The fall of Nanking and the demon slayers

Hi, this is Our Bloody History, where we lean into some of the biggest atrocities known to man.

Here’s today's hot take:

The fall of Nanking, the capital of the unrecognised rebel state in China, this week, 158 years ago, on 19 July 1864, which finally brought an end to the bloodiest civil war in history.

First, let's do some scene setting.

We're in the thick of what China will later call their Century of Humiliation, a period of time where everyone is doing their thang in the middle country. Between 1839 to 1949, Japan and a bunch of Western Powers intervene, invade, bully, subjugate, and carve up China as they please. It's good ole' fashioned geopolitical greed.

Adding to the fire is a series of internal insurrections against the Manchu-led Qing dynasty. After a period of general stability and progress, the Great Qing is now fighting conflicts on all fronts, but none is more catastrophic than the Taiping Rebellion. This religious revolt will go down in history as the bloodiest civil war of all time anywhere and kill an estimated 20-30 million people, a feat comparable to World War I. Holy mackerel!

As rebellions often do, this movement starts with one man...

Hong Xiuquan.

Hong is the third and youngest son of a Hakka family, an ethnic minority based mainly in Southern China. Hakka literally means "guest families," and, as migrants to the south, are looked down upon by the more dominant Han and ruling Manchus. Poverty is rife in the empire, and the Hakka suffer more than most. But there is one ray of hope, a guaranteed way to obtain status for one's family, regardless of ancestry – the Confucian civil service examinations (which supposedly have less than a 1% pass rate). Nail the exams and you become a government official, unlocking prestige and wealth for your family and village. It's Willy Wonka's golden ticket and everyone's rooting for Charlie, aka, Hong.

From a young age, Hong shows a ton of promise. He can recite the Four Books of the Confucian texts by the time he's 11. Hot dang. The weight of his family's hope and expectation is crushing. Hong! Hong! Hong! Despite years of preparation, Hong fails his first attempt at the examinations when he's 13. Poor fella, chin up. Nine years later, now 22, he comes back for a second try. But bombs again. Come on Hong! Just a year later, he gives it a third shot and...

fails.

Devastating.

The pressure and shame lead to a total nervous breakdown. Our mate Hong is delirious for days. During his outta-this-world state, Hong sees celestial beings, who he will later come to recognise from a Christian pamphlet as none other than God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ. Not only that, but Hong learns from these visions that he is the literal younger brother of Jesus and, like his elder sibling, he too has a divine mission. Hong is presented with a golden seal and sword and commanded to slay the demons infesting heaven. It quickly becomes apparent to him what he must do – purge China of Confucianism and all false idols.

Mission accepted. Let the preaching begin.

Growth of Hong's new faith is slow at first; it's grassroots and hyper local, but a wave of macro forces – famines, natural disasters, defeat to foreign powers, overtaxed famers, increasing rents, rising banditry and other economic woes – help fuel the movement. Pissed off, struggling and disaffected Chinese flock to the new religion in their thousands. By 1850, Hong has between 10,000-30,000 thousand followers. The Qing regime is threatened by the movement and local officials in the southern province of Guangxi launch a campaign of religious persecution against Hong's so-called God Worshipping Society. This leads to a small scale battle in December 1850, and then a decisive clash in January 1851, where an army of 10,000 rebel believers rout Qing forces.

The Taiping Rebellion is now officially underway.

Hong ups the ante. He declares himself the Heavenly King of a new dynasty, and on 11 January 1851, almost fourteen years after his first vision, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is established. In March 1853, with around two million followers, Hong captures the city of Nanking (often romanised as Nanjing) and renames it Tianjing, meaning “heavenly capital.” Then, as instructed in his dreams (to slay all demons), Hong and his followers go on a killing rampage:

The rebellion-turned-civil war rages for 14 years. It's intensity ebbs and flows across multiple, bloody campaigns. Bloody is an understatement; it's total war beyond comprehension. Savage atrocities are committed by both sides. Cities change hands like hot potatoes and the death toll of innocent bystanders ticks away into the millions.

Despite initial success on the battlefield, the Heavenly Kingdom begins to rot from the inside. Hong loses his grip on things (too much time spent in opulent indulgence and spiritual journeys rather than attending to the needs of his people). Distrust, political intrigue and betrayal rip the divine court apart and Hong is forced to purge some of his most capable generals.

Another huge turning point comes when Western powers, who until this point have remained neutral, decide to back the Qing against the Heavenly Kingdom. The Taiping's aggressive expansion plans and their siege against Shanghai threaten to unravel the hard-earned gains the West have made in opening up China for trade. Even Karl Marx, who initially supported the movement as a positive catalyst for change, now claimed that “they have destroyed everything and produced nothing”

Slowly, but surely, the Heavenly Kingdom is crumbling. Qing forces, with support from foreign mercenaries, begin to clear the rebel-infested countryside, recapturing towns and cities. Only Nanking, the Heavenly Capital, remains under Taiping control. But in May 1862, Qing troops lay direct siege to the bastion of faith.

The siege at Nanking lasts two hard years. With all supplies lines cut off, the residents are reduced to eating rats (and according to some reports, each other). At one point, some 200,000 starving Taiping troops abandon the city and surrender. Hong tries to revive the morale of his people and reveals that God has provided for them with manna from heaven. To prove his point, he scoops up random weeds growing in the street and eats them. You see. Manna! We'll be saved. And....he get's super sick and dies twenty days later on 1 June 1864. That really didn't work out for him.

Meanwhile, the attackers are busy digging tunnels under the walls of Nanking. Sensing that the end is nigh, on 18 July 1864, a group of 1,000 defenders sally from the city, disguised as attackers, and try to destroy the main tunnel. But the plan is foiled and they're forced to retreat.

The following afternoon, on 19 July 1864, our day in history this week, Qing forces detonate the tunnel, collapsing a huge section of the wall under Taiping Gate. Sixty thousand attackers rush into the gaping gap. The street fighting is scrappy and vicious but the stubborn defenders are eventually overwhelmed, and by nightfall every gate in the city is in the hands of the Qing.

And cue the massacre.

The attacking soldiers lose all discipline and commit mass-scale random murder, rape, looting and arson against the residents of Nanking who they view as "rebels."

And just like that, after fourteen years of bitter fighting, the rebellion, civil war, religious revolt, call it what you will, finally comes to an end (in part). Despite the collapse of the Heavenly Kingdom regime, the fight is still not over for some. Several thousands of rebel troops continue to resist, many of them joining concurrent rebellions. It takes another seven years to finally put down the remaining remnants of the Taiping Rebellion.

Today, the Taiping Rebellion has been largely forgotten outside of China and is buried deep within a larger historical narrative. But the religious-political movement is worthy of remembrance, not just because of the scale of folly and loss of life, but because of how close Hong and his followers came to creating an entirely different China to the one we know today.

What's so fascinating about history, and this story in particular, from the visions to the massacres, is the interesting 'what if' questions we sometimes forget to ask ourselves. What if the Taiping had successfully taken Beijing when they had the chance? What if foreign forces had remained neutral? What if it was the Heavenly Kingdom that overthrew the Qing Dynasty rather than the Republic of China established in 1912?

Interesting thought threads to follow.

Matthew White, author of The 100 Deadliest Episodes in Human History writes: "..it's probably a good idea to remember that if the Taipings had won their rebellion, they might today be considered totally legit and every bit as Christian as the Mormons ("mostly, sort of")."

Imagine that.

Give all religious movements enough time and they often settle into legitimacy and general acceptance. But some, like the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, never get that far.

3 quick facts:

• As reported by Zeng Guofan, the commander-in-chief of the Hunan Army, more than 100,000 Taiping soliders and civilians are killed during the fall of Nanking and the following massacre.

• The final stage of the siege, also known as the Third Battle of Nanking, was a testing ground for the first modern Chinese firearms used in battle. It's the first time that Chinese indigenously built bolt-action single-shot rifles appear, and although they were few in number, they added to the tactical superiority of the Qing troops.

• Hong's 15-year old son, Hong Tianguifu, the "Junior King of Heaven," who inherits the throne from his father, is caught after successfully escaping the city. Despite renouncing his faith – "It has nothing to do with me, even after stepping on the road, I did nothing that is unfavorable to the Qing dynasty" – Hong Junior is executed by the infamous "slow slicing" Lingchi technique, also known as "Death by a Thousand Cuts."

Other conflicts that happened this week:

• 18 July 452: Attila the Hun lays siege to the Roman metropolis of Aquileia and destroys it in the Sack of Aquileia.

• 19 July 1333: The English win a decisive victory over the Scots at the Battle of Halidon Hill during the Wars of Scottish Independence.

• 20 July 1592: During the first Japanese invasion of Korea, Japanese forces capture Pyongyang, although they are ultimately unable to hold it.

• 21 July 1798: Napoleon's forces defeat an Ottoman-Mamluk army near Cairo in the Battle of the Pyramids during the French campaign in Egypt and Syria.

• 22 July 1209: The Albigensian Crusade, initiated to squash a growing non-Catholic sect, kicks off with the Massacre at Béziers.

• 23 July 1793: The Kingdom of Prussia re-conquers Mainz from France in the Siege of Mainz.

• 24 July 1411: The Battle of Harlaw, also known as "Red Harlaw," one of the bloodiest battles in Scotland, takes place.

A historical quote about historical things:

DisclaimerYou are reading my abstractions based on the abstractions of others. History is not always an accurate map of what really happened. The map is not the territory. Reality can be very different. We are like blind people groping an elephant, describing what we feel. It always pays to do your own research and ask questions.