There are no shortcuts to the Earthly Paradise, especially when one has no idea where it is. The towns, hills, streams, and valleys of China spread out before one, in all directions. The demons, always at one’s heels, can dictate the rhythms of one’s march, but not its purpose.
As they leave Yongan and climb into the hills, the Taiping number around forty thousand. From the dead and dying demons they have seized Qing uniforms, banners, insignia, pouches, and other items. They have also found and carried off a cache of gunpowder, at least ten large loads, a crucial addition to their nearly exhausted stores. However ingenious, the extraction of saltpeter from old bricks and the attempts to make sulfur from blood or dung are inadequate for their needs on the march, which include the gunpowder for muskets, for mines, for cannon mounted on their boats, and the extra supplies for blasting down the walls of demon towns. Siege warfare should be easier for them since over one thousand experienced miners, employed once in Guangxi but now jobless, have joined them in Yongan.1
As they leave Yongan, do they advance or retreat? The question is maybe not the right one. The point is that, with God’s help, they have survived again. And also with the help of Big-head Yang, who as a bandit deserted them at Jintian, and as a Qing officer during the summer of 1851 stopped their troops from uniting with those of Ling Shiba; by 1852 Yang has realized that the Taiping presence helps his own prestige, and though he controls the Meng River south of Yongan he lets the Taiping move upstream to the north, and makes no attempt to use his stronger fleet to race up the river and cut the Taiping route to Guilin.2
It is a mixture of chance and strategy that leads the Taiping forces toward Guilin, the capital of Guangxi, sheltered in its rice-rich valleys among the vivid forested peaks of karst and limestone. Guilin is a major city with strong defenses, and the walls will not fall as easily as those of Yongan. But the routes back into southern Guangxi are blocked by Qing forces, and with well-equipped Qing garrison armies holding cities to both the west and the east, it is the best Taiping strategy to drive straight through the center, moving from village to village rather than attacking other towns.3
Luo Dagang, proven by now to be one of their subtlest and most inventive commanders, suggests the Taiping proceed with guile. He orders several hundred of his troops to don Qing uniforms—seized from the prisoners or stripped from the fallen troops outside Yongan—and with Qing banners flying to approach Guilin in marching order, and bluff their way past the unsuspecting guards. By the chance of war, though no one in Guilin has yet heard that the Taiping have left Yongan, a commanding general is hurrying to Guilin with that news when he sees the marching troops dressed like his own army. Realizing that no Qing troops can or should be there, he gallops ahead of the Taiping columns and beats them to Guilin, alerting the defenders and ordering the great gates closed.4
For thirty-three days the Taiping besiege Guilin, concentrating their attacks on the southern edge, but they can neither break through nor undermine the walls, nor can they starve out the city for they do not have enough troops to surround Guilin completely. But camped on the banks of the fast-flowing Li River, they are able to rest their forces and seize large numbers of boats, to make up for those that had to be abandoned on the Meng River when they left Yongan. It is during the Guilin siege that the Taiping develop the strategic and logistical skills to make themselves a power on the water as well as on the land. A few weeks into the siege, they have already amassed a fleet of forty or more large river vessels. It is on these ships that they store their munitions and their grain reserves, the cash and treasure from looted houses, along with the noncombatant women, and the children. This tactic frees up the stronger Hakka women and other male troops from tedious guard duty and lets them join in active combat, while dependents and supplies can be swiftly moved if danger threatens.5 Land batteries of cannon are there to hold back the ships of Big-head Yang if needed, but he does not press the attack with vigor. The other Qing river forces stay mainly to the south, fearing the Taiping might try to double back and join up with Ling Shiba or other supporters in western Guangdong.6 By mid-May, the siege still unsuccessful, the Taiping pay a massive bribe to Big-head Yang to leave them unpursued; with their now well-honed skills, they execute a swift withdrawal along two routes, one by land and one by water, and continue their journey to the north.7
The choice of direction has now become a fateful one, for north of Guilin the Taiping forces cross one of China’s great strategic and geographical divides, the band of hills and mountains where the river systems that flow from north to south have their source; on the far side of the range, a different group of rivers flows from south to north. So having traveled some sixty miles north of Guilin, to the northern end of the navigable section of the Li River, the Taiping troops come to the ancient but still serviceable canal at Xingan city, which links the Li River to the northward-flowing river Xiang. From here, the Xiang River flows straight through the heart of Hunan province, and thence, via the wide waters of the Dongting Lake, directly to the Yangzi River itself.
Astonishingly, Qing forces have left Xingan virtually unguarded, and the Taiping enter it on May 23 without a fight. But they do not have the time to linger there, for the journey north draws them with greater urgency, and the Qing are in pursuit. Thus they push on immediately to the river junction city of Quanzhou, which the Taiping vanguard reaches the next day, on May 24. Unlike Xingan, Quanzhou is strongly guarded, but since it is not the Taiping goal, their troops march and sail past the walls. In their midst, comfortable in his ornamental sedan chair, sits Feng Yunshan, the South King, the closest friend of Hong Xiuquan and founder of the God-worshipers in Thistle Mountain. Idly, a Qing gunner on the Quanzhou walls takes aim at the gaudy target and fires at the unseen passenger within. The casual shot has a deadly accuracy. The ball smashes through the chair’s ornamental coverings, seriously wounding Feng.8
When Xiao Chaogui, the West King and voice of Jesus, was struck by the demons at Yongan, there was confusion among the leaders and the sound of contradictory voices. But at Quanzhou, the news of Feng’s mortal wound spreads unstoppably through the ranks, and the Taiping forces seem to act as one. Breaking their march, massing around the city walls, for over a week the Taipings launch assault after assault, while the neighboring Qing commanders, scared of the Taiping ferocity, linger in their camps and refuse to give the city aid, despite the anguished pleas of the city magistrate, written with his own blood. Finally breaching the gate and walls on June 3, the Taiping force their way into the city and attack everyone inside without quarter. They have never acted thus before. Within two days almost all of Quanzhou’s residents, except for those who fled in time, are dead.9
Leaving the gutted city on June 5, the double Taiping columns continue north, apparently intending to proceed down the Xiang River to the provincial capital of Changsha. As before, they follow the dual tactic of one line of river vessels and a parallel marching column, for the time being on the western bank. Now more of the foot soldiers can travel by water, for their fleet of boats has expanded once again. They have seized at least two hundred craft of different sizes anchored off Quanzhou at the time of the siege.10 Tired and careless after the siege and slaughter in Quanzhou, the Taiping move swiftly on their way without the careful procedures of advance reconnaissance that they usually follow on the march through unknown terrain. So it is that only five miles north of the city they blunder straight into the trap set for them by a local militia leader, Jiang Zhongyuan.
Jiang Zhongyuan is the earliest exemplar of a new kind of antagonist the Taiping must now confront, a man backed by more resources and with infinitely more important family and bureaucratic contacts than local landlords like Wang Zuoxin and the God-worshipers’ other enemies in the Thistle Mountain region. Jiang is a scholar from southern Hunan, just two years older than Hong Xiuquan. His first experience with organizing local militia troops came in the late 1840s, before the Taiping had yet appeared, as he sought to protect his home and lands from Yao tribesmen and other disaffected groups. These rootless men drew strength and inspiration from millenarian sects like the “Black Lotus” or from local secret societies like the “Cudgels,” which combined elements of martial arts with Buddhist beliefs and vegetarian dietary practices.11 Such groups had been expanding their forces in Jiang’s native Hunan for years, gaining recruits as drought conditions worsened and corrupt local magistrates connived with local grain merchants to manipulate distributions from the local granaries so as to drive the already exorbitant rice prices still higher.
One of Jiang’s purposes in raising a local militia was preemptive, to keep his own kinsmen out of these potentially rebellious organizations. The members of such defensive militia groups were, as in Guangxi, a complicated mix: representatives of powerful lineages, local farmers, the unemployed, and semiprofessional soldiers who had no strong local ties but sought a military sponsor to guarantee them a steady income. Jiang’s militia numbered around two thousand men by the late 1840s, and though his successes brought him career preferment and a posting in a distant province, the militia were kept partly intact by Jiang’s brothers and family friends from the educated Hunanese elite.12 When in 1850 Jiang returned to his Hunan hometown following his father’s death—as Qing ritual practice demanded—his previous skills were brought to the attention of the Qing commanders, who summoned Jiang and his militia to aid in the siege of Yongan and the relief of Guilin, even though it meant traveling far from his home base. Jiang did take part, briefly, in both those campaigns, though he was mortified by the hesitancy of the various Qing government forces to take decisive or concerted action.13
The ambush that Jiang lays is just beyond the Suoyi ford on the Xiang River, five miles north of Quanzhou. At this point, where the river makes an abrupt eastward turn, it is about one hundred yards wide and fairly shallow, but the current is swift and the riverbed is crisscrossed by an intricate tracery of sandbars that make navigation difficult. The west bank is hilly and thickly wooded, with trees and shrubs growing down to the water’s edge. It is here that Jiang oversees the blocking of the stream with cut trees and logs, through which huge iron spikes have been driven to hold them in place, making the river impassable to vessels. Meantime he positions his troops on the west bank, among the dense trees.14
Swept along the river by the swift stream, the first Taiping vessels in the column sail through the sandbanks and round the bend in the river straight into the great barrier of tethered tree trunks. As hails of shot are poured on them, and their stranded vessels set afire, the boats behind, unable to halt, pile into those in front. Each arriving vessel compounds the confusion, while the fire spreads from boat to boat and the trapped troops and sailors—joined by their comrades who have been marching along the west bank—flounder across the river to the eastern shore. Had Jiang had more troops at his command, and had one of his fellow military commanders not reneged on his promise to set up a similar ambush on the eastern edge of Suoyi ford, the Taiping force might have been wiped out. As it is, the Taiping casualties are colossal: three hundred boats are burned, sunk, or captured, and around ten thousand of their troops are killed or drowned, many of them the original God-worshipers from Guangxi who gave the movement so much passion and energy. Among the dead is the South King, Feng Yunshan, who succumbs to his wounds.15
Abandoning the remaining vessels, Hong Xiuquan and the Taiping troops cut across the wooded hills beyond the east bank of the Xiang River and trek into Hunan province, hoping to seize the prosperous river city of Yongzhou by surprise. But the Qing have cut the bridges and pulled all boats over to the farther shore. With no clear destination open to it, the whole army veers south again and finding the city of Daozhou unprepared for its sudden change of direction, and weakly defended, occupies it on June 12.16
Here the Taiping stay, either in the city itself, or campaigning, raiding, and destroying temples in the vicinity, for a month and a half. The leaders must not only restore morale but also attract new recruits to make up for their stunning losses. The greatest potential sources for such recruits are also the most problematical: the members of the various groups who—for ethnic, economic, political, or religious reasons—have turned against the state and its officials, and seek an often rough-and-ready version of a better life. In wooing such people directly, the Taiping leaders are taking a calculated risk, for whether or not such men will make true God-worshipers, or care about the Taiping’s Heavenly Kingdom, has to remain unknown.
The proclamations posted in southern Hunan are issued in the names of Yang Xiuqing and Xiao Chaogui, the East and West Kings, who have already begun to prepare such materials in Yongan. The rhetoric they employ to denigrate the Manchu rulers and their minions is both forceful and personal. The ruling emperor himself, Xianfeng, is referred to as “the Manchu demon” and “the Tartar dog,” of “barbarian origin,” and the “mortal enemy of us Chinese.” By serving him, the followers of the Heaven-and-Earth Society are reminded, they not only obey the “old serpent devil” and shun the “glory of the Great God”; they violate their own blood oaths, which pledged them “with united hearts and united efforts to exterminate the Qing.”17 But avoiding all references to the cause of restoring the Ming dynasty, which some secret-society brothers still espouse, Xiao and Yang urge on them the duty of supporting Hong Xiuquan, the “True Sovereign,” in his goal of “founding the state.”18
In their earliest recruiting efforts, in the Guiping region of Guangxi, the Taiping leaders had begun to talk of a common “sacred treasury” and the need to donate to it. The secret societies, too, in the same areas as the God-worshipers, constructed their own appeals, often as songs or jingles, with a powerful social message:
The people at the top owe us their money;
The people in the middle are content to snooze.
The people at the bottom should go with us—
For that’s far better than renting an ox to plow some worn-out land.
Playing on the same theme, the Taiping had their own version in Thistle Mountain jingle:
Those with millions owe us their money,
Those who are half poor-half rich can till their fields.
Those with ambitions but no cash should go with us:
Broke or hungry, Heaven will keep you well.19
Now Yang and Xiao expand these ideas and relate them specifically to Manchu abuses and callousness:
Whenever floods and droughts occur, [the Manchus] do not show the slightest compassion; they sit and watch the starving people wander by until the bleached bones grow like wild weeds, for they desire to reduce the numbers of us Chinese. Moreover, throughout China the Manchus have unleashed grasping officials and their corrupt subordinates to strip the people of their flesh until men and women weep by the roadsides, for they desire to impoverish us Chinese. Official posts are obtained by bribes, and punishments bought off with money; the rich hold the power and heroes despair.20
This oppression is one of the main reasons that the Taiping armies are on the march: “On behalf of God above we shall avenge those who have deceived Heaven, and for China below we shall free the common people from their miseries. We must wipe away the foul air of the Qing dynasty so that we can together enjoy the happiness of Taiping.”21
The Taiping proclamations tie mockery of the Manchus to mockery of their racial ancestry and their pretensions:
We have carefully investigated the Manchu Tartars’ origins and have found that their first ancestors were a white fox and a red dog, who copulated together and from their seed produced this race of demons. As their numbers grew they mated together since they had no proper human relationships nor civilization. Availing themselves of China’s lack of real men, they seized the country, established their own demon throne and placed the wild fox upon it; in their court the monkeys bathed and dressed. We Chinese could not plow up their caves or dig up their dens; instead we fell in with their treacherous plots, bore their insults, and obeyed their commands. Moreover, our civil and military officials, coveting their awards, bowed and knelt in the midst of this pack of foxes and dogs. Now, a little child only three feet tall may be extremely ignorant, but point to a pig or a dog and tell him to bow down to it and he will redden with anger.22
In other passages, Yang and Xiao link social humiliation to sexual subservience:
Chinese people should look like Chinese; but now the Manchus have ordered us to shave the hair around the head, leaving a long tail behind, thus making the Chinese appear to be brute animals. The Chinese have their own Chinese robes and hats; but now the Manchus have instituted buttons of rank on the hat, barbarian clothes, and monkey caps, discarding the robes and headdresses of former dynasties, in order to make the Chinese forget their basic origins. The Chinese have Chinese family relationships; but the former false demon, Kangxi, secretly ordered the Ta [Tartars] each to control ten families and to defile the Chinese women, hoping thereby that the Chinese would all become barbarians. The Chinese have Chinese consorts; but now the Manchu demon devils have taken all of China’s beautiful girls to be their slaves and concubines. Thus three thousand beautiful women have been ravished by the barbarian dogs, one million lovely girls have had to sleep with the malodorous foxes; to speak of it distresses the heart, to talk of it pollutes the tongue.23
The manifestos also invoke the kind of numerological wordplays that the secret societies use so often, and that Hong Xiuquan and the Taiping kings also use to emphasize their prestige. In telling their followers that “the demons’ fortune of three by seven has ended,” the Taiping leaders refer to an astrologer eighteen hundred years before, who predicted that in “three by seven decades,” or 210 years, the dynasty in which he lived would come to its end. Applying the same time frame to the Qing, who founded their dynasty in 1644, this would make 1853 the year of the Manchu fall. In that year “the true sovereign of nine by five” would rule triumphant—in other words, Hong Xiuquan. For the reference here is to the first hexagram of the Book of Changes, which declares, “Nine in the fifth place means: Flying Dragon in the Heavens. It forces one to see the Great Man.” The Confucian commentary on this line elaborated that “things that accord in tone vibrate together. Things that have affinity in their inmost natures seek one another. Water flows to what is wet, fire turns to what is dry. . . . Thus the sage arises, and all creatures follow him with their eyes.”24
It is in this same spirit of dignity and emancipation, of shared fellowship in the knowledge that all Chinese are God’s children, even if they have unwittingly or even willingly served the Manchu demon, that the Taiping armies are fighting. Those who reject the Taiping message after it is offered to them will be “caught in the demons’ net of delusion and in death become slaves and underlings of the demons, to bear their debaucheries and evil poisons, to become bloated with leprosy, to become ugly and evil ghosts eternally consigned to the eighteenth layer of hell.” For those who repent and join the Taiping, and for their descendants, there will be “unlimited happiness, eternal dignity, and eternal honor.”25
The numbers drawn to the Taiping in Hunan, at least in part because of these messages, are large: according to one man serving in their ranks, in the three cities briefly held after the disaster at Suoyi ford, the Taiping gained respectively twenty thousand, “twenty or thirty thousand,” and “several thousand” new recruits, bringing a total of at least fifty thousand new troops to their army.26 These secret-society recruits, toughened by years of hardship in this area of Hunan, and speaking the local dialect, can infiltrate towns ahead of the Taiping forces, posing as local militia members or as traveling merchants, and thus gauge the defenders’ strength. Holding some of these cities for a day or two, dodging others altogether, and acquiring the mules and pack horses wherever they find them to speed their land advance, the Heavenly King, his Taiping veterans, and the new recruits drift between various prosperous towns in southeast Hunan.27
It is Xiao Chaogui, once the voice of Jesus, still the West King, and apparently recovered from his wounds, who breaks this circle of indecision. In late August 1852 he leaves the city of Chenzhou, the current base for Hong Xiuquan and the Taiping forces, and with a small force of two thousand troops or less, cuts across Hunan by land, reaching the city of Changsha on September 12. For six days he leads his men in pounding at the walls and gates on the southern face of the city with cannon and explosive, and showering the city with fire-tipped arrows. Changsha’s defenders are not much more numerous than Xiao’s small force, for most of the Qing troops have been ordered deployed elsewhere, and Xiao’s impetuous attack has been unexpected, the other Taiping armies having shown no signs of marching on the city. But the walls and gates are strong, the defenses skillfully coordinated. The West King, with his robes of office, and his fluttering banners, is a tempting target. On September 17, as he leads another in his series of attacks, a marksman from the walls fells him with a shot.28
Jolted by the news of Xiao’s death, which reaches him a week later, the Heavenly King leads his entire army north, to press the siege at Changsha. He reaches the city walls in early October, after a ten-day march, and sees for the first time the powerful city which—but for the shattering ambush at Suoyi ford—might have been his four months before.29 His delay has been a crucial one to the city’s defense; whereas only five to eight thousand troops were there when Xiao Chaogui made his surprise attack, Xiao’s near success galvanized the state to send massive reinforcements, so that by the time Hong and his troops arrive the defenders’ ranks have swollen to thirty thousand or more, and within another month reach fifty thousand. These new Qing arrivals are backed by the necessary resources: twenty thousand pounds of gunpowder, as many pounds of shot for their guns, and several heavy cannon to be mounted on the city walls.30
The defenders of Changsha are coordinated in their resistance by the governor of Hunan, Luo Bingzhang, whose official residence is in the city. Luo is from Hong Xiuquan’s home county of Hua, and his life has been everything that Hong’s has failed to be. Twenty years older than Hong, Luo excelled at his classical studies and converted his scholarship into examination success, rising by turns through every stage of the hierarchical challenges, from the county level to the provincial, and thence to the national level, where he attained the topmost degree of jinshi in 1832, ranking twenty-seventh in the second class, the highest-ranking student from the whole of Guangdong province. For this achievement he was selected for service with the elite of scholars in the Hanlin Imperial Academy in Peking. Scholarly, honest, meticulous, Luo rose steadily in the ranks of the Qing bureaucracy, as Hong dreamed, preached, traveled, and began to gather the brethren in Thistle Mountain. At almost exactly the time that Hong donned his yellow robe and won his first great battle at Jintian, Luo was chosen by the emperor as Hunan governor and posted to Changsha.31 As governor of Hunan, Luo was blamed by Emperor Xianfeng for the Taiping victories in the southern part of his province, but he was not recalled. Instead, following a common Qing practice, he was “dismissed from office but retained at his post,” and despite the formal appointment of a new governor in his place, he received a special commission as “Coordinator of the Changsha Defenses.”32 Now Luo watches from the walls as Taiping troops try, for two full months, to bring the city to its knees and kill the demons who are based within it.
The siege of Changsha is thus partly the story of two wills clashing, one steeped in the successful practice of Confucian virtue, one confidently in touch with God the Father. It is also a battle of techniques, as the Taiping perfect their skills at building floating pontoon bridges to hold their forces together. They span the wide, swift waters of the Xiang that flow past the westward wall of Changsha with just such a bridge. While Shi Dakai, the Wing King, opens a second front to keep other Qing forces at bay to the west of the city, the two long stretches of this bridge give the besieging Taiping troops easy communication with each other, as well as access to a narrow island west of the city walls where they can camp and beat back any boats that seek to approach the city from the south with reinforcements.33
In their attempt to take Changsha, the Taiping use the skills of the Guangxi miners who have joined their ranks over the previous two years, as well as thousands of miners from Hunan who have recently come over to them. Gunpowder is no longer a problem, for they have accumulated massive supplies in southern Hunan. As the Taiping miners dig and sap the walls, the defenders sink great wooden vats into the ground to serve as their listening posts, often using blind men, whose ears have grown unusually acute, to listen for the far-off sounds of burrowing and pinpoint the miners’ progress to the garrison troops. Though the Taiping seek to confuse these secret listeners by the constant banging of drums outside the walls, the distractions are not enough, and each time a tunnel is near completion, it is smashed open from above by the Qing defenders with huge iron balls, crushing those within, or else flooded with water or with excrement to flush out the exhausted sappers.34 Of ten major tunnels attempted by the Taiping at Changsha only three are completed, and though explosions within these successfully bring down stretches of the city wall, the Taiping still cannot fight their way past the defenders, whose ranks have swelled to fifty thousand by November, for as at Guilin the Taiping forces are too small to surround the city completely and prevent relief columns from arriving.35
By late November 1852, with no victory in sight, but with thousands of boats acquired from the city wharves and the maze of connecting streams and rivers around Changsha now in Taiping hands, Hong Xiuquan orders the siege abandoned. As the Taiping fleet and army move north, they use these newly captured ships to capture other ships, and the awesome sight of marching men to lure new recruits into the Taiping ranks. They also develop a new idea, that of coordinating mobile floating fortresses with land forces and cannon that can be swiftly moved from land to boat and back again.36
Like the land troops before a battle, the naval forces develop a system by which each unit of a given fleet has its flags—the forward sections fly triangular red flags from their mastheads, the center sections triangular yellow flags, the rear sections triangular black flags. For recognition at night, sound signals are used: two drumbeats at regular intervals mark the lead ship; one gong stroke the command ship with heavy cannon aboard; three drumbeats for the ships of the rear guard.37 Three gong beats from the commander’s ship, regularly repeated, mean the signal to untie cables and prepare to sail; four gong beats mark the signal to anchor. Ships must always anchor in lines, not in the form of a cross; they must keep their guns cleared and pointed up or downstream. Small Taiping patrol boats move through the fleet at night, carrying lanterns and searching for spies or signs of fire. Shore patrols perform similar tasks, with each soldier carrying a gong to sound the alarm—the horns, which some soldiers used to carry, have been abandoned since soldiers “frightened at the approach of demons” might lose the ability, through fear, to blow a clear warning call. On shipboard, however, blasts blown on the horn are always used to signal the presence of demon vessels.38
Probing unknown waterways is difficult as well as dangerous, and lack of care can swiftly lead to disaster, as the catastrophe at Suoyi ford showed all too well. Though all contingencies cannot be anticipated, many are spelled out in the Taiping’s battle manuals:
When troops move by the water route, they must act with extreme care, for rivers are wide, and there are numerous branch channels and creeks and small inlets. Disaster may result if they take a wrong turn. Before the forces move out on an operation, all military equipment must have already been installed aboard the ships. Then a fixed date for departure shall be set and the soldiers notified of it.
A plan for moving the ships must first be drawn up. The assistant general shall select several soldiers of the water force who are familiar with the river route and keep them at his side. They shall first list carefully all the branch channels and small creeks along the river. If on a given night they are to anchor the ships at a certain place and there are ten branch channels at that spot, the assistant general must assign beforehand a certain number of small boats, each carrying five or six of the brothers [Taiping soldiers], equipped with guns and military supplies, to proceed in advance of the main troops. When they come upon a branch channel, two of the small boats shall be moored at the diverging point. When the other ships arrive at this place, they shall sound one signal on the rattle and two signals on the gong, instructing the ships to proceed straight ahead and not to enter the divergent channel. For fear that the people aboard the ships will not be able to distinguish the small boats at night, they shall hang three small red lanterns on each boat, besides giving the signal of one sound of the rattle and two of the gong.39
The leaders of the Taiping river forces are from the south, but the owners and crewmen of the captured boats are often from Hunan, and can be trusted to know the rivers well. In the land forces, both leaders and the central groups of fighting men and women are also from the south, but as one of them observes, when over fifty miles from home one loses one’s bearings, and has little choice but to move on blindly, following one’s orders.40 The newly joined troops have unproven loyalties, and tricks and traps are frequent. As with the river forces, full precautionary measures are taken:
When the troops are starting on a march, it is of first importance to calculate the distance of the march. For example, if it is intended to proceed to a certain place or to attack a certain city, the approximate distance between the objective and the present location must be investigated thoroughly. Then from among the troops a number of men who are thoroughly acquainted with the route must be selected, from whom can be learned the distance from the present location to the town and the distance from that town to the next village. These facts shall be clearly recorded on paper so that the facts are as intelligible as one’s own palm. Make several copies. . . .
If there are none of their own soldiers who are familiar with the route, when they arrive at a particular location, they shall first seize one of the locals to be a guide. However, they must investigate carefully whether the man actually knows the route before his service is employed. Obviously one cannot just seize a man at random and tell him to lead the way, for care must be exercised against possible treachery. When the army arrives at a junction of two or three routes, the correct one is easy to distinguish in the daytime, but it is very difficult to distinguish at night. Therefore, the officer in charge must investigate carefully in which direction a given road leads and which road is the correct one. Then the officer in charge must send a personal aide to take a station at the junction, holding a signal flag in his hands. When the heavenly troops arrive he shall shout in a loud voice that one is the right road and the other a branch route, thus clearly indicating to the heavenly troops the correct route to follow, so that they will not go the wrong way. Moreover, lest the heavenly troops suspect the soldier with the signal flag of being a spy and not believe him, the commanding officer must first issue him credentials bearing the assistant general’s seal.41
Discipline of the troops on the march is equally important. The general policy guidelines issued at Yongan are supplemented by precise rules that every soldier, veteran or raw recruit, can follow. Rice and other foods for the coming day are cooked in the predawn hours, before breaking camp. The troops march out at dawn, carrying with them their cooked food for the noon meal. No fires may be lighted along the way to reheat food, nor may the troops shelter or cook in villagers’ houses. The march generally ends between five and seven in the evening, and then troops can prepare an evening meal.42
In a campaign of spectacular coordination and skill, after leaving Changsha the Taiping armies crisscross northward down the Xiang River toward the Hubei capital of Wuchang, taking to the land when least expected, abandoning fleets of hundreds of boats at one spot only to seize new fleets a thousand strong when they descend upon some unsuspecting river town, cutting bridges as they pass them to delay pursuit, recruiting the boatmen along with the boats to check the Qing, throwing up pontoon bridges where no other bridges had existed, then removing them and floating them downstream to use again. In twenty-five days of constant moving and fighting, despite the dependents and the families, the equipment, weapons, gunpowder, munitions, treasure, grain, salt, oil, and religious texts, they cover three hundred miles.43
Bursting out across Dongting Lake to the banks of the Yangzi River, and moving swiftly east downstream, instead of at once attacking the strongly walled and massively guarded city of Wuchang, the Taiping leaders in a surprise maneuver send their troops to the north shore and seize the two wealthy but poorly defended commercial towns of Hanyang and Hankou. With these two bases in their hands, the Taiping construct two huge floating bridges across the Yangzi, so they can attack Wuchang on its weaker northern face, which fronts the river. The Hubei governor orders his garrison to burn all the homes outside the Wuchang city walls, to give them clearer fields of fire, and tries to rally the inhabitants of Wuchang by promising them lavish cash rewards for every Taiping soldier they capture: twenty ounces of silver for every male Taiping head with hair so long one can tell it belongs to a veteran soldier, and ten ounces for each Taiping head with the shorter hair of recent recruits to the rebel ranks. Like the Changsha defenders, too, they block all the city gates with earth and rocks, and create sunken listening posts to pinpoint the undermining of their walls. But the people are sullen and resentful of the destruction of their homes, and seem sympathetic to the Taiping message; the defense crumbles, and the city falls to the Taiping on January 12, 1853, the greatest prize that they have ever won.44
The huge city becomes a proving ground for all the social policies the Taipings have been developing since they retreated from Yongan in the spring of 1852. They seize for their common treasury the immense stores of wealth found in the homes of the Qing officials. They commandeer the military supplies from the armories, and take from the various Qing treasuries in Wuchang sums so huge they bedazzle the mind—well over one million ounces of silver in all. The property of the wealthy citizens and merchants who have fled is also taken for their treasury, and those residents who choose to stay in the city are told to offer a tithe of all their assets—whether jewelry, gold and silver bullion, copper cash, rice, ducks, clothes, or tea—to the public treasury. The jails are opened and the prisoners freed, common soldiers of the Qing disarmed, and new Taiping militias of the able-bodied citizens formed to guard the city walls.
All inhabitants of Wuchang are urged to follow the God-worshipers’ religion, divided up according to their sex, and organized under sergeants in groups of twenty-five, men in one squad, women in another. Execution is the penalty for those who stray from one camp to the other. Even those preexisting families from which the men have been recruited to guard the walls are told to leave their homes, the women and children placed in women’s hostels, and the old and infirm sent to special houses of their own. For all, whether active combatants, cloistered women, or sequestered elderly, daily rations are allocated, three-tenths of a pint of rice, and a small container each of salt and oil. The Taiping allow no trade of any kind within the city walls, but to supplement their meager public diets, soldiers and their families are allowed to shop outside the city gates, where local farmers congregate to sell fresh river fish and shellfish, chicken and pork, flat cakes and dumplings.45
The emperor, in despair and rage, has barely begun to issue the edicts that threaten punishments to all his baffled and defeated officials—a litany that in scope and intensity has been unwavering since Yongan fell over a year before—when unexpectedly on February 10, 1853, the Taiping leave the city, taking with them the huge stores of gold and treasure, and tens of thousands of new followers, both men and women.46 They have acquired at least two thousand more boats in the lakes and rivers near Wuchang, and absorbed their crews into their ranks. While the campaign continues at this breakneck pace, they excuse all sailors working for them from the sexual segregation they impose on their own troops, and let all who have their families on board keep them there, just as long as they will serve. The sailors need not even let their hair flow free, like Taiping braves, but may keep them in the Manchu queue if that is what they prefer.47 For speed, speed is everything. The forces all arrayed. The current swift. The leaders still have not publicly said where the Earthly Paradise lies, but to them as to their followers the next stage on the journey there has now become the city of Nanjing, six hundred miles down the Yangzi to the east, the soul of China’s richest province, the center of its scholarship, the capital of the founding emperor of the Ming dynasty almost five hundred years before.48 Along the six hundred miles of river are garrisons, forts, ships, loyal ministers and generals, and Qing armed forces moving in pursuit. The Taiping seem not to care. They race down the river in their great armada, columns of soldiers on the shore, pausing briefly for supplies and to empty the treasuries in the cities that surrender, bypassing those that offer stout resistance, crossing the river altogether to avoid the few major cities where organized resistance might check their rushing flood.49
Ahead of the main forces, the Taiping leaders send spies and agents to infiltrate the towns and villages on the route, and spread their message of solace and salvation. Some of these messages promise swift execution for looters and others who use the battle world for crimes. Gentry members are told to remove any honorary tablets or insignia they have received from serving the Manchus, but are reassured that once the Taiping armies seize Nanjing new examinations will be held to select the worthy. All are assured that if they simply write the character for shun—“obedient”—and post it beside their doors, no harm will come to them. Buddhist and Taoist monks are threatened with beheading if found in their temples; all their property, like that of the gambling-shop owners and brothel keepers, will be confiscated and given to the poor.50 For everybody on the route of march, passive acceptance is the recommended stance:
The Heavenly King is the younger brother of the Lord, Jesus Christ, descended into the earthly world. Because the people of the world are deluded by the devils, the Heavenly King was by design born into the world to save the people of the world. Therefore, he is called the Saviour. Those who are trapped and become devils are like men who are contaminated by sickness. Further, the East King was born to advise the people to revert to righteousness, and to cure their sickness. Therefore the East King is called the Teacher of Advice and Consolation and the Redeemer from Sickness. The Taiping troops practice the Way of Heaven, save people, and do not harm people. After the unification of the rivers and mountains there will be a universal three-year exemption from [land] taxes in cash and grain. The rich should contribute money, the poor should offer up their strength. After the great enterprise is finished all will be rewarded with distinctive and hereditary official positions. Wherever we pass we will concentrate on killing all civil and military officials, and soldiers and militiamen. People will not be harmed and they can certainly pursue their livelihood as usual, and fairly buy and fairly sell. At the time when a city is taken if all families close their doors we can guarantee an absence of incidents. If you assist the devils in the defense of a city and engage in fighting, you will definitely be completely annihilated.51
Within thirty days of leaving Wuchang, the Taiping vanguard covers the six hundred miles of river route and reaches the edges of Nanjing. The walls are vast, rising forty feet or more above the flat riverbanks and twisting through the hills that girdle the city to the east. They also extend for almost twenty-five miles in circumference, too huge to be defended in depth, as the British noted in their surveys made several years before, at the time of the Opium War. The northwest corner near the river seemed to them the most vulnerable part, while raiding parties sent up into the surrounding hills with cannon or artillery could hold the inner city at their mercy.52
The Taiping are no lesser strategists, and see the same possibilities for attack. They sap. They surround. They threaten. They infiltrate. They spur the hatred for the Manchu conquerors and urge the city’s population not to do the demons’ work. On March 19, 1853, they breach the walls on the northwestern corner with a series of huge explosions and their first patrols enfilade the streets, though one tragically mistimed explosion kills hundreds of Taiping warriors as they charge through the open gap. Other forces scale the southern gate and walls and move through the prosperous residential quarters there, routing the remaining Chinese defenders. On March 20 the Manchu garrison troops hold fast in their inner citadel as the Taiping troops converge. The Taiping press around the inner citadel and launch a fresh assault. There are perhaps fifty thousand Manchus there, but few of them are trained or battle-ready veterans. As their walls are breached they turn on themselves and their families, setting fire to their homes and committing suicide even as the Taiping burst into their garrison quarters. The smoke rises, the carnage continues for days as the Taiping hunt and slay all surviving demons.
On March 29, all preparations completed, there is the sound of music. The people of the city prostrate themselves at the roadside as Hong Xiuquan in yellow robe and yellow shoes is carried into the city by sixteen bearers in his elaborately ornamented golden palanquin. Above the palanquin nod the effigies of five white cranes. In front march the long columns of his victorious troops. Behind him, astride on their horses, are thirty-two women, with yellow parasols.53