1862 with 200,000 troops. Eventually his army was reduced by starvation. After traveling 6,000 miles through fifteen provinces, Shi was finally captured and executed by slicing in 1863.
King Hong once again withdrew into his palace. Many officers only stayed with the Taiping regime because of the Qing policy of decapitating any rebels who surrendered. Chinese residents in Nanjing resented the Hakkas and attempts to separate the women. Their attempts to coordinate with the Nian revolt in the north and Red Turbans' rebellion in the south were not successful. Hong's unusual version of Christianity was disliked by missionaries, and traders resented the ban on opium.
Hong's cousin Ren'gan had lived in Hong Kong and tried to westernize the Taiping government. In 1859 he was named Shield King and prime minister, but his ideas for European legal and banking systems, public construction projects, a postal service, and newspapers were not implemented. Instead, his reforms included adjusting the calendar by having a year of 28-day months once every forty years, using a more vernacular literary style, promoting Chinese culture, regulating marriages, reorganizing the examination system, and using central military planning. Hong Ren'gan's attempt to regain the upper Yangzi valley failed. Loyal King Li Xiucheng managed to win some victories in 1860 and destroyed the Qing camp below Nanjing, but he could not take Shanghai. That year Zeng Guofan was appointed imperial commissioner and was put in command of the war against the Taiping rebels with his army of 120,000. He appointed Hu Linyi to govern Hubei, Zuo Zongtang in Zhejiang, and Li Hongzhang in Jiangsu. The Loyal King damaged the imperial forces at Anhui, but Zeng's brother Guoquan defeated the rebels at Anqing in September.
After the Loyal King led a Taiping attack on Shanghai in 1860, the westerners allied with the Qing. The American Frederick T. Ward organized a force, which after his death from a wound in 1862 was led by Charles G. Gordon. Emperor Xianfeng named them the Ever Victorious army, and they were under Chinese command. In May the Green Standard army with help from British and French troops and four British gunboats recovered the port of Ningbo. Zeng Guofan began the siege of Nanjing in June 1862 with 20,000 men. The Englishman Alexander Michie had visited Nanjing in 1861 and reported that the rebels were hated for murdering, destroying, prohibiting trade and industry, collecting high taxes, and plundering, but others reported Taiping taxes were lower. Issachar Roberts declared that Hong was crazy and did not know how to govern.
Zeng gave Li Hongzhang 3,000 troops as a nucleus for the Huai army of 70,000 he recruited. In 1862 they defended Shanghai from the attack led by the Loyal King with 50,000 troops. Li bought rifles and artillery from the westerners and was given permission to hire French and British officers to train his troops in Shanghai. In 1863 Li's Huai army with help from the Ever Victorious army captured Suzhou and slaughtered 20,000 Taiping troops. Gordon complained that Li had executed eight captured Taiping officers, and in March 1864 Palmerston ordered Gordon to withdraw from the imperial ranks. Yet before he received the order and dissolved the Ever Victorious army in May 1864, Gordon participated in the conquest and massacre of prisoners in four more cities. Gordon got Li to admit his responsibility for the Suzhou massacre and urged him to follow the international law against killing prisoners in the future.
Ill and weakened by malnutrition during the siege, King Hong refused to take medicine and died in June 1864. His 16-year-old son Hong Fu succeeded him with the Shield King Ren'gan as regent. Zeng Guoquan's Qing troops stormed Nanjing on July 19 and massacred about a hundred thousand Taiping believers, some of whom refused to surrender and burned themselves to death. In fourteen years the Taiping revolution had spread to sixteen of the eighteen provinces and captured more than six hundred cities, but they had not been able to govern them while fighting a civil war against the Qing empire. The young king fled to Jiangxi as the Loyal King gave him his horse and was captured. Zeng Guofan had the Loyal King write an autobiographical history of the Taiping revolution and then executed him in August. Hong Ren'gan was captured in October and executed in November. In December 1865 Wang Haiyang captured the last city for the Taiping at Jiaying in Guangdong, but in February 1866 a Qing army of 70,000 killed 10,000, and the last 50,000 Taiping surrendered.
Historians have estimated that at least twenty million people died in battle or by starvation in the region under Taiping influence between 1853 and 1864, as its industry and intellectual centers were devastated. The Taiping revolution failed for many reasons. Their beliefs were based more on the ten commandments than on the teachings of the Christ, and their massive use of violence brought on the consequences that destroyed them. Because they were constantly fighting the civil war, they could not implement their land reforms. Their destruction of temples and rejection of Confucian philosophy alienated the Chinese, especially the literati. Although chastity was supposed to be enforced by capital punishment, that Hong had 88 concubines and Yang 36 indicates their hypocrisy. Yet in many ways women were empowered in their revolution more than ever before. The kings fought each other in 1856, and they missed any possibility of an alliance with Christian foreigners because of poor diplomacy and by attacking Shanghai. Most western Christians considered Taiping beliefs and practices blasphemous. Ren'gan's reforms seemed to come too late, and only the brilliant generalship of the Loyal King and his determined fighters kept the revolution alive for so long.
