1864: Hong Tianguifu, in the Taiping Rebellion
8 comments November 18th, 2009 Headsman
On this date in 1864, the sins of the father were visited upon the son when the Qing Dynasty dealt a coup de grace in what is perhaps history’s bloodiest civil war, executing the luckless teenager to whom leadership of the Taiping Rebellion had fallen.
Strangely little-known, the Taiping Rebellion shook the weakened Chinese state through the middle of the 19th century, nearly to its very foundations.
From 1851 until the 1864 death of its queer leader figure, prophetic Christian convert Hong Xiuquan, it maintained its own state in southern China, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
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Also of interest: Google freebies from the 19th century. Ti-ping tien-kwoh: the history of the Ti-ping revolution and History of the insurrection in China: with notices of the Christianity, creed, and proclamations of the insurgents.
China’s defeat in the First Opium War in the 1840’s set the stage for Hong Xiuquan’s movement, and not only geopolitically: western powers had pried open the Orient to proselytizers as well as poppies, and though Christianity would find a rough go of it in China, it did win over Hong.
Fired by his supposed divine vision, Hong’s Heavenly Kingdom conquered the Yangtze Valley and much of the south, with an outlook radically progressive as against the hidebound Qing: egalitarian land distribution and gender equity (the Kingdom’s administrative acumen is less generously accounted). Naturally, the “real” Christian missionaries abhorred it, which sincere theology happily comported with the policy of their national statesmen who abhorred the Taiping’s encumbrance upon the opium trade.
The rebellion waxed while the Qing lost a second Opium War to the west, but a Taiping bid to capture Shanghai fell short in 1860. By this time, westerners had the Qing by the short-and-curlies and were not eager to see the client dynasty they had so painstakingly browbeaten supplanted by a bunch of millenarian Levellers without the common courtesy to promulgate smack; accordingly, China’s recent Opium War antagonists now helped China field the forces necessary to suppress the rebellion.
Charles George Gordon, a British evangelical Christian himself destined for eventual beheading, even led the pacification force swaggeringly branded the “Ever Victorious Army“.
We’ve reached the end here and only just met our day’s principal, the son and heir who at 15 was handed the helm of the collapsing state by his visionary father. (Hong Xiuquan conveniently proceeded to kick the bucket just before the Qing finished off the rebellion.)
Officially the second (and obviously the last) ruler of the Heavenly Kingdom, Hong Tianguifu had no juice with his military or administration, and no time to enjoy the more prosaic perquisites of regal authority, but was available as the object of official vengeance. (Thanks, dad.)
Less exalted Taiping Rebellion prisoners, from here (click through the pages for a detailed history of the rebellion).
The Taiping Rebellion features in the 2007 Chinese flick Tau ming chong (The Warlods), which represents a Qing-Taiping battle in the fine cinematic bloodbath below. Some 20 to 30 million people are thought to have perished in this civil war, which was also one of the last significant conflicts fought primarily with blades rather than bullets.
On this day..
- 1872: Joseph Garcia, for the Llangibby Massacre - 2019
- 1936: The Seven Martyrs of Madrid - 2018
- 1784: Richard Barrick and John Sullivan - 2017
- 1441: Roger Bolingbroke, "hanged, hedyd, and quartered" - 2016
- 1813: Ezra Hutchinson, teen rapist - 2015
- 1329: Alberghettino II Manfredi, upstart condottiero - 2014
- 1427: Johann Bantzkow, Mayor of Wismar - 2013
- 1646: Twelve at an Evora auto da fe - 2012
- 1961: Four for the assassination of Rafael Trujillo - 2011
- 2009: Danielle Simpson, "If I can't be free - Kill me!!" - 2010
- 2005: Elias Syriani, a family affair - 2008
- 1577: Soulmother of Kussnacht - 2007
Entry Filed under: 19th Century,Beheaded,Capital Punishment,Children,China,Cycle of Violence,Death Penalty,Execution,God,Heads of State,History,Occupation and Colonialism,Power,Religious Figures,Revolutionaries,Royalty,Treason,Wartime Executions
Tags: 1860s, 1864, charles george gordon, christianity, ever victorious army, first opium war, free trade, hong tianguifu, hong xiuquan, november 18, opium, opium wars, second opium war, taiping heavenly kingdom, taiping rebellion
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