Taiping Rebellion The Taiping Rebellion was a massive civil war in southern China from 1850 to 1864 , against the ruling Manchu - led Qing Dynasty . It was a millenarian movement led by Hong Xiuquan , who announced that he had received visions in which he learned that he was the younger brother of Jesus . At least 20 million people died , mainly civilians , in one of the deadliest military conflicts in history . Hong established the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom with its capital at Nanjing . The Kingdom ' s army controlled large parts of southern China , at its height ruling about 30 million people . The rebel agenda included social reforms such as shared " property in common , " equality for women , and the replacement of Confucianism , Buddhism and Chinese folk religion with their form of Christianity . Because of their refusal to wear the queue , Taiping combatants were nicknamed " Longhairs " ( ) by the Qing government , which besieged the Taiping armies throughout the rebellion . The Qing government eventually crushed the rebellion with the aid of French and British forces . In the 20th century , Sun Yat - sen , founder of the Chinese Nationalist Party , looked on the rebellion as an inspiration , and Chinese leader Mao Zedong glorified the Taiping rebels as early heroic revolutionaries against a corrupt feudal system . History . Origins . China , under the Qing Dynasty in the mid - 19th century , suffered a series of natural disasters , economic problems and defeats at the hands of the Western powers ; in particular , the humiliating defeat in 1842 by the United Kingdom in the First Opium War . The Qing government , led by ethnic Manchus , were seen by much of the Chinese population , who were mainly Han Chinese , as an ineffective and corrupt foreign regime . Anti - Manchu sentiment was strongest in the south among the laboring classes and it was these disaffected who flocked to join the charismatic leader Hong Xiuquan , a member of the Hakka community , a Han - Chinese sub - group that inhabited southern China but traced their ancestries back to northerners in the Song Dynasty . Having arrived too late to acquire the best land , they were engaged in constant conflicts , culminating in the Punti – Hakka Clan Wars . Among these serious problems were the prevalence of female infanticide , creating massive imbalances with shortages of women being worst in the primary Taiping centers . At the age of thirty - seven , Hong Xiuquan failed on multiple occasions to pass the imperial examinations ( of those who attempted the examinations , only about 5 percent passed ) which consequently denied him access to the ranks of the ruling scholarly elite . Hong experienced a lengthy illness and then after spending many days in bed , he recovered with a changed personality . His cousin Li Ching - fang noticed the pamphlet Hong had received from a Protestant Christian missionary in 1836 after his failed attempt at the imperial examination on a bookshelf inside Hong ' s house . After reading it Li suggested that Hong should read the material . After studying the material , Hong Xiuquan claimed that the illness he had following his imperial examinations was in fact a vision to the effect that he was the younger brother of Jesus , who was sent to rid China of the " devils , " including both the corrupt Manchu rulers and the teachings of Confucius . After this vision , he felt it was his duty to spread his interpretation of Christianity and overthrow Manchu rule . Hong ' s associate Yang Xiuqing was a former firewood merchant from Guangxi , who claimed to be able to act as a voice of God , in order to direct the people and gain political power . American Baptist missionary Issachar Jacox Roberts became a teacher and an adviser to Hong . The sect ' s power grew in the late 1840s , initially by suppressing groups of bandits and pirates ; persecution by Qing authorities spurred the movement into a guerrilla rebellion and then into widespread , bloody civil war . Early years . The revolt began in Guangxi province . After a previous small - scale battle resulting in a rebel victory in late December 1850 , in early January 1851 , a ten thousand - strong rebel army organized by Feng Yunshan and Wei Changhui routed government troops stationed in the town of Jintian ( present - day Guiping , Guangxi ) . Taiping forces successfully drove back the imperial reprisal against the Jintian Uprising . Middle years . In 1853 Hong Xiuquan withdrew from active control of policies and administration , ruling exclusively by written proclamations that often had religious content . Hong disagreed with Yang Xiuqing in certain matters of policy and became increasingly suspicious of Yang ' s ambitions , his extensive network and spies , and his declarations when " speaking as God " . Yang and his family were put to death by Hong ' s followers in 1856 , followed by the killing of troops loyal to Yang . With their leader largely out of the picture , Taiping delegates tried to widen their popular support with the Chinese middle classes and forge alliances with European powers , but failed on both counts . The Europeans decided to stay neutral . Inside China the rebellion faced resistance from the traditionalist middle class because of the rebels ' hostility to Chinese customs and Confucian values . The land - owning upper class , unsettled by the Taipings ' peasant mannerisms and their policy of strict separation of the sexes , even for married couples , sided with government forces and their Western allies . In 1859 Hong Rengan , a cousin of Hong Xiuquan , joined the Taiping forces in Nanjing and was given considerable power by Hong Xiuquan . He developed an ambitious plan to expand the Kingdom ' s boundaries . In 1860 the Taiping rebels were successful in taking Hangzhou and Suzhou to the east ( see Second rout of the Jiangnan Daying ) , but failed to take Shanghai ( Battle of Shanghai ( 1861 ) ) , which marked the beginning of the decline of the Kingdom . Fall of the Kingdom . An attempt to take Shanghai in August 1860 was repulsed by a force of Qing imperial troops and European officers under the command of Frederick Townsend Ward . This army would later become the " Ever Victorious Army " , a group of Chinese soldiers trained and led by Charles " Chinese " Gordon , and would be instrumental in the defeat of the Taiping rebels . Imperial forces were reorganized under the command of Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang , and the imperial reconquest began in earnest . By early 1864 imperial control in most areas was re - established . Hong Xiuquan declared that God would defend Nanjing , but in June 1864 , with Qing imperial forces approaching , he died of food poisoning as a consequence of eating wild vegetables when the city ran low on food supplies . He was sick for 20 days before succumbing and a few days after his death Qing forces took the city . His body was buried in the former Ming Imperial Palace where it was later exhumed on orders of Zeng Guofan to verify his death , and then cremated . Hong ' s ashes were later blasted out of a cannon in order to ensure that his remains have no resting place as eternal punishment for the uprising . Four months before the fall of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom , Hong Xiuquan abdicated in favour of Hong Tianguifu , his eldest son , who was 15 years old . The younger Hong was inexperienced and powerless , so the Kingdom was quickly destroyed when Nanjing fell in July 1864 to the imperial armies after protracted street - by - street fighting . Most of the Taiping princes were executed by Qing forces in Nanjing . Aftermath . Although the fall of Nanjing in 1864 marked the destruction of the Taiping regime , the fight was not yet over . There were still several hundred thousand Taiping rebel troops continuing the fight , with more than a quarter - million Taiping rebels fighting in the border regions of Jiangxi and Fujian alone . It wasn ' t until August 1871 that the last Taiping rebel army led by Shi Dakai ' s commander , General Li Fuzhong ( 李福忠 ) was completely wiped out by the governmental forces in the border region of Hunan , Guizhou and Guangxi . In 1865 , Liu Yongfu escaped in command of a splinter group he called his Black Flag Army ( ; ) recruited largely from soldiers of ethnic Zhuang background , and crossed from Guangxi into Upper Tonkin in the Empire of Annam , where his forces were engaged by the French . He later became the second and last leader of the short - lived Republic of Formosa ( 5 June – 21 October 1895 ) . Other " Flag Gangs " armed with the latest in arms , disintegrated into bandit groups that plundered remnants of the Lan Xang kingdom , and then were engaged by incompetent forces of King Rama V ( r . 1868 – 1910 ) until 1890 , when the last of the groups eventually disbanded . Their victims did not know where the bandits had come from , and , as they were plundering Buddhist temples , confused them with Chinese Muslims from Yunnan called " Hui " in Mandarin and " Haw " in the Lao language ( , ) which resulted in the protracted series of conflicts being misnamed the Haw wars . Death toll . With no reliable census at the time , estimates are necessarily based on projections , but the most widely cited sources put the total number of deaths during the 15 years of the rebellion at about 20 – 30 million civilians and soldiers . The rebellion happened at roughly the same time as the American Civil War . Though almost certainly the largest civil war of the 19th century ( in terms of numbers under arms ) , it is debatable whether the Taiping Rebellion involved more soldiers than the Napoleonic Wars earlier in the century , and so it is uncertain whether it should be considered the largest war of the 19th century . Other rebellions . The Nien Rebellion ( 1853 – 1868 ) , and several Muslim rebellions in the southwest ( Panthay Rebellion , 1855 – 1873 ) and the northwest ( Dungan revolt , 1862 – 1877 ) continued to pose considerable problems for the Qing Dynasty . The Panthay Rebellion ' s leader Du Wenxiu was in contact with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom . He was not aiming his rebellion at the Han Chinese , but was anti - Qing and wanted to destroy the Manchu government . Du ' s forces led multiple non - Muslim forces , including Han Chinese , Li , Bai , and Hani peoples . They were assisted by non - Muslim Shan and Kakhyen and other hill tribes in the revolt . The other Muslim rebellion , the Dungan revolt was the reverse : it was not aimed at overthrowing the Qing Dynasty since its leader Ma Hualong accepted an imperial title . Rather , it erupted due to intersectional fighting between Muslim factions and Han Chinese . Various groups fought each other during the Dungan revolt without any coherent goal . According to modern researchers , the Dungan rebellion began in 1862 not as a planned uprising but as a coalescence of many local brawls and riots triggered by trivial causes . Among these were false rumours spread that the Hui Muslims were aiding the Taiping rebels . However , the Hui Ma Hsiao - shih claimed that the Shaanxi Muslim rebellion was connected to the Taiping . The Heavenly Kingdom ' s policies . The rebels announced social reforms , including strict separation of the sexes , abolition of foot binding , land socialization , and " suppression " of private trade . In religion , the Kingdom tried to replace Confucianism , Buddhism and Chinese folk religion with a form of Christianity , holding that Hong Xiuquan was the younger brother of Jesus . Troops were nicknamed " Longhairs " , because they sported a traditional Confucian hairstyle which was different from the Qing queue . Qing government papers refer to them as " hairy rebels " ( , pinyin : " fàzéi " ) . Within the land it controlled , the Taiping Heavenly Army established a theocratic and highly militarized rule . However , the rule was remarkably ineffective , haphazard and brutal ; all efforts were concentrated on the army , and civil administration was non - existent . Rule was established in the major cities and the land outside the urban areas was little regarded . Even though polygamy was banned , Hong Xiuquan had numerous concubines . Many high - ranking Taiping officials kept concubines as a matter of prerogative , and lived as " de facto " kings . The military . Taiping Heavenly Army . The army was the rebellion ' s key strength . It was marked by a high level of discipline and fanaticism . They typically wore a uniform of red jackets with blue trousers , and grew their hair long so in China they were nicknamed " Longhairs " . The large numbers of women serving in the Taiping Heavenly Army also distinguished it from other 19th - century armies . Combat was always bloody and extremely brutal , with little artillery but huge forces equipped with small arms . The Taiping Army ' s main strategy of conquest was to take major cities , consolidate their hold on the cities , then march out into the surrounding countryside to recruit local farmers and battle government forces . Estimates of the overall size of the Taiping Heavenly Army are around 500 , 000 soldiers . The organization of a Taiping army corps was thus : These corps were placed into armies of varying sizes . In addition to the main Taiping forces organized along the above lines , there were also thousands of pro - Taiping groups fielding their own forces of irregulars . Ethnic structure of the army . Ethnically , the Taiping Heavenly Army was formed at the outset largely from these groups : the Hakka , a Han Chinese subgroup , the Cantonese , local residents of Guangdong province and the Zhuang ( a non - Han ethnic group ) , which were minority groups as compared to the Han Chinese subgroups that form dominant regional majorities across south China . It is no coincidence that Hong Xiuquan and the other Taiping royals were Hakka . As a Han sub - group , the Hakka were frequently marginalized economically and politically , having migrated to the regions they inhabit only after other Han groups were already established there . For example , when the Hakka settled in Guangdong and parts of Guangxi , speakers of Yue Chinese ( Cantonese ) were already the dominant regional Han group there and had been for some time , just as speakers of various dialects of Min are locally dominant in Fujian province . The Hakka settled throughout southern China and beyond , but as latecomers they generally had to establish their communities on rugged , less fertile land scattered on the fringe of the local majority group ' s settlements . As their name ( " guest households " ) suggests , the Hakka were generally treated as migrant newcomers , often subject to hostility and derision from local majority Han populations . Consequently , the Hakka , to a greater extent than other Han Chinese , have been historically associated with popular unrest and rebellion . The other significant ethnic group in the Taiping army were the Zhuang , an indigenous people of Tai origin and China ' s largest non - Han ethnic minority group . Over the centuries Zhuang communities had been adopting Han Chinese culture . This was possible because Han culture in the region accommodates a great deal of linguistic diversity , so the Zhuang could be absorbed as if the Zhuang language were just another Han Chinese dialect ( which it is not ) . As Zhuang communities were integrating with the Han at different rates , a certain amount of friction between Han and Zhuang was inevitable , with Zhuang unrest on occasion leading to armed uprisings . The second tier of the Taiping army was an ethnic mix that included many Zhuang . Prominent at this level was Shi Dakai , who was half - Hakka , half - Zhuang and spoke both languages fluently , making him quite a rare asset to the Taiping leadership . In the later stages of the Taiping Rebellion , the number of Han Chinese in the army from Han groups other than the Hakka increased substantially . However , the Hakka and the Zhuang ( who constituted as much as 25 % of the Taiping Army ) , as well as other non - Han ethnic minority groups ( many of them of Tai origin related to the Zhuang ) , continued to feature prominently in the rebellion throughout its duration , with virtually no leaders emerging from any Han Chinese group other than the Hakka . Social structure of the Taiping Army . Socially and economically , the Taiping rebels came almost exclusively from the lowest classes . Many of the southern Taiping troops were former miners , especially those coming from the Zhuang . Very few Taipings , even in the leadership caste , came from the imperial bureaucracy . Almost none were landlords and in occupied territories landlords were often executed . Generals . In fact , the military ability of the generals of the Taiping Rebellion was higher than that of the Qing government ' s generals , for example : Early ( 1851 – 1854 ) : Xiao Chaogui , Wei Changhui , Shi Dakai , Qin Rigang , Lin Qirong , Lai Hanying , Zeng Tianyang , Li Kaifang , Luo Dagang , Tang Zhengzai Middle ( 1855 – 1859 ) : Li Xiucheng , Chen Yucheng , Yang Fuqing , Wei Jun , Li Shixian , Ye Yunlai , Huang Chengzhong , Liu Chunlin Late ( 1860 – 1864 ) : Li Rongfa , Lai Wenguang , Chen Kunshu Imperial Army . Opposing the rebellion was an imperial army with a size over a million regulars with unknown thousands of regional militia s and foreign mercenaries operating in support . Among the imperial forces was the elite Ever Victorious Army , consisting of Chinese soldiers led by a European officer corps ( see Frederick Townsend Ward and Charles Gordon ) , backed by British arms companies like Willoughbe , Willoughbe & Ponsonby . A particularly famous imperial force was Zeng Guofan ' s Xiang Army . Although keeping accurate records was something imperial China traditionally did very well , the decentralized nature of the imperial war effort ( relying on regional forces ) and the fact that the war was a civil war and therefore very chaotic meant that reliable figures are impossible to find . The destruction of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom also meant that any records it possessed were destroyed . Zuo Zongtang from Hunan province , who was also known as General Tso , was another important Qing general who contributed in suppressing the Taiping Rebellion . The organization of the Qing Imperial Army was thus : Total war . The Taiping Rebellion was the first instance of total war in modern China . Almost every citizen of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was given military training and conscripted into the army to fight against Qing imperial forces . During this conflict both sides tried to deprive each other of resources to continue the war and it became standard practice to destroy agricultural areas , butcher the population of cities and in general exact a brutal price from captured enemy lands in order to drastically weaken the opposition ' s war effort . This war was total in the sense that civilians on both sides participated to a significant extent in the war effort and in the sense that armies on both sides waged war on the civilian population as well as military forces . This resulted in massive civilian death toll with some 600 cities destroyed and other bloody policies resulting . Since the rebellion began in the province of Guangxi , Imperial forces allowed no rebels speaking its dialect to surrender . Reportedly in the province of Guangdong , it is written that 1 , 000 , 000 were executed . These policies of mass civilian murder occurred elsewhere including in Anhui , and Nanjing . In art and popular culture . Art . The rebellion is featured on the Tiananmen Square ' s Monument to the People ' s Heroes and many other public places in Beijing and Nanjing .