The biggest war is the Taiping Rebellion in China.

The biggest war.

Taiping Rebellion in China. 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!

Other examples like this mass death there are no people. 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. Characteristic phase that swings open everything that can be plowed open. 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 dropped 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 the 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 China 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 peasant war Four wars were raging in 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, 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 and 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. 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 the South 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, the supporters of Hong-Xiuquan 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 their 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, up to last person resisted for two years.
By 1856 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. In 1860, the Taipings inflicted a series of crushing defeats on the enemy and captured southern part Jiangsu province. By the end of 1861 they also took most Zhejiang province, but lost the important fortress of Anqing. Since February 1862, Great Britain and France began to actively participate in hostilities 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 farms The crops were not harvested, 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"

In the villages not far from Canton, shocked by the "overseas barbarians", another sect or secret society arose. Such secret unions and societies - religious, political, mafia, and often all this together and at once - in China since ancient times there have been a great many. In the era of the Qing Empire, they opposed the Manchu domination, for the restoration of the old, already legendary national Ming dynasty: “Fan Qing, Fu Ming!” ( Down with the Qing Dynasty, restore the Ming Dynasty! ).

At the end of the 18th century, one of them - best known by the "mafia" name "Triad" - raised an uprising against the Manchus in Taiwan and in the southern coastal provinces. Thus ended almost a century of relative social peace within the empire. At the turn of the 19th century in northern China, the Buddhist secret society "Bailyanjiao" ( White Lotus) led a large peasant uprising that lasted almost nine years. It is characteristic that after the suppression of the uprising, in 1805, those who suppressed it rebelled - the rural militia "xiangyong" and the shock units of the volunteers "yongbin", who demanded remuneration after demobilization. They were joined by the recruits of the troops of the "green banner", protesting against the poor supply. The Manchus could no longer cut out experienced soldiers, and in order to calm the military rebellion, they distributed land from the state fund to the rebels.

The entire first half of the 19th century passed in China under the sign of incessant provincial unrest, scattered riots and rebellions of secret societies and national minorities. In 1813, followers of the Heavenly Mind sect even stormed the imperial palace in Beijing. Eight dozen attackers managed to break into the chambers of the emperor, but they were killed by the Manchu guards from the "Jin-jun-ying", the palace guards.

But a new sect or a new secret society differed from the previous ones in that it was based on Christianity refracted in the Chinese mind.

Chinese brother of Jesus Christ

The son of a prosperous rural family, Hong Xiuquan traveled to Canton three times, devoting the first 30 years of his life to failing to pass the notorious official exams. It was there that he became acquainted with Chinese translations of Christian books and sermons, and the brain overloaded with Confucian scholasticism and severe disappointment in the traditional world order (failure in exams meant the end of career dreams) first gave rise to spiritual crisis, and under the epiphany, illumination and religious-political exaltation, which became the beginning of a new doctrine and state.

State examinations for official rank, medieval Chinese drawing.
A nationwide examination system existed in China for over a millennium until 1905.

Like the Christian saints, Hong, after the third failed exam, which became the end of his former life for him, spent 40 days and nights at death, wandering verses in which he mixed Christian elements with traditional Chinese. After recovering, he no longer thought about passing exams, but intended to change the world. After all, he was already the brother of Jesus Christ ...

Fortunately for the new messiah, he turned out to have very practical followers, as it turns out in the near future, endowed with remarkable organizational and military talents. Such was Yang Xiuqing, the son of impoverished peasants from the neighboring province of Guangxi, who changed many occupations and found himself unemployed after the center of foreign trade moved from Canton to Shanghai as a result of the opium war. Yang hardly fully believed that the teacher Hong, whom he respected, was the son of Jehovah and the brother of Jesus, but this did not prevent him from declaring himself the second younger brother son god. And even more so, like all passionate personalities, he sincerely considered himself no worse than Christ or the Manchu Emperor.

In total, the founders of the new doctrine and the new state (really new - it’s not for nothing that the New History of China begins with this uprising) were six - a teacher, a beggar, a usurer, a landowner, a peasant, a miner. Of the most diverse social origin, education and professions, they were all "Hakka" - the children of poor clans. "Hakka", literally - "guests", the descendants of the ancient settlers, who have long been despised and oppressed by the indigenous clans. And the centuries of living together did not smooth out, but deepened this enmity. Here the primordial struggle for the main means of survival intervened - for the land, very similar in social nature to the one that in half a century will give rise in the South of Russia between the Cossacks and the "out-of-town" big blood civil war. This great blood - made even greater thanks to the huge masses of the population - will flood the rebellious China.

Chinese drawing on the biblical theme. Christianity, refracted in the medieval Chinese consciousness, turned out to be able to give rise to not such plots ...

The Hakka children created the Baishandihui society, the society of the Heavenly Father, in which the Christian doctrine of justice and ancient Chinese utopias of universal harmony, calls for social equality and a national uprising against the foreign Manchu dynasty intertwined. In fact, it was the first version of the "theology of national liberation" in modern history. In addition to the Old and New Testaments, they wrote their own "third part" of the Bible - the Last Testament.

In 1847, Hong Xiuquan came to Canton to visit Protestant missionaries from the United States to be baptized. But these were not the same Christians of the first centuries who crushed the slave-owning empire of Rome - frightened by a strange Chinese, an American priest refused to baptize him.

God-seekers did not immediately turn into rebels. Local authorities chased incomprehensible preachers, then they began to imprison and release them for bribes. Seven years later, the new teaching embraced significant masses, and the sect turned into a branched underground organization, which began preparations for an open uprising in the summer of 1850.

"Kingdom of Heaven" and its militias

On January 11, 1851, in the village of Jintian, Guiping County, Xinzhoufu County, Guangxi Province, coal workers rebelled against the arbitrariness of a local Manchu official. The rebellion was the signal for a great uprising. September 25, the rebels capture the first Big city- the county center of Yong'an, where they create their own government and proclaim a new state. It was called the Kingdom of Heaven of Greatest Happiness - "Tai-Ping Tian-Guo" - and the rebels began to be called "taipings".

The rebellious taipings, "huntou" - red-headed. Modern Chinese drawing. The rebel in the center, most likely, carries a primitive bamboo flamethrower on his shoulder - there will be more about him in the future

Since the 19th century, "Taiping Tianguo" has been traditionally translated as "Heavenly State of Great Welfare". But since the leaders of the Taipings used precisely the biblical terminology, the closest Russian analogue of "Tian-Guo" will be the "Kingdom of Heaven", well known to all Christians today. Naturally, in the 19th century in Russia they could not call the state of Chinese insurgents that way. As for the term “Prosperity”, it was appropriate in the century before last (for example, one of the first secret societies of the Decembrists was called “Prosperity Union”), but in the 21st century it is absolutely not necessary to translate the terminology of Chinese revolutionaries with the help of linguistic anachronism. "Kingdom of Heaven of the Greatest Happiness" reflects the Taiping style much more accurately.

The leader of the rebellious sectarians, Hong Xiuquan, received the title "Tian-wang" - the Heavenly Sovereign (the closest Russian religious analogue is the "King of Heaven"). In fact, he became the emperor, the antipode of the Manchu bogdykhan Xianfeng, who had just entered the “dragon throne” in Beijing.

The self-proclaimed "King of Heaven", Tian-wang, claimed supreme power throughout the world - such a Taiping version of the world revolution. Therefore, his associates received auxiliary titles in the cardinal directions - Eastern, Western, Southern and Northern sovereigns, respectively: "Dun-wang", "Si-wang", "Nan-wang" and "Bei-wang". There was also an Auxiliary (or Flank) Sovereign, "I-van".

Having proclaimed the “Kingdom of Heaven of the Greatest Happiness”, in fact, the Taipings, bluntly declared the creation of a paradise on Earth ... They wore red bandages on their heads, and as a sign of disobedience to the Manchus, they stopped shaving their hair over their foreheads and braiding obligatory braids, for which they received from the enemies the nickname “huntou” and “changmao” - red-headed and long-haired.

The obligatory male hairstyle in the Qing Empire is clearly visible - a forehead shaved in front and a long braid in the back. Photo XIX century

Later, during the protracted civil war, when individual cities and regions changed hands more than once, especially cunning and conformist inhabitants managed, having grown their hair, to keep the braid, hiding it under their headdresses from the Taipings, so that in the event of the return of the Manchus, quickly shaving off the excess, present this sign of loyalty to the Manchu dynasty.

In addition to braids, the Taipings also abolished the custom of bandaging women's legs, traditional for Confucian China. In general, Taiping women received an equal social status and at the first stage of the movement in their army there were even special women's detachments.

The same custom of bandaged female legs is the “lotus legs” of medieval China. It was the practical application of the slogan "beauty requires sacrifice" brought to its apotheosis. Chinese girls from the age of 7 and throughout their lives had their feet tightly bandaged to keep them petite. With the growth of the child, the foot and toes deformed, acquiring the desired shape. It was difficult for medieval Chinese beauties to walk on mutilated legs. Their miniature legs in small embroidered shoes and swaying gait with tense buttocks - all this was the main object of erotic experiences and admiration of the knights of medieval China. However, there was not only an aesthetic reason here - they say that the displacement of the female genital organs, due to the peculiarities of gait, also gave men special pleasure during sexual intercourse. By the way, the Manchus, in an effort to differ from the Chinese, forbade their women from bandaging their feet, which caused the Manchu beauties to suffer greatly and feel inferior. Among the Chinese, only women of the lower classes did not bandage their feet, because they could not work on mutilated legs

The Taiping movement - one might even speak of the Taiping revolution - was a very complex phenomenon. It was both a traditional peasant war against the ruling bureaucracy (a social explosion that included a war of clans), and a traditional national liberation movement against a foreign dynasty. It was a religious war of the new "Christian" worldview against the traditional Chinese (especially against Confucianism in its most basic forms) - and at the same time a war for the revival of ancient Chinese ideals dating back to the Zhou era, which ended three centuries before Christ. The Taipings combined traditional Chinese nationalism, with its sense of superiority over the surrounding peoples, and a sincere interest in Western Christendom—the "barbarian brothers," as they called it.

These features of the movement turned the Taiping uprising into a complex and long civil war - the degenerate Qing dynasty with their decayed military-bureaucratic apparatus was saved from the Chinese revolutionaries by the Chinese traditionalists, staunch Confucians, who entered into a shaky alliance with the last Manchu-Mongolian passionaries.

It is no coincidence that the main enemy of the Taiping "vans" on the battlefield was the leader of the classical poetic school of China, the master of "poetry of the Sung style" Zeng Guofan. He was all right with his exams and his official career. Perhaps he would have adopted the slogan "Fan Qing, Fu Ming!" - but the "Christian communism" of the Taipings was deeply disgusting to him. An inspired traditionalist and at the same time a staunch innovator (he reformed everything from the army and court etiquette to Confucian philosophy), he played a decisive role in defeating the Taipings.

It was Zeng Guofan and his student and comrade-in-arms in the civil war, Li Hongzhang, who, in the course of the fight against the Taipings, would initiate a new, no longer medieval Chinese army, which will save the Qing dynasty in order to throw it off the throne at the beginning of the 20th century, and by the middle of the century disappear under the blows of the heirs of the Taipings - the Chinese Communists, who in turn will create new army, one of the largest in our XXI century.

But let's leave the historical dialectic and return to the Taipings.

The first losses and failures of the "Kingdom of Heaven"

The rebellious sectarians held the city of Yong'an for six months. Forty thousand provincial troops of the "Green Banner" blocked the area captured by the Taipings, but were never able to start storming the city walls, stumbling into active defense - the rebel detachments constantly maneuvered and counterattacked the enemy in the vicinity of Yun'an, skillfully combining these actions with guerrilla warfare. In April 1852, when food supplies ran low in the area they controlled, the Taipings broke through the blockade line and moved north. During a breakthrough in stubborn battles, four Manchu generals were killed, and the Taipings lost their first military leader, the head of the allied "triads" Hong Daquan, who was captured.

During the breakthrough, the rebels attacked the capital of Guangxi province, the city of Guilin, but matchlock guns and cannons on the city walls repelled all attacks. In one of them, under the fire of the Manchu cannons, Nan-wang, the Southern Sovereign of the Taipings, was killed - by the way, he was the first to be arrested by the authorities several years ago for a strange sermon and denial of Confucius.

Without being drawn into a long siege, the Taipings moved further northeast into the neighboring province of Hunan. On the way they were joined by 50-60 thousand people, including several thousand coal mine workers. Of these, a separate sapper detachment was created, intended for digging under the city walls. For two months, the Taipings besieged and stormed the city of Changsha, the capital of Hunan. It was here that the main enemy of the Taipings in the near future, a 40-year-old retired high-ranking official and Confucian poet Zeng Guofan, first appeared, and the united local self-defense units - “mintuan”, along with cannons, played leading role in the defense of the city. Under the fire of cannons near the walls of Changsha, the Western sovereign of the Taipings, "Si-wang", from poor peasants, a former guard of merchant caravans, died.

Retreating from Changsha, the Taipings moved to the great Chinese Yangtze River, along the way joining more and more crowds of rebels. After 80 years, the Chinese communists will have to act in exactly the same way - having failed in the storming of large urban centers, their “Soviet regions” will roam the expanses of rural China for many years, breaking through the blockades of government troops, constantly losing old ones in battles and with the same constancy gathering along the way new rebels, who were born in masses by the impoverished Chinese village.

Subordination to authorities, traditional for all secret societies, helped the Taipings at the very beginning of the movement to form an excellent military backbone with iron discipline, courage and devotion based on religious (and in fact political) fanaticism. Among the leaders of the Taipings there were many educated people who were familiar with ancient Chinese military treatises, at the same time they were not constrained by the rigidity and stereotypes inherent in Qing military officials.

Here is how the seventh founding father of the movement, Hong Daquan, the leader of one of the branches of the more traditional Triad, who did not believe in Christ, but from the very beginning became an ally of the Taipings and died in the first battles, described his “universities”:

“From an early age, I read books and wrote compositions, several times I passed examinations for a scientific degree, but the examining officials, without delving into my compositions, did not recognize my talents, and then I became a monk. Returning to the world, I once again passed the exams, but again did not receive a degree, then I was terribly angry, but then I was carried away by books on military affairs, wanting to do great things. All military laws and strategy from ancient times have attracted my attention. The whole map of China was in my head, at a glance ... "

A detailed presentation of the history of the Taipings, the essence of their teachings and the course of the 15-year civil war is very difficult due to the abundance of Chinese names, terms and place names that are difficult for the Russian-speaking reader. Therefore, the following narrative will be only a general and fragmentary description of the war of the Taiping "Kingdom of Heaven" against the Celestial Empire.

To be continued

Literature:

Pozdneev D. Taiping uprising in China. SPb., 1898.
Shpilman D. Peasant Revolution in China. Taiping Rebellion. 1850–1864 M, 1925
Kharnsky K. China from ancient times to the present day. Vladivostok, 1927
Skorpilev A. Report on the Taiping Revolution. China Problems Magazine, No. 1, 1929
Skorpilev A. Army of the Taiping Revolution. China Problems Magazine, #4–5, 1930
Kara-Murza G. Taipins. The Great Peasants' War and the Taiping State in China 1850–1864. M., 1941
Efimov G. Essays on the new and recent history of China. M., 1951
Hua Gang. History of the revolutionary war of the Taiping state. M., 1952
Fan Wen-Lan. New story China. Volume I, 1840–1901 M., 1955
Skachkov K. Beijing in the days of the Taiping uprising: From the notes of an eyewitness. M., 1958
Taiping Rebellion 1850–1864. Collection of documents. M., 1960
Ilyushechkin V. The Peasant War of the Taipings. M., 1967

Cyclic patterns in the development of human society are clearly demonstrated by the history of China. These include the most merciless periods of history that come at the end of each cycle. Such a demographic crisis in China led to the Taiping Rebellion, when 118 million people died. The history of mankind does not know other examples of such a mass death of people.

The sinologist, professor of the Russian State University for the Humanities, employee of the Institute of Oriental Studies Oleg Efimovich Nepomnin and doctor of historical sciences, employee of the Russian State Humanitarian University Andrei Vitalievich Korotaev tell about the greatest catastrophe in history.

Oleg Nepominin: During the Taiping Rebellion, or rather the Great Peasants' War, four wars broke out in China. This happened in 1851 - 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, 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. Begging, begging, then theft, then banditry, then the insurgent phase, and finally, when the insurgent detachments merge into a powerful avalanche, the peasant war begins,

Andrey Korotaev: In one of the southern regions of China, a man named Hong Xiu-quan, he came from a peasant family, while his father did what many rich peasants did - he transformed economic capital into social capital, that is, he gave his son an education so that he would pass the exam and become an official. Indeed, Hong Xiuquan studied for a long time, then it was time to take, let's say, a state exam, as a result of which one could get a degree that opened up opportunities for a bureaucratic career. In China, on the eve of the demographic collapse, the situation was especially severe, the competition was about 100 people per place, that is, it was actually almost impossible to pass the exam. Naturally, Hong Xiuquan fails the exam. For him, this is a disaster. His father invested a lot of money in his education, the whole family counted on him, and suddenly it turns out that all his studies are in vain. In general, he acted quite logically, he decided that he needed to better prepare for the next exam. Hands over for the second time - the result is the same, failure.

After the third failure, the real thing happened to Hong Xiuquan mental disorder, that is, he was taken on a stretcher to his native village, and he sat at home there for several months. And it turned out that when before that he was preparing for exams in the canton, he bought a book, which was a fairly free translation into Chinese of the Bible. But when he was in prostration at home, this book clearly impressed him (judging by the notes made in the margins). And it ended with Hong Xiuquan having a dream after that, about which he later repeatedly told: 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.” Friends reacted to this dream with full understanding and with great attention. Because the situation was really pre-crisis.

Despite the fact that the interpretation of the dream did not raise any doubts, the forces of darkness were understandable - these were foreigners who captured China, the Manchurian dynasty, Hong Xiuquan himself did not have much practical ingenuity. But friends were found and it turned out that there were already several thousand armed men ready to follow him to overthrow the dynasty.

The thought that there are only a few thousand of them, and the dynasty, in principle, can put up hundreds of thousands of people against them, somehow does not particularly stop, because “our cause is just, heaven supports us”, what is there to be afraid of. Therefore, they descend from the mountains and go to the main economic center of China in the lower reaches of the Yangtze, the Chinese granary.

When several thousand armed people descended from the mountains, more and more armed peasants and bandits began to join them. The authorities react late, send a detachment - several tens of thousands of people, that is, a rather powerful army, but they are already faced with an army of rebels that is superior to them - government troops are defeated. This further increases the popularity of the rebels, more and more peasants join them. The government is already sending a serious army. But by the time she meets the Taiping army, there are more Taipings again, the Taipings are encouraged, the government army is demoralized, and they are crushed. In the end, the rebels successfully occupy the economic capital of China - Nanjing in the lower reaches of the Yangtze, the part that, in fact, feeds the North. So, according to the calculations of historians, it turns out that if they went to Beijing, they would most likely occupy Beijing, because the government could not put up an effective military force at that time.

But one of the mechanisms of the demographic cycle in relation to China is that with the growth of the population, all the land that, in principle, can be cultivated begins to be cultivated. Including cultivated land not very suitable for agriculture upstream of the Yellow River. There is soil erosion, more and more silt is washed into the Yellow River, the riverbed rises higher and higher. The Chinese have long developed a way to respond to this - they need to build dams along the Yellow River. But the dams rise higher and higher, and after a while it turns out that the Yellow River flows simply over the Great Chinese Plain. But at the same time, this requires more and more investments in maintaining the dams in order. But then the Taiping uprising begins, the treasury is empty. There are no colossal funds that are needed to maintain these dams in order. And what's going on? The dam breaks. At the same time, before the Taiping Rebellion, the Yellow River flowed south of the Shandong Peninsula, and now flows north. You can look at the map: then the entire Great Plain of China was simply washed away. This means that tens of millions of peasant farms have not harvested their crops, they have nothing to eat, a crowd of refugees is fleeing to the cities. Epidemics begin. There is what is called a political and demographic catastrophe.

Oleg Nepominin: The fact is that as the next phase of the crisis grows, the ability of the authorities to withdraw taxes from the countryside, including taxes in kind, is sharply reduced, because the peasantry cannot pay these taxes, since they eat everything up.

Andrey Korotaev: It seems to me that this will be of particular interest to the Russian reader, all this was supplemented by corruption that was still growing towards the end of the political and demographic cycle. I'll just read an excerpt from the Cambridge History of China: “Stories of multi-day banquets and theatrical performances arranged to amuse the flood administration staff support the view that only 10 percent of the 60 million taels allocated annually to fund the flood control service were spent for the intended purpose.

Oleg Nepominin: The fact is that in the recovery phase it was possible to steal more and more, in the stabilization and balance phase it was possible to steal more or less with impunity, but with the transition to the crisis phase, bureaucratic corruption, bureaucratic embezzlement became dangerous. Officials, in principle, had to organize the repair of dams every year. At the end of each dynastic cycle, in the phase of the catastrophe, this very problem arises: today the dam was not covered, tomorrow the dam was not filled, in the third year even less was poured - and then that great flood occurred, 7 million people died.

It was, of course, a great disaster. The fact is that about the same number died during the Sino-Japanese war of 1937-45, when the Kuomintang blew up dams and staged an artificial flood to stop the advance of the Japanese division. Invincible Japanese divisions were moving from north to south, and they had to be stopped. Several million people also died.

Andrey Korotaev: There is another point that we, in principle, are also well aware of. During the civil war, there is a "brutal effect". At the beginning of the civil war, there are no special atrocities, but then there is simply an escalation, and from both sides, both from the side of the rebels and from the side of government troops. In Russia, it lasted only three years, but if it had lasted 10 years, we would not have seen such a thing. During the capture of Nanking, 1 million people died, that is, almost everyone who was in Nanjing.

Oleg Nepominin: It must be said that they sent three Taiping armies from Nanjing to take Beijing, but one army was unable to force the Yangtze and retreated, the other two fell into very difficult conditions. The fact is that there were two Chinas - southern China and northern China. The South treated the North badly, the North considered the southerners as strangers. In addition, European powers intervened in China and dealt painful blows to Chinese pride during the so-called opium or trade wars. The first war began in 1840. The second war was in 1856.

Andrey Korotaev: And there was a third war, during which Russia received Primorye. The UK at this time had a balance of payments deficit in trade with China, so in order to eliminate this deficit, the UK began selling opium to China and reacted nervously to the Chinese government's attempts to ban the import of opium. This is such a blatant example of a European power forcing China into the drug trade. And as a result of all these terrible events - floods, wars, strife, famine and epidemics - 118 million people died. Moreover, a minority of the population still die directly from weapons. Although, as we remember, many millions of people died from weapons. But the main thing, of course, that takes lives in such cases is hunger, cold and epidemics. In the case of China, there was another specific factor - the flood, when a huge number of people physically drowned.

Topic 2. IDEOLOGY AND THE TAIPING PROGRAM

1. Background and causes of the Taiping movement. Hong Xiuquanyi and his role in Taiping history.

2. The ideology of the Taiping state.

3. Characteristics of the main stages of the Taiping movement.

4. Taiping program. "Land System of the Heavenly Dynasty":

- agricultural device

5.Nature, driving forces, causes of defeat and consequences of the Taiping movement for China.

Background and causes of the uprising.

The purpose 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.

Background of the peasant war.

In addition to the general reasons, the first consequences of the results of the First Opium War, when China turned into a semi-colony, aggravated.

The ebb of silver abroad hence the increase in the value of its silver. Peasants paid taxes in silver, while they themselves used copper coins - wen (silver - lyans). Bundles of wen grew more and more hence the worsening situation of the peasants. --Rent rises hence the position of the peasant tenants and those who held the land is deteriorating.

Handicraftsmen and artisans are losing their jobs (English competition). trade routes began to pass through sea coast(formerly within the country). The center of China also began to go bankrupt.

The reasons that led to the start 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.

- Signs of a dynastic crisis

China's trade with 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 the transfer of the main volume 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 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. W dry spells, hurricanes and pest infestations almost completely destroyed 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, there were very strong traditional contradictions between two groups of the population - Punti (“indigenous”, or Bendi in the Beijing Dialect) and Hakka (“newcomers”, or Kejia in 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.

Ideology of the Taipings: – Hong Xiuquan and the origins of the ideology of the Taipings; – The ideological and political orientation of the Taiping movement.

Ideology:

A mixture of traditional Chinese and Christian beliefs.

1. Anti-Manchu character.

2. Close connection with ancient Chinese social utopias (taiping, land division, etc.)

3. Asceticism of morality (banned opium, gambling, tobacco; Puritan communication between M and F)

4.Christian coloring (idea of equality, 10 commandments - but changed, Ten Heavenly Commandments, etc.)

Supporters of Hong Xiuquan 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. 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 victory. people's war. 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.

Hong Xiuquan

The leader of the Taiping Rebellion was from a Hakka village - Hong Xiuquan(1814-1864) was born into a simple peasant family in Prov. 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. 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 new faith, which was a bizarre combination of Christian ideas with Chinese tradition, of which Hong Xiuquan can be considered an expert, was not crowned with success, 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 followers. From their midst, a group of future leaders of the uprising soon formed. Among them was an 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 lips with the followers of the movement. Very young joined the insurgents Shi Dakai(1831-1863), who came from a wealthy family in Guangxi. He brought into the ranks of the rebels several hundred people who were his relatives in the clan. Among the leaders of the movement can also be called 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.

The structure and social composition of the rebels

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 banner 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, poor and wealthy people, people from Shenshi families, Han people and representatives of local peoples, primarily Zhuang, and others. s. Nevertheless, from this extremely heterogeneous mass of people who saw in the Taiping movement a path 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 rebels stood for:

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, ruthlessly destroying religious buildings and statues of saints, dear to the heart of not only the scribe-official, but also common man. In place of all this, they put forward Christianity in the interpretation of Hong Xiuquan as the only true teaching.

The rebels demanded to restore social justice, to punish negligent officials, to take away the surplus from the rich.

The course of the uprising

The Taiping Rebellion is usually divided into several stages. 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 - final stage in Taiping history, culminating in the fall of Nanjing and the death of all the main participants in the Taiping drama.

First stage ( 1850-1853)

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. 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. 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 battles. Failures were followed by resounding victories. The Taipings never managed 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 that 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 decided to turn east and, going down the Yangtze, capture Nanjing and turn it into the capital of the Taiping 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.

Second phase(1853-1856)

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 insufficient 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 connected 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 leaders 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 youths", 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 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 customarily called in Sinology literature were laid."regional militarism". 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 that was 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 her reign in China, was forced to come to terms with this.

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 repel attacks, but also defeat government troops and detachments of local military leaders who sided with the Qing government.

Third stage(1856-1864)

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 to 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. 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, his bodyguards carried him out of 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 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. 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 they created special units, 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 Zhengang), 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.

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 dropped 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

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 and 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 schools for women 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 their 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 hostilities 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"

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