In the history of China, a certain cyclicality inherent in most world civilizations is especially clearly traced. Epochs of prosperity here alternated with periods of chaos and devastation. By the middle of the 19th century, the growing tension in the country led to another social explosion, which this time was caused not only by traditional internal Chinese problems, but also by fundamentally new phenomena.

Causes of the uprising

Since 1644, the imperial throne in China was occupied by representatives of the Manchu Qing dynasty, who established themselves here as a result of conquests. Despite the fact that the Manchus quickly assimilated, the local population continued to perceive them as outsiders. Therefore, all subsequent social unrest took place under calls for the overthrow of the hated Qing emperors.

The situation in the village also heated up. However, social tensions were nothing new to China. Since ancient times, the interests of rich landlords and the poorest lower classes clashed here, moreover, the latter have always been a source of anti-government sentiment. However, the social protest of the middle of the 19th century was associated not only with internal phenomena, but also with the consequences of the First Opium War. The purchase of opium from Britain caused an outflow of silver from the Chinese economy and inflation. At the same time, payments to the population were issued in cheap copper coins, and duties were collected exclusively in silver. This imbalance has caused a significant increase in the tax burden and growing discontent.

The opening of new ports for trade with foreigners unloaded land trade routes in the southern part of the country - in the Guangdong region. Transportation began to be carried out along the Yangtze River, which required less financial costs and saved a lot of time. As a result, many peasants who lived in the south and were engaged in the transportation of goods were left without work and livelihoods.

Another circumstance that led to peasant uprisings was the natural disasters that hit China in the 1840s: two severe floods that claimed the lives of 1 million people, and a crop failure in 1849.

The protest of the poorest sections could result in a short series of scattered and unsystematic uprisings, which the government would crush in a matter of months, or even weeks. But at this historically important moment, a very ambitious person appeared among the peasantry, who not only offered a clear ideological justification for further speeches, but also turned an amorphous mass of dissatisfied people into a strict, paramilitary organization. His name was Hong Xiuquan. Based on his own ideas about the structure of the world and the ideal state, he managed to create a real religion that found many adherents throughout the country.

The Teachings and Activities of Hong Xiutsuan

Hong Xiutsuan's ideas combined both traditional Chinese worldview elements and fundamentally new ones. In fact, it was a synthesis of Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism, on the one hand, and Christianity, understood in a special way, on the other.

Hong Xiutsuan saw the creation of a "state of great prosperity" based on the principles of equality and brotherhood as the main goal of his activity. The reason for the crisis, in his opinion, was the power of the Manchus - "devils". In order to return harmony to the world, it is necessary to eliminate the oppression of the landlords, begin to cooperate with Western countries and expel the "devils". Hong Xiutsuan called himself "the ruler and savior of people", sent down to earth from above, and also the younger brother of Christ.

In 1843, Hong Xiutsuan founded the "Society for the Worship of the Heavenly Ruler" and began to conduct active propaganda activities, moving from one province to another. Quite quickly, a wide circle of adherents develops around him. Basically, these were representatives of the poorest segments of the population: peasants, workers and marginals, attracted by the idea of ​​enriching the poor at the expense of the rich. However, wealthy people dissatisfied with Qing rule also stood up under the banner of Hun Xiutsuan. As a result, he managed to assemble a real 30,000-strong army.

The center of the revolutionary movement was the secluded village of Jin-Tian in the southern province of Guangxi. A real military camp was set up here, in which the strictest discipline reigned: opium and tobacco smoking, alcohol, sexual relations and gambling were banned. Members of the "Society for the Worship of the Heavenly Master" called for universal equality, community of property, austerity, the elimination of commodity-money relations, the observance of the ten Christian commandments and the fight against the Manchus.

Course of events

The initial stage of the revolution (1850-53)

Guangxi officials noticed the revolutionary movement growing in their province only in the summer of 1850. To eliminate it, they created armed peasant detachments, which either could not provide worthy resistance to the Taiping army, or joined the rebels. In January 1851, when Hong Xiutsuan's army was finally strengthened, it was officially announced the beginning of an armed struggle to overthrow the old order and establish a new one. In parallel, the formation of the Heavenly State of Great Prosperity (Taiping tanguo) was proclaimed. A full-fledged state apparatus was formed, based on the army. Hong Xiutsuan himself was declared the supreme ruler of Taiping tanguo - the Heavenly Wang.

The rebels sacked the estates of the landowners, killed officials and their families, destroyed everything that had to do with traditional Chinese religions: temples, figurines, literature. Hong Xiutsuan's ideas were declared the only correct teaching, despite the fact that the leader of the movement himself drew most of his views from ancient Chinese religious treatises.

In the autumn of 1851, the Taipings occupied the city of Yong'an, where the government troops tried to block them. However, the siege was broken, the Qing army suffered considerable damage, and the rebels fought their way north. Along the way, they managed to capture Wuchang, a strategically important city with rich weapons arsenals. Since part of the river fleet stationed on the Yangtze also fell into the hands of the Taipings, the rebels were able to quickly and without loss reach Nanjing, the ancient capital of China. After a heavy, long blockade, the resistance of the city's defenders was broken. Nanjing became the capital of Taiping Tanguo. From that moment on, one can speak of the establishment of dual power in China: a revolutionary government in Nanjing and a Manchu government in Peking.

The peak of the revolutionary movement (1853-1856)

The next goal of the Taipings was the conquest of northern China and the heart of the empire - Beijing. However, the expeditions sent to the capital were destroyed by the Qing troops, and the leadership of Taiping tanguo took up the solution of internal issues.

The population of Nanjing was divided into male and female communities, relations between which were suppressed. These communities, in turn, were subdivided into professional guilds, which created everything necessary for the life support of the new state. Money was abolished. The leaders of Taiping tango, who quickly abandoned the principles of austerity and abstinence, disposed of the surplus production and military booty. They took the lion's share of the wealth for themselves, and sent the rest to public storerooms, from where any citizen could take something they needed.

Hong Xiutsuan announced the reform of agrarian relations in accordance with the program he developed - the "Land system of the heavenly dynasty." According to it, private law was abolished, the country's population was divided into agricultural communities, which were at the same time military units. Communities had to provide for themselves, and everything produced in excess of the norm should be handed over to the state. However, this program has never been implemented in practice.

Meanwhile, a split is brewing in the Taiping leadership. In 1856, a former associate of Hong Xiutsuan, Yang Xiuqing, was killed, who attempted to become the sole leader of Taiping tanguo. This massacre is followed by a whole series of bloody events, the result of which was the destruction of not only the majority of the Taiping leaders who once supported the Heavenly Van, but also 20 thousand ordinary citizens.

While the leaders of the Taipings threw magnificent feasts, created harems and cracked down on each other, the Qing government was preparing for decisive action. Firstly, well-armed self-defense units were organized on the ground, led by ethnic Chinese, and secondly, European mercenaries began to be used for military service. The British provide the Peking government with active assistance in suppressing the uprising, deciding in this situation to stake on the Qing dynasty. The Taipings, despite their sympathy for the Europeans, refused to recognize the terms of the Nanjing Peace Treaty, and, therefore, could refuse to cooperate with the colonialists in the future.

The crisis of the revolutionary movement and the defeat of the Taipings (1856-1864)

The leadership of the Heavenly State was torn apart by contradictions. Representatives of the younger generation of revolutionaries who understood the essence of the processes taking place in the world, for example, Hong Zhengan, proposed a set of reforms aimed at formalizing capitalist relations in China: the creation of a banking system, the development of industry and a transport network. However, all these projects remained unrealized. At this time, mass exodus begins from the Taiping camp, repression, which the rebel leaders regularly resorted to, and a radical approach to resolving issues related to private property and religion, scared away all segments of the population.

The modernized Qing army begins to win one victory after another. In 1862, together with his army, Shi Dakai, one of the oldest associates of Hong Xiutsuan, was taken prisoner. And in early 1864, Nanjing was besieged. There was famine in the city. In this situation, the complete absence of any military talents was revealed in the Heavenly van, who previously relied on his entourage in tactical matters. After 1856, there was not a single living person left who could influence his decisions. He rejected all possible options for breaking the blockade, expecting that the surviving parts of the once huge Taiping army would come to his aid. These hopes did not come true, and in the early summer of 1864 the leader of the uprising committed suicide. The defenders of Nanking were able to hold out for another two months. At the end of July, the blockade was broken, and desperate street fighting continued for several days, during which all the Taipings were destroyed. Despite the victory of the Qing government, the fight against individual rebel detachments scattered throughout China continued until 1868.

Reasons for the defeat of the uprising

Despite the success of the Taipings in the early stages of the revolution, the rebellion was doomed from the start. In the 1840s-60s, in addition to the Taiping, several more peasant movements flared up in China, the participants of which wanted to restore the previous dynasty, the Ming, while the Taipings wanted to put Hong Xiutsuan himself at the head of the state. This caused controversy and did not allow the rebels to act as a united front against the Manchus. At the same time, the Taiping top itself began to decompose.

During the uprising, the rebels managed to occupy most of the country, but they did not care about keeping these territories for themselves. In the provinces that the Taipings claimed as their own, the pre-revolutionary way of things remained: the owners kept their land, the landowners continued to exploit the peasants, and the amount of taxes was practically not reduced.

The Taiping ideology never attracted enough of the population. She carried ideas alien to the Chinese. If the radical redistribution of property alienated the rich strata from the Taipings, then religious fanaticism and an attempt to destroy the traditional system of Chinese beliefs scared the common people from participating in the revolution. In addition, the leaders of the movement themselves did not understand the nature of the changes that were taking place in the world and in their country. The polity they proposed was a combination of utopian communism and oriental despotism, while all the progressive powers were entering the era of capitalism. At the same time, the Taipings did not understand that the main reason for the heated socio-economic situation was not at all the Manchus, who by that time had finally adopted Chinese culture, but the Western colonialists. Even when the latter began to openly come out on the side of the Qing government, the Taipings continued to regard the Europeans as their "little brothers".

The Taiping uprising that lasted 15 years bled the country dry. During the civil war, according to some historians, up to 20 million people died. The economy was in decline, and the intervention of British troops in the internal affairs of China strengthened the colonial dependence of the state. The Taiping movement exposed all the problems of the Qing empire that arose after the collapse of Chinese self-isolation, and raised the question of the continued existence of the state in the new conditions.

Everyone knows about the Second World War, according to various sources, 50-60 million people died in it. But only a few know that in the history of mankind there were events with a number of victims that exceeded this figure twice!
There are no other examples of such mass loss of life. We are talking about the Taiping uprising - the largest peasant war in China led by Hong Xiu-quan, Yang Xiu-qing and others against the Qing dynasty.

Demographic background

In China, from the beginning of the first century AD, records were kept of the number of subjects of Chinese emperors. Therefore, the demographic history of China has become the basis for studying the mechanisms of natural growth and artificial regulation of the population. If we consider the dynamics of population on the scale of centuries, then the cyclical component becomes more noticeable, that is, repeated stages of population growth, which are replaced by periods of stagnation and then sharp declines.
How are these cycles arranged? The first phase is the phase of devastation, when there is a lot of empty abandoned land, and few people. Recovery begins, normal demographic growth occurs, maybe even accelerated. Abandoned fields are plowed up, the demographic potential is being restored, the country is entering a phase of restoration from a phase of devastation. Gradually, this phase is replaced by a phase of stability, when a conditional, of course, balance is established between the demographic potential and the land potential. But the population continues to grow. The period of stability is replaced by a phase of crisis, when the birth rate cannot be stopped, and the land becomes less and less. The earth is crumbling. If at the beginning of the cycle there was one peasant family in this area, then when the crisis phase enters, there can be up to four or five families in this area.
demographic growth is very difficult to stop. In principle, the Chinese used means that are unacceptable at the present time. There were widespread, for example, the killing of newborn girls. And these were not isolated events. For example, for the last Qing cycle, there is data on historical demographic statistics, it turns out that already in the penultimate phase of the cycle, there are five registered girls per ten registered boys, and by the end of the cycle, on the eve of the political and demographic collapse, there are two or three girls per ten boys. That is, it turns out that 80% of newborn girls were killed. In Chinese terminology, there was even a special term "bare branches" - men who do not have a chance to start a family. They represented a real problem and a real material for the subsequent explosion.
The situation as a whole is as follows: the first census of the second year of our era registered 59 million taxpayers. But the second data point we have is 59, 20 million people. This shows that between the 2nd and 59th years, a political and demographic collapse took place, which is very well described in the sources. A characteristic feature of the phase is that everything that can be plowed open opens up. This means that plots along the Yellow River that are not very good for agriculture are being plowed up. This means that soil erosion is growing, forests are being cut down, the Yellow River is rising and rising more and more. Dams are being built along the Huang He, and they are getting higher and higher. But at the same time, the closer to the collapse phase, the less funds the state has at its disposal. And more and more funds are needed to maintain the dams, and the Yellow River is already flowing over the Great Plain of China. And then the dam breaks. One of the most disastrous breakthroughs occurred in 1332. As a result of it and the “Black Death” (plague) that raged in subsequent years, 7 million people died.
As a result, by the end of the 11th century, the population of China exceeded one hundred million people. And in the future, if 50 million people for the first millennium of our era is the ceiling, then in the second millennium it becomes the floor, the population has never fallen below 60 million. On the eve of the Taiping Rebellion, the population of China exceeded 400 million. In 1851, 40% of the world's population lived in China. Now much less.

Start of wars

Since 1839, the British launched military operations against China, which marked the beginning of the "opium wars". Their essence is that Great Britain began to sell opium to China and nervously reacted to the attempts of the Chinese government to ban its import. This nervousness was due to the fact that the drug trade was then a significant part of the UK budget.
The feudal army of China could not resist the first-class armed ground forces and fleet of England, and the Qing authorities showed a complete inability to organize the defense of the country.
In August 1842, an unequal treaty was signed in Nanjing. This treaty opened four Chinese ports for trade. The island of Hong Kong went to England. The Qing government also undertook to pay the British a huge indemnity, to liquidate the Chinese Trade Corporation, which had a monopoly on intermediary trade with foreigners, and to establish a new customs tariff beneficial to England. An important consequence of the "opium" wars was the emergence of a revolutionary situation in the country, the development of which led to a peasant uprising that shook the Qing empire, later called the Taiping.

During the Taiping Rebellion, or rather the Great Peasants' War, four wars blazed across China. This happened in 1850-1864. This is the very phase of the demographic cycle when an excess population is formed, which no longer has a place, food, work in the villages. People go to the mining industry, to trade, go to the cities, and when there is no food or work there, the process begins, which occurs at the end of each cycle - the catastrophe phase begins. Every year the number of dissatisfied grew. And as was traditional in history, the dissatisfied united in secret societies and sects, which became the initiators of uprisings and riots.
One of them was the "Society for the Worship of the Heavenly Master", founded in the south of China by Hong Xiu-quan. He came from a peasant family, while preparing for an official career, but despite repeated attempts, he could not pass the exam. But in the city of Guangzhou (Canton), where he went to take exams, Hong met Christian missionaries and partly imbued with their ideas. In his religious teaching, which he began to preach from 1837, there were elements of the Christian religion. Hong Xiuquan himself said that once he had a dream: he is in heaven, and the Lord shows him another nice-looking man and says: “This is my son and your brother. ." And the general meaning is that "the world is in the power of the forces of darkness, and you are entrusted with the mission to free the world from these forces." The doctrine he founded was based on the ideals of equality and the struggle of all the oppressed against the exploiters for the construction of a heavenly kingdom on earth. The number of adherents of the doctrine was constantly growing and by the end of the forties of the nineteenth century. The “Society for the Worship of the Heavenly Ruler” already had thousands of followers. This religious-political sect was distinguished by internal cohesion, iron discipline, complete obedience of the younger and lower to the higher and older. In 1850, at the call of their leader, the sectarians burned their houses and began an armed struggle against the Manchu dynasty, making hard-to-reach mountainous regions their base.
The local authorities could not do anything with them, nor could sending troops from other provinces. On January 11, 1851, the birthday of Huang Xiuquan, the creation of the "Heavenly state of great prosperity", "Taiping tian-guo" was solemnly proclaimed. Since that time, all participants in the movement began to be called Taipings.
In the spring of 1852, the Taipings launched a victorious offensive northward. Strict discipline was established in the troops, military regulations were developed and introduced. As they advanced, the Taipings sent forward their agitators, who explained their goals, called for the overthrow of the alien Manchu dynasty, the extermination of the rich and officials. In the areas occupied by the Taipings, the old government was liquidated, government offices, tax registers and debt records were destroyed. The property of the rich and food seized in government warehouses went into a common cauldron. Luxuries, precious furniture were destroyed, pearls were crushed in mortars to destroy everything that distinguishes the poor from the rich.
The broad support of the people of the Taiping army contributed to its success. In December 1852, the Taipings went to the Yangtze River and captured the powerful fortress of Wuhan. After the capture of Wuhan, the Taiping army, which reached 500 thousand people, headed down the Yangtze. In the spring of 1853, the Taipings occupied the ancient capital of South China, Nanjing, which became the center of the Taiping state. During the capture of Nanjing, 1 million people died. The power of the Taipings by that time extended to large areas of southern and central China, and their army numbered up to a million people.
A number of events were held in the Taiping state, aimed at implementing the main ideas of Huang Xiuquan. Ownership of land was abolished and all land was to be divided among consumers. The peasant community was proclaimed the basis of the economic, political and military organization. Each family singled out one fighter, the commander of a military unit also owned civil power in the corresponding territory. By law, the Taipings could not own any property or private property. After each harvest, the community, consisting of five heels of families, had to keep only the amount of food necessary to feed them until the next harvest, and the rest was handed over to state warehouses. The Taipings tried to implement this principle of equalization in the cities as well. Artisans had to hand over all the products of their labor to warehouses and received the necessary food from the state. In the field of family and marriage relations, Hong Xiuquan's supporters also acted in a revolutionary way: women were given equal rights with men, special women's schools were created, and prostitution was fought. Such a traditional Chinese custom as bandaging girls' feet was also banned. In the Taiping army, there were even several dozen women's detachments.

And fall

However, the Taiping leadership made several mistakes in its activities. Firstly, it did not go for an alliance with other societies, since it considered its teaching to be the only true one. Secondly, the Taipings, whose ideology included elements of Christianity, naively for the time being believed that European Christians would become their allies, and then they were severely disappointed. Thirdly, after the capture of Nanjing, they did not immediately send their troops to the north to capture the capital and establish their dominance throughout the country, which gave the government the opportunity to gather strength and begin to suppress the uprising.
It was not until May 1855 that several Taiping corps began to march north. Exhausted by the campaign, unaccustomed to the harsh climate of the north, and having lost many fighters along the way, the Taiping army found itself in a difficult position. She was cut off from her bases and supplies. Failed to secure support from the peasants of the north. So successful in the south, the Taiping agitation did not achieve its goal here. From all sides, the Taipings were pressed by the advancing government troops. Once surrounded, the Taiping corps courageously, to the last man, resisted for two years.
By 1856, the Taiping movement failed to overthrow the Manchu dynasty and win throughout the country. But the government was not able to defeat the Taiping state either. The suppression of the Taiping uprising was facilitated by internal processes among the Taipings themselves. Their leaders settled in luxurious palaces and started harems with hundreds of concubines. Hong Xiuquan could not escape the temptation either. Discord began in the Taiping elite, as a result, a single military command actually ceased to exist.
Taking advantage of the weakening of the rebel camp in 1856-58. Qing dynasty troops recaptured many important strongholds and significant territory from the Taipings. The situation on the fronts somewhat stabilized from the autumn of 1858, after the Taiping troops won two major victories over the enemy. But in 1860, the Taipings inflicted a series of crushing defeats on the enemy and captured the southern part of Jiangsu province. By the end of 1861, they also occupied most of Zhejiang, but lost the important fortress of Anqing. Since February 1862, Great Britain and France began to actively participate in military operations against the Taipings, which, in connection with receiving new privileges from the Qing government, were interested in maintaining the power of the Manchus and in the speedy suppression of the Taiping uprising.
By the middle of 1863, the rebels had lost all the territory they had previously conquered on the northern bank of the river. Yangtze, most of Zhejiang and important positions in southern Jiangsu. Their capital, Nanjing, was tightly blockaded by the enemy, and all attempts by the Taipings to release it failed. In fierce battles, the Taipings lost almost all their strongholds, and their main military forces were defeated by the Qing troops. With the capture of Nanjing in July 1864, the Taiping state also ceased to exist. The leader and founder of the Taiping movement, Hong Xiuquan, committed suicide.
And although the remnants of the Taiping army continued to fight for some time, the days of their existence were numbered.

Finally

But the war itself was not the only cause of human casualties. The main reasons were hunger, devastation and natural disasters, with which the state, weakened by endless wars, could not cope. The story of the flood of 1332 was repeated in 1887. The dams rising above the Yellow River could not stand it, washing away almost the entire Great Plain of China. 11 cities and 300 villages were flooded. According to various sources, the flood claimed the lives of 900 thousand people, up to 6 million.
And tens of millions of peasant farms did not harvest their crops, they had nothing to eat, crowds of refugees fled to the cities. Epidemics begin. There is what is called a political and demographic catastrophe. And as a result of all these terrible events - floods, wars, famine and epidemics - 118 million people died.
And although many historians may not agree with such terrible figures, and call them the maximum possible, no one, I think, will argue that the number of victims as a result of the events described above was comparable to the victims suffered in World War II.

L. Koltsov. Journal "Discoveries and Hypotheses"

Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) - a peasant war in China against the feudal oppression of the Manchu dynasty and foreign colonialists. The reasons for the uprising were the increased tax burden due to the outflow of silver from the country and the need to pay military indemnity to England, the aggression of the capitalist powers during the first opium war, which led to the extreme aggravation of the crisis of Chinese feudal society. The cause of the crisis was the rapid growth of the population, due to which there was a decrease in the area of ​​arable land on average for each peasant household. As a result, the peasants were dispossessed of land, and as a result, they were unable to pay all taxes.

The Taiping uprising broke out in the province of Guangxi in the summer of 1850. The ideological leader of the rebels was the rural teacher Hong Xiuquan, who organized the religious “God Worship Society”, which preached the idea of ​​​​creating a “heavenly state of great prosperity” - Taiping tianguo. The society borrowed a number of ideas from Christianity, combined with ancient Chinese teachings about a just society. The Society of God Worshipers considered Jehovah the true God the Father, below were his three sons Jesus Christ, Hong Xiuquan and Yang Xiuqing. Sectarians preached the fight against Confucianism and Buddhism. The leadership of the sect included, in addition to the poor, the wealthy landowner Shi Dakai.

By November 1850, Hong Xiuquan and his associates Yang Xiuqing, Shi Dakai, at the head of a 20,000-strong army, began military operations against the government army. On August 27, 1851, the rebels captured the large city of Yong'an and announced the creation of their "heavenly state." In April 1852, the Taipings destroyed a 13,000-strong army, headed north and entered the valley of the river. Yangtze.

The army of Taipings, replenished at the expense of working people (from 20 thousand it grew to 300-500 thousand people), was distinguished by high combat effectiveness and strict discipline. The Taipings developed their own strategy and tactics and successfully waged a mobile war. The followers of Hong Xiuquan sold their property, and the proceeds were given to the sacred storerooms in Jintian, from which all the rebels and members of their families received food and clothing according to general norms. Strict discipline was established. Women lived in separate camps, communication between men and women was not allowed. The fighters of the Taiping army were distinguished by strict discipline and followed Christian precepts. The army was distinguished by a humane attitude towards the population, the absence of robberies and cruelty. Gambling, wine, opium smoking and prostitution were banned. The rebels killed all the Manchus and major Chinese officials, as well as their opponents from among the landowners, confiscated their property. But all other categories of landowners retained their property and land holdings. The new land tax was much lower than the Qing tax, and a number of previous additional taxes were abolished. The Taipings forced landowners to lower their rents. The new state prohibited the sale and purchase of brides and slaves, the demand for a dowry, and the custom of bandaging women's feet. The goal of the rebels was to liberate China from the power of the Manchus and reduce the tax burden. The Taiping movement was essentially a peasant war.

In January 1853, the Taipings captured the three cities of Wuhan (the cities of Hanyang, Hankow, and Wuchang), and in March occupied Nanjing. For the final overthrow of the Qing dynasty, the Taipings needed to defeat the troops in the north of the country and take Beijing. However, the leaders of the Taiping rebellion delayed the campaign to the north and allocated insignificant forces for it, as a result, the campaign ended unsuccessfully.

Having settled in Nanjing and declaring it their capital, the Taiping leadership promulgated its program, called the “Land System of the Heavenly Dynasty”, which was supposed to become a kind of constitution for the Taiping state. In accordance with the principles of utopian "peasant communism", it proclaimed the complete equalization of all members of Chinese society in the sphere of production and consumption. The organization of the entire life of the Taiping state was built on an army-bureaucratic basis. The basis of the state structure was based on the monarchical principle with its traditional hierarchy of ranks and ranks. Nominally, the head of the Heavenly State and the absolute monarch was Hong Xiuquan. Upon his arrival in Nanjing, he withdrew from worldly affairs, occupied himself only with religious matters, and remained in his palace all the time. Even before moving to Nanjing, all power was transferred to Yang Xiuqing. All other rebel leaders who had the titles of princes were subordinate to him. The princes began to build their own luxurious palaces with a mass of servants. Private property, market economy and trade were prohibited in the capital of the Taiping state. Workshops, manufactories, shops and houses became state property. Family relations and marriages were forbidden. In order to avoid debauchery, men were separated from women and children. The entire population of Nanjing, except for military units and the houses of the Taiping nobility, was distributed among isolated male and female labor camps and work teams. Similar measures were not taken in other cities. But the capital system also provoked protests from ordinary rebels, and in the spring of 1855 it was abolished.

In the period 1853-56, the Taiping state expanded at the expense of land in the middle reaches of the Yangtze. The Manchurian regime at that time was on the verge of collapse. The Taipings inflicted one defeat after another on the Qing troops. The Chinese landlords and officials came to the aid of the Manchu dynasty, creating private military squads, which became dangerous opponents of the Taipings. From 1856, the power of the Taipings began to weaken due to the fact that a split occurred among the leadership, which developed into an internecine war, as a result of which the actual leader of the Taipings, Yang Xiuqing, was killed, and Shi Dakai and a number of others broke with Nanjing and began to act independently. The Manchus took advantage of this and at the end of 1856 went on the offensive, which was stopped only by the beginning of 1860 because of the 2nd Opium War, which fettered the Qing troops in the North. England, France and the United States did not openly oppose the Taipings at first. Taking advantage of the civil war in China, they started the 2nd Opium War. When it became obvious that the Taipings could not overthrow the ruling dynasty and were a serious obstacle to the opium dealers, they launched an open intervention against the rebels, which accelerated the internal decay of their state power. The Qing armies were now armed with modern rifles and artillery. For the Taipings, a period of military setbacks began, ending in 1864 with the occupation of Nanjing by the Manchus.

The Taiping movement, their social economy and political program, the causes of the death of the Taiping state

The history of the Taiping movement belongs to the pages of Chinese history in the middle of the 19th century. The movement was generated by the aggravation of contradictions between the ruling and dependent sections of the population, as well as between the bulk of the Chinese people and the Manchurian aristocracy. played an important role as an accelerator I Opium War (1840-1842).

Consequence of opium. wars - a sharp deterioration in the life of the people. The increasing deficit of China's foreign trade led to the outflow of silver abroad. The growth of the silver liang, the growth of taxes in copper wen. The authority of the Qings was undermined by the defeat in the war of 1840. During 1841-1849 there were 110 uprisings (Chinese, Tibetans, Miao). Society: "Triads" (Sanhehui), "Earth and Sky" (Tiandihui), "Three Points" (Sandianhui).

1843 . - The village teacher Hong Xiuquan created the "Society for Worshiping the Heavenly Ruler" (Baishandihui) in Guangxi. "On the true way of knowing the world" - popularization of Christianity from Guangzhou. Just about-in the great unity. Everyone is equal.

1848 . - skirmishes between detachments and supporters of Hong Xiuquan.

1850 . - an open uprising in the province of Guangxi. (detachments of Yang Xiuqing, Wei Changhui, Shi Dakai) [miners, coal burners, coolies, artisans, merchants; discipline, red bandage, loose. hair]. Attempts to suppress failed. Created a disciplined army

January 11, 1851, Jintian - Publicly announced an uprising against Qin to establish the "Heavenly State of Great Welfare" (Taiping Tianguo). Hong Xiuquan - Heavenly Sovereign

1 period: from the first battles to the occupation of Nanjing and the creation. there the center of the Taiping State (1850-1853)

2 period: the struggle for the expansion of the territory. T. state-wa - from the occupation of Nanjing to the split in the Taiping camp (1853-56)

3rd period: decline of the movement (1856-60)

4th period: the struggle of the Taipings with the block of Manchu-Chinese feudal lords and foreigners. aggressors. (1860-64).

Autumn 1851 - The Taipings occupied the city of Yunnan and formed the Taiping government. 5 Companions of Xiuquan - Wang titles. Organized the production of weapons. Warriors are obliged to obey, not to drink wine, not to appropriate the captured, to observe military secrets.

January 1853 - moved east.

March 1853 - they took Nanjing, but did not gain a foothold there. A common feature of the movement - they took the city and moved on.

Domestic and foreign policy of the Taipings

1853 . - The Taiping government published the "Land System of the Heavenly Dynasty" - the program for the creation of the state of Taiping tianguo [equate. distribution among consumers. Age limit. Under 16 - half put on an adult. All lands were divided into 9 categories, so 1 mu (115 ha) of the first category = 3 mu of the 9th. Equal distribution of the harvest. Those who lack land in one place move to another; co-processed earth, joint fed and clothed, money was spent together.] The dispensation regulated the structure of life in the Taiping state on the based military community.

Every 25 families image. lower admin., household, military, religious. unit - liang, i.e. platoon. Liang had a public pantry where surplus food and money were donated. From each family - one fighter. 25 families - a platoon under the command of lansym (4 platoons-100, 500 battalion, 2,500 - regiment, 5 regiments - corps). document duality. Equalization of women in rights with men. The Taipings failed to redistribute the land. The implementation of such a program could clear the way for capitalism.

State. the taiping system is monarchical. There was a new hierarchical top of the van-princes, followed by officials of 11 ranks. Most of the Taiping elites are from the common people, but they surrounded themselves with luxury and servants.

Religion sanctified the monarchical structure.

In foreign policy - for mutually beneficial trade and equality. In Taiping Tianguo, only the opium trade is prohibited.

1853 . - Northern expedition. Having captured Nanjing, the Taipings decided to overthrow the entire Qing dynasty. It is unusual for the natives of the south, it is cold here.

1854 . - an unsuccessful attempt to capture Beijing.

At the same time - the Western campaign of the Taiping army.

1855 . - The western regions are captured.

At the same time, the "Small knives" and "Red coins" societies became more active in the southeast of China. They also wanted to overthrow the Qing.

The Small Knives started an uprising in Fujian. Next, in Shanghai.

The leader of the uprising sent a letter to the Taipings, suggesting that his detachments be considered part of the general army. The situation in Shanghai was of great concern to the Qing. These provinces were considered the pantries of the countryÞ large forces sent to Shanghai.

For 17 months, small knives resisted, but in February 1855 they surrendered.

MN leader Liu Lichuan died. The Qing entered Shanghai and massacred.

At the same time, there are internal strife throughout the Taiping camp. The peasantry is incapable of maintaining unity and discipline for long. The uprising at this time had two leaders - Wei Changhui and Yang Xiuqing. With Hong Xiuquan's consent, Wei killed Yang and several thousand supporters. Wei seized power in Nanking, but he was soon killed.

1857 . - Hong Xiuquan's relatives came to power.

1859 - Hong Rengan "A New Composition to Help the Rule" - a program of bourgeois reforms (helping private entrepreneurs, supporting technical innovations and trading companies, strengthening centralization and prohibiting public organizations). The program is not feasible under those conditions.

The period of the decline of the war. Differences between the masses and the leadership of the uprising - the demands of universal equality are not recognized.

1860 . - Taiping troops began the Eastern campaign. In June 1860 they failed to take Beijing (Qing + UK, FR, US).

February 1862 - meeting of foreign commanders and consuls in Shanghai. UK, FR, US provided new batches of weapons.

Among the Taipings, there are more and more disagreements.

1864 . - almost the entire territory previously conquered by the Taipings went back to the Qing.

June 19, 1864 - Qing troops broke into Nanjing. Massacre. 100.000 killed. Defeat of the uprising. But for a long time Taiping detachments operated in the south of China.

1864 - defeat of the Taiping rebellion.

Reasons for defeat:

1) support of the Western powers

2) Chinese society is forcibly involved in world economic relations, which has reinforced traditional contradictions

3) state religion of the Taipings = Christianity without traditional roots; struggle of the Taipings with Confucinism and traditional beliefs

4) agrarian program = expropriation of landowners in favor of the state, which in those conditions would only lead to despotism

5) Shenshi dissatisfied with Taiping democratization (extension of exam rights, etc.)

2. Taiping Rebellion

The reasons that led to the beginning of one of the largest popular uprisings in Chinese history, which threatened the rule of the Qing dynasty and lasted fifteen years, were a complex interweaving of traditional factors with new phenomena associated with the invasion of foreign powers. The signs of the dynastic crisis, which was discussed above and which manifested themselves in the uprisings at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries, were exacerbated by the consequences of the intensive involvement of Chinese society in world economic and cultural ties.

Perhaps the most significant effect that led to the growth of popular discontent was China's ever-increasing negative trade balance with the Western powers, which in turn was the result of a huge increase in the import of opium into the country. During the 1820-1840s. as a result of trade operations, the Chinese economy received about 10 million liang of silver profit, while it was exported from China about 60 million. This was reflected in the market ratio of silver and copper token. So, if at the beginning of the XIX century. for one liang of silver they gave 1 thousand copper coins (tuzyr), then in the early 1840s. - up to 1500 coins. The last circumstance was most directly related to the problem of the tax burden. As noted above, the land tax was assigned depending on the quantity and quality of land and was calculated in grams of silver. The direct payment was made in copper coin in accordance with the ratio actually taking shape in the market. Thus, the real tax burden, and primarily on the territory of the provinces of South China, through which the main trade with the West went, should have increased, and quite significantly.

The second circumstance, also connected with the foreign invasion and feeding the sources of popular discontent, was the transfer of the bulk of trade after the first "opium" war to the coastal provinces of the Yangtze basin. This was the result of the resistance that foreigners met in Guangdong, as well as the opening of a number of new seaside cities to foreign trade. Goods that had previously had to be transported south were now very convenient to ship overseas using the Yangtze Basin's water transport network. This deprived of work a very significant part of the population of the southern provinces, who belonged to the social lower classes, which by the middle of the 19th century. have traditionally been associated with the transport of goods for foreign trade.

Thus, new factors associated with the influence of the world market and capitalism became, as it were, part of the traditional mechanism, the action of which led to an aggravation of the dynastic crisis and an outbreak of popular resistance.

To the noted circumstances, one should add a number of others that were quite traditional in nature. Popular discontent was caused by the consequences of natural disasters that hit China in the 40s. 19th century The poor maintenance of irrigation facilities led to the fact that in 1841 and 1843. The Yellow River broke through the dams that controlled its course. This caused the flooding of vast areas, resulting in the death of about 1 million people. In 1849, the lower Yangtze provinces experienced one of the worst crop failures of the 19th century. Drought, hurricanes and the invasion of agricultural pests almost completely destroyed the crops.

In conditions of a serious deterioration in the situation, significant Masses of the rural and urban lower classes could take part in anti-government demonstrations. In addition, in the provinces of South China, where, in fact, the uprising began, the traditional contradictions between the two groups of the population were very strong - Punti (“indigenous”, or Bendi in the Beijing Dialect) and Hakka (“newcomers”, or Kejia in the normative reading ). The first, organized into powerful clan communities, occupying the most convenient and fertile lands of the valleys for agriculture, considered themselves the true owners of these places. The Hakka were the descendants of later settlers who inherited foothill lands more suitable for growing sweet potatoes than for irrigated agriculture. Among them were the tenants of Punti lands. In addition to this, the Hakka, as later newcomers, more often had to deal with the local non-Chinese population and fight with them for land.

The Hakkas were a very fertile environment for promoting anti-government sentiment. Dissatisfaction with their position, a constant feeling of a belittled social status made them blame the social order as a whole, which was personified by the ruling Manchu dynasty. In the South, especially among the Hakka, there were many supporters of the Heaven and Earth secret society, which was engaged in anti-Manchu propaganda and called on the people to overthrow the Qing dynasty and establish Chinese rule.

It is not surprising in this regard that the future leader of the Taiping uprising was from a Hakka village - Hong Xiuquan (1814-1864) was born into a simple peasant family in the province. Guangdong. Hong had a penchant for learning since childhood. When the boy was six years old, his parents sent him to a village school, which he managed to successfully complete, which very few of his peers managed to do.

Hong Xiuquan's family, his clan relatives, including himself, hoped that after studying, he would be able to pass the exams for an academic title, and then start a bureaucratic career. Thus, his youthful aspirations were based on a completely loyal attitude to the existing social order and nothing seemed to promise that life and time would make him the leader of one of the most significant popular uprisings in Chinese history. However, Hong Xiuquan's failures during the exams for the first academic title (shenyuan) affected his entire future life.

In 1837, after another failure in the exams, Hong, who was tragically experiencing what had happened, fell seriously ill. He fell into a nervous fever, accompanied by delirium and hallucinations. During his illness, a vision appeared to him - an old man sitting on a throne and giving him a sword adorned with precious stones. After recovering from his illness, the future leader of the uprising, trying to understand the vision that had visited him, turned to the study of translations of sacred Christian books, which he had brought from Guangzhou a year earlier. As a result of their long and careful study, Hun came to the conclusion that the elder who appeared to him is God the Father, who destined him to fulfill God's Testament - the liberation of people and the foundation of the Kingdom of God on earth. Subsequently, Hong Xiuquan named his state Taiping tianguo (Heavenly State of Great Prosperity), hence the name of the rebellion. Hong Xiuquan considered himself the younger brother of Jesus Christ and the future ruler of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.

An attempt to convert fellow villagers to a new faith, which was a bizarre combination of Christian ideas with Chinese tradition, of which Hong Xiuquan can be considered an expert, was unsuccessful, although he found followers among some relatives (for example, his cousin Hong Rengan became an adherent of new ideas) and true friends.

In an effort to expand the circle of his followers, Hong Xiuquan moved to one of the villages in the neighboring province of Guangxi (Guiping County), where he had relatives. In this impoverished mountainous area, populated by poor Hakkas and out-of-country coal workers, the number of adherents of the new doctrine increased. Here, with the support of his closest friends, he founded the "Society for the Worship of the Heavenly Master", which soon numbered up to 2 thousand people.

Despite the persecution of the authorities and temporary setbacks, the preaching of Hong Xiuquan and his associates attracted more and more new followers. From their midst, a group of future leaders of the uprising soon formed. Among them was the energetic and talented organizer Yang Xiuqing (1817-1856). Being a simple charcoal burner, he claimed to recognize that God the Father Himself speaks through his mouth to the followers of the movement (when Yang Xiuqing fell into a state resembling an epileptic seizure). Shi Dakai (1831-1863), who came from a wealthy family in Guangxi, joined the insurgents at a very young age. He brought into the ranks of the rebels several hundred people who were his relatives in the clan. Among the leaders of the movement, we can also name Wei Changhui, a rather wealthy man whose family belonged to the shenshi. Each of them had their own reasons for deciding to take part in a case that could end in death.

In the summer of 1850, Hong Xiuquan called on his supporters to gather in the village of Jin-tian (the same Guiping) in Guangxi in order to prepare for a decisive struggle against the authorities. Approximately 20-30 thousand people responded to the call - men, women, children. Many, having sold all their property, came to the Taipings with their whole families and even clans.

Already at the early stage of the rebellion, Hong Xiuquan's supporters sought to implement some of the most important principles of his teachings. One of them was the position of the initial equality of all people. This was influenced by both Christian ideas and the Chinese tradition associated with the history of religious sects and secret societies. As we saw earlier, the principle of the primordial equality of all God's creatures was also professed by the followers of religious sects, whose beliefs were based primarily on Buddhist principles. Hong Xiuquan's supporters tried to embody these beliefs in some public institutions. One of the most important innovations among the rebels was the public pantries, where the followers of the movement had to give all the property that exceeded the minimum necessary for the simplest life. Subsequently, what was captured by the rebels during the civil war was also transferred here.

The Taiping leadership divided its followers into male and female units, announcing that marriage would be allowed after the people's war was won. In the Taiping ranks, the use of tobacco and drugs was banned and severely punished; as well as gambling. As a sign of non-recognition of the power of the Manchu dynasty, the Taipings cut off their braids and wore loose hair that fell to their shoulders. For this reason, they were often called "long-haired" in government sources.

The social composition of the rebels was heterogeneous - it was in the full sense of the people's movement, bringing together under its banners people of different social status and different nationalities. In its ranks were Hakka farmers, as well as those who belonged to local clans, coal workers and miners employed in mining in the mountainous regions of Guangxi, the poor and wealthy people, people from Shenshi families, Han Chinese and representatives of local peoples, first the turn of zhuang, etc. But, of course, the bulk were those who can be attributed to the lower classes of the then Chinese society - its outcasts and even lumpen.

Nevertheless, from this extremely heterogeneous mass of people who saw in the Taiping movement a way to a different, more worthy life, its leaders managed to create a completely disciplined and combat-ready army. Already in the summer and autumn of 1850, the rebels had to repeatedly engage in hostilities with village self-defense detachments, which, on orders from the local authorities, were sent to suppress the unrest that had begun. Performances organized by local powerful clans were repelled by the rebels.

The number of supporters of the movement grew, it became crowded in a remote, godforsaken region of Guangxi. In January 1851, the beginning of the uprising and the formation of the Heavenly State of Great Prosperity were officially announced, as well as the main goal of the rebels - the overthrow of the established social order, the embodiment of which in the eyes of the Taipings was the ruling Manchu dynasty.

It seemed that the insurgents were striving to completely eradicate everything that had anything to do with Chinese culture and historical tradition, and to establish completely different, Western values ​​in their place. They dealt with everyone who was somehow connected with the service of the ruling dynasty. All family members were mercilessly destroyed, in whose household belongings at least individual items of ceremonial clothing of an official were found. The leaders of the movement announced the abandonment of the traditional system of examinations and the recruitment of candidates for the civil service through it. They opposed the traditional Chinese religious "three teachings", calling them heresy, while ruthlessly destroying religious buildings and statues of saints, dear to the heart of not only the scribe-official, but also the common man. In place of all this, they put forward Christianity in the interpretation of Hong Xiuquan as the only true teaching.

However, the Taiping movement did not mean a complete break with the past. Already in the very name of the Taiping state (Taiping tango - Heavenly state of great prosperity), a combination of Christian influences with quite traditional ideas is found. "Heavenly State" - this first part of the name, rather, can be attributed to the influence of Western religious concepts. Although for the Taipings, God is “tian-zhu” (Master of Heaven), i.e. God the Father in the biblical tradition. In the mind of a simple Chinese, it could well be combined with the usual idea of ​​Heaven, which is also capable of creation, but this is a fundamentally different act than the one that underlies Christian teachings.

We find a clear impact of traditional Chinese ideas in the second part of the name of the state created by the Taipings - "great prosperity". It is this term that we meet in the ancient treatise "Zhou Li" (Ritual of Zhou). It was from there that Hong Xiuquan mainly drew the main ideas related to the principles of the state and social system, which the insurgents were called upon to establish in their state.

It seems that there was nothing fundamentally new in the appeal to a foreign religious doctrine, in this case Christianity. Suffice it to recall that the ideology of religious sects adopted a number of provisions of Buddhism, the Chinese were also aware of Islam, although the birthplace of these teachings is far from China. And Christianity itself was not a completely new and unknown teaching to the Chinese. Despite persecution in the 18th century, Christians existed in the Qing state. The rigidity in religious propaganda and actions that distinguished the Taipings was shocking. Subsequently, this did them a disservice, alienating their potential followers from among ordinary Chinese or shenshi, who were ready to respond to the call for the revival of Chinese statehood, but were unable to abandon traditional Chinese scholarship, the comprehension of which was the meaning of their existence.

The Taiping uprising is usually divided into several stages. The first stage covers 1850-1853. It was a time when the rebels gathered forces, created armed detachments, which later turned into armies, and fought their way north. It ended with the siege and capture of Nanking, which was turned by the Taipings into the capital of their state. The highest rise of the uprising occurred in 1853-1856. During this period, the insurgents managed not only to create a completely stable state formation on the territory of several coastal provinces of the lower reaches of the Yangtze, but also to appear as a real threat to the Qing dynasty. The events associated with the bloody internecine struggle in the Taiping leadership in the autumn of 1856 divide the history of the uprising into an ascending period and a time when the rebels unsuccessfully tried to hold on to what they had won in a hard struggle. 1856-1864 - the last stage in Taiping history, culminating in the fall of Nanjing and the death of all the main participants in the Taiping drama.

In the autumn of 1851, the Taipings captured a small town in northern Guangxi - Yun'an, where they stayed until the next spring. Here the formation of the political institutions of the Taiping state was completed, Hong Xiuquan became the Heavenly wang (ruler), which testified to his dominant position in the Taiping hierarchy. Yang Xiuqing, commander of the Taiping troops, received the title of Eastern Wang. Wei Changhui became the Northern Wang and Shi Dakai became the Separate Wang. Each of these rulers had their own armed forces and administrative apparatus under their command. Hong Xiuquan was considered the supreme leader, who was soon greeted with the appeal "wansui" (wishing "ten thousand years of life"). However, the true military leader and supreme administrator was Yang Xiuqing, whose state talent was fully revealed. Subsequently, Hong spent most of his time writing religious and philosophical works, while the main burden of state care lay on the shoulders of Yang Xiuqing.

In the autumn of 1852, the Taipings were blocked in Yong'an by regular government troops. Having managed to break the siege with an unexpected blow, defeating the Qing detachments trying to stop them, they moved north with fighting. Failures were followed by resounding victories. The Taipings failed to capture the capital of Hunan, Changsha, despite its long siege, but the attack on Wuchang, the capital of Hubei, ended with the capture of this most important political and military center of China (February 1853). The Taipings, who by this time apparently numbered up to half a million people, fell into the hands of stockpiles of weapons from the Wuchang arsenals. On the Yangtze, they also captured a large number of river boats.

In the current situation, the leadership of the rebels had to make a serious choice - to decide where to move on. It was possible to continue the offensive to the north in order to capture the capital and overthrow the Manchu power. Had the Taipings chosen this option, they might have succeeded in throwing off Qing rule, since at that moment the central government did not have any significant forces between Wuchang and Beijing capable of stopping the insurgents.

However, another decision was made - to turn east and, going down the Yangtze, take control of Nanjing and turn it into the capital of the Taiping state. Behind this decision were the fears of the rebels, the former southerners, to go too far to the north, which seemed unfamiliar and alien to them. Not the last role was also played by the memories that the winner of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang, also first made Nanjing the capital of his state.

In March, after a fierce siege, the Taipings captured Nanjing. From that time on, the city remained the capital of the Heavenly State until its fall in 1864.

Having made the provinces of central-southern China, located mainly in the basin of the lower Yangtze, as their base, the rebels did not completely abandon the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bsubjugating Northern China. Already in the spring of 1853 they organized the first expedition to conquer Beijing. Despite the fact that the troops were commanded by one of the most talented Taiping commanders, the campaign ended in failure, mainly due to an insufficient number of forces. By October of the same year, the army, whose number was reduced to 20 thousand people, managed to reach the suburbs of Tianjin, but such a few forces, deprived of siege artillery, could not take the city. The second detachment sent at the beginning of 1854 to help, numbering approximately 40 thousand people, could not improve the situation. Having recovered by this time from the first defeats, after several months of stubborn fighting, the Qing troops defeated both armies participating in the northern expedition, their commanders were captured and executed. Thus, the Taipings at least twice missed a real chance to end Manchu rule and unite China under the Heavenly Wang.

At first, the government forces were too weak and were constantly defeated by the rebels. Fearing to enter into a decisive battle with the Taipings, the Qing armies followed them at a respectful distance. After the Taipings settled in Nanjing, government troops set up two fortified camps on the outskirts of the city, building up strength and preparing for a decisive battle, which was to lead to a turning point in hostilities. However, this turning point was associated not so much with the activity of the troops of the central government, but with the formation of new armed forces, which were under the control of Chinese military officials and created on the basis of militia detachments of powerful clans in those areas that were swept by the waves of the Taiping invasion. The first such formations were detachments of "Hunan fellows", formed by permission of the Qing government by a prominent official of Hunan origin, Zeng Guofan (1811-1872). The first victories over the Taipings belonged to the nominal Hunan army.

The creation of Chinese armies, which were under the control of the Chinese, and not the Manchu commanders, meant a lot from the point of view of the future of the Taiping state. The local Chinese elite, represented by powerful clans and officials associated with them, preferred to support the Manchu dynasty, rather than the Taipings, whose break with the social foundations of Confucian statehood, as we have already said, turned out to be too radical.

The formation of regional military formations, which were under the nominal control of the center, had another very important consequence for the future political development of China: in this way, the sprouts of a phenomenon that is usually called “regional militarism” in Sinology literature were laid. Its essence was that the imperial power, weakened by the developing dynastic crisis, internal unrest and external invasions, was no longer able to keep the country within the framework of a system of centralized control. Influential local officials, who subjugated numerous armed formations, originally created to fight the Taipings, turned into a force politically quite independent of the Peking authorities. This process had another side - the "regional militarists" were not the Manchus, but representatives of the bureaucratic elite, Chinese in origin. In this, her desire for social self-affirmation found a way out, and the Manchu ruling group, who wanted to continue their rule in China, was forced to put up with it.

Meanwhile, having become the rulers of Nanjing and the area of ​​approximately 50 by 100 km around it, the Taiping rulers increasingly lost the appearance of ascetic leaders of the popular movement. The contents of the pantries were used for the construction of luxurious palaces, the maintenance of numerous servants and harems. Leveling principles, not completely forgotten, were left exclusively for subjects.

It was in Nanking, where the situation was firmly controlled by the Taiping administration and the army, that the rebels tried in practice to realize their vision of a society of "universal harmony". The urban population was divided into male and female communities, relations between which were limited; the latter, in turn, were divided into associations on a professional basis. Weavers made fabrics, seamstresses sewed clothes from them, gunsmiths made armor and swords, and potters made dishes for the palaces of the Taiping rulers. Money was abolished in this realm of egalitarian communism, and everyone could at least expect to have their needs met from the public storerooms. However, this system, introduced into the practice of public life in Nanjing, did not last long and was canceled as a result of protests and discontent of the townspeople.

Behind these measures taken by the Taipings was not only the desire to put into practice the ideas of primitive socialism, very common in traditional societies of various types and fed by the ideology of the rural and urban lower classes, but also the desire to establish the model of Eastern despotism in its purest form - as it was described in ancient treatises.

The program of transformations in rural areas was subordinated to the same goal, and never realized in life. Its main provisions are formulated in the work "The Land System of the Heavenly Dynasty", the author of which was Hong Xiuquan himself. This system was based on an egalitarian distribution of land between communities, which were both religious and lower military associations. Their members jointly performed cults related to the Christian teachings interpreted and transformed by Hong Xiuquan. Each of these communities singled out men of fighting age for military service. Everything that exceeded the minimum necessary needs was subject to delivery to state storage facilities. This manifested Hong Xiuquan's desire to establish the model of Eastern despotism in its most classical form. Hong Xiuquan's agrarian program was not aimed at eliminating large land holdings. Its goal was to expropriate the land of all landowners for the benefit of the state. It could hardly be expected that the village (perhaps with the exception of its most disadvantaged inhabitants) would readily respond to the promotion of a program of this kind.

Nevertheless, the practical implementation of the policies of the Taiping administration in the rural areas that came under its control spoke of its certain social orientations. In fact, the Taipings did not take practical measures that could be interpreted as a desire to change the nature of the agrarian system. True, they tried to reduce the rent in case of crop failure or natural disasters. However, all this was included in the traditional list of measures that any dynasty had to carry out, striving to rule in accordance with the principles of Tao and Te.

On the whole, however, until the autumn of 1856 the situation in the Taiping camp remained stable. The Taipings managed to hold a very significant territory of strategic importance, and not only successfully repulse attacks, but also defeat government troops and detachments of local military leaders who sided with the Qing government.

The Taiping state was sharply weakened by the internal struggle that flared up in the autumn of 1856 and marked a milestone after which the uprising went downhill. The reasons for what happened were assessed differently by historians, but most of all it looked like a desire to seize supreme power in the Taiping state. The protagonists of the September events were all the main leaders of the Taiping state, who managed to survive during the campaigns and battles. First of all, it was a struggle between the Heavenly Wang Hong Xiuquan and his most influential associate, Yang Xiuqing, who had already concentrated the main threads of political and military control in his hands by the time of the occupation of Nanjing.

After the transformation of Nanjing into the Taiping capital, relations between them began to deteriorate sharply, which began at the end of 1853, when Yang, under the pretext that God the Father Himself was speaking through him, condemned Hong for unworthy behavior, announcing that he “began sin too much."

In the early summer of 1856, there was another episode that could also be interpreted as Yang Xiuqing's claim to seize a dominant position in the Taiping hierarchy. This time, “God the Father” demanded that Hong Xiuquan wish him, Yang Xiuqing, not “nine thousand years of life”, but all “ten”, which, according to the existing ceremonial, was supposed to be wished only by Hong Xiuquan himself.

Yang Xiuqing, who had turned other Taiping leaders against him by despotic methods of government, continued to be a beloved and revered leader of the rebellion for ordinary Taipings. One can speculate about the true causes of the September events of 1856, but outwardly their outline looks like this.

At dawn on September 2, 1856, units loyal to the Northern Wang Wei Changhui broke into Yang's residence and ruthlessly destroyed everyone who was there, including Yang Xiuqing himself. A few days later, an edict was issued on behalf of Hong Xiuquan, in which Wei Changhui was condemned for what had happened, moreover, he was sentenced to public punishment with sticks in the palace of the supreme ruler of Taiping. The surviving supporters of Yang Xiuqing, who numbered several thousand in Nanjing and who undoubtedly represented a danger to the participants in the conspiracy, wishing to be witnesses to the humiliation of their enemy, gathered at the indicated place without weapons. But here they were surrounded by Wei Changhui's fighters and ruthlessly and cold-bloodedly destroyed.

Upon learning of what had happened, Shi Dakai, who was at that time at war, withdrew his troops from the advanced positions and in October appeared at the walls of Nanjing. The incident caused him extreme condemnation, which he did not try to hide. Wei was also preparing a massacre against Shi Dakai, hoping in this way to get rid of his main rivals in the struggle for the main role in the Taiping state.

Shi Dakai narrowly escaped death. Having received a message about the impending massacre of him, he fled the city. According to some reports, his faithful people helped him to descend from the city wall by a rope, according to others, bodyguards carried him outside Nanjing in a basket in which greengrocers usually delivered vegetables to the city. Then, by order of Wei, the members of the Shi Dakai family who remained in the city were massacred.

However, Wei Changhui's victory was short-lived. A month later, at the request of Shi Dakai and numerous other Taiping leaders, he was deprived of his life along with several hundred of his followers. Shi Dakai returned to Nanjing in triumph.

The role that Hong Xiuquan played in these events is not entirely clear. Most likely, he was a participant in a conspiracy directed against Yang, but subsequently began to fear an excessive increase in the power of the one who, fulfilling his will, dealt with the Eastern van. Nevertheless, the elimination of Wei Changhui, who was given full responsibility for the tragic events, helped him retain the halo of the supreme ruler, whose excessive trust was taken advantage of by hostile confidants.

The ensuing coups d'état and counter-coups were truly terrible. Thousands of people, who were the flower of the Taiping military command and political leadership, were killed. According to sources, their number was more than 20 thousand people.

All this caused the growth of mutual distrust in the Taiping leadership and ultimately led to a split in the movement. In 1856, Shi Dakai, obviously fearing for his safety not without reason, left Nanjing and with his armed followers (about 100,000) went on an independent campaign, hoping to establish a new center of the Taiping movement in the rich province of Sichuan.

The events of the autumn of 1856 dealt the Taiping movement a blow from which it never truly recovered. However, despite this, the Taipings continued to put up stubborn resistance, defending the territory of their state for almost 10 more years. During this time, new talented leaders and statesmen emerged who hatched reform projects that could change the face of traditional Chinese society, making it more modern.

One of the most prominent leaders of the Taiping state at the stage of its later history was Li Xiucheng (1824-1864), whose name is associated with many successful military operations. With the project of reforms, sustained in the spirit of Western influences, in the 60s. Hong Xiuquan's cousin Hong Zhengan (1822-1864), who became a follower of his ideas back in the 40s, made a speech. Subsequently, fleeing persecution, he was forced to take refuge in Hong Kong. Hong Zhengan proposed to introduce modern means of communication in China, advocated the construction of railways, the development of banks, industry, and trade.

Meanwhile, the forces fighting against the Taipings were increasing. The main burden of the civil war was borne by regional armed formations, whose importance was growing more and more. Under the command of Li Hongzhang (1823-1901), who served for several years in the army of "Hunan fellows" Zeng Guofan, in the early 60s. the Huai army is formed. Zuo Zongtang (1812-1885), who led the army operating against them in the province of Taiping, took part in delivering decisive blows to the Taipings. Zhejiang.

These armies, armed and trained in the European manner, were far superior to the Taiping troops in terms of equipment, but inferior to them in fighting spirit. From the beginning of the 60s. foreigners, abandoning the policy of neutrality, which they have adhered to since the beginning of the uprising, also begin to interfere in hostilities, speaking on the side of the Beijing government. From their point of view, the Taipings, who refused to confirm the provisions of the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, were less convenient partners than the Manchu government. Detachments of European mercenaries fought on the side of the Manchus. Later, special units were created, in which foreigners were assigned the role of an officer corps, while Chinese were ordinary fighters.

In 1862 Shi Dakai, trying to turn Prov. Sichuan, was blocked on the banks of the mountain river Daduhe by superior enemy forces. Relying on the promise given by the Qing command, in the event of a voluntary surrender, to save his fighters and himself, he surrendered to the mercy of the victors. However, they did not keep their word. Ordinary fighters were put to the sword, and Shi Dakai himself was transported to Chengdu and executed there.

At the beginning of 1864, the capital of the Heavenly State was subjected to a blockade by government troops. In the spring, the supply of food to the city stopped, and the threat of starvation became real.

Hong Xiuquan, deeply convinced that the intervention of Divine forces would help his state overcome all trials, refused to discuss, perhaps reasonable proposals to break the blockade and move to the south, from where the movement itself began.

By the summer of 1864, it became obvious that there was nowhere to wait for help. Apparently, having taken poison, on June 1, 1864, Hong Xiuquan died, and at the end of July, the decisive assault on the capital of the Heavenly State began. The signal to storm the city was the undermining of part of the powerful defensive walls surrounding Nanjing by the enemy. The fifteen-year-old son of Hong, crowned as a Heavenly Wang, despite the help of experienced and loyal advisers, was powerless to do anything.

Nevertheless, the young ruler, surrounded by a small group of the most devoted and close dignitaries (it included Li Xiucheng and Hong Rengan), together with an armed detachment, managed to escape from Nanjing, where the last defenders of the Taiping state entered into street battles with the troops of the Qing government. They fought to the last man.

In October, the Sky Wang was captured and executed (Li Xiucheng was captured and put to death even earlier). But scattered Taiping detachments continued to resist even after the death of their leaders. Some of them fought in the north, in the provinces of Anhui and Shandong, others resisted in the south. One of the Taiping groups, under pressure from government troops, even crossed the border with Vietnam and subsequently took part in the events of the Franco-Chinese war of 1884-1885.

The consequences of the Taiping Rebellion were truly tragic. Large parts of the country were depopulated and lay in ruins. During the civil war, according to various estimates, 15-20 million people died.

Did the Taipings have a chance to win the fight, and if so, how could their victory "affect the further course of Chinese history? It seems that they had such a chance, it is enough to refer to an example related to the history of the coming to power of the Ming dynasty. And themselves The facts of the history of the Taiping state convince us that the rule of the Qing dynasty barely retained power in 1856. On the other hand, some circumstances cast doubt on the fact that if they came to power, the Taipings would have been able to keep it for a long time.The challenge they threw down to the foundations was too radical Chinese statehood and culture, which made them enemies of both the shenshi, who were dissatisfied with the rule of the Manchu dynasty, and ordinary peasants who did not want to give up the habitual beliefs of their ancestors. but still traditional Chinese despotism.

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