position as Son of God, he resolved to overthrow the Qing Dynasty. It must have appeared a hopeless dream to all but Hung Hsiu-chuan–a failed scholar, an impecunious teacher, a member of the despised Hakka minority, eking out a precarious living in an insignificant village in a southern province remote from the centres of power, deciding to take on the might of the Manchu and destroy them. The arrogance of his ambition is breathtaking even now. The wonder of it is that he almost succeeded.
But Hung’s powers of persuasion and oratory were phenomenal. With his cousin, Hung Jen-kan, and classmate, Feng Yun-shan, Hung established a group known as the Pai Shang Ti Hui (Society for the Worship of God). People were impressed by their sincerity and by the moral transformation of those joining the Society, and many converts were made, especially among the peasantry. Over the next six or seven years Hung’s triumvirate travelled widely in the south, establishing groups of Pai Shang Ti Hui . Despite his punishing schedule, Hung felt that the real work of his life had not yet begun. He wrote: ‘At the moment I am idle like a fish leaping in a deep pool as I bide my time for men to congregate.’
By the beginning of 1851, he felt he was ready. Ten thousand members of the Pai Shang Ti Hui were ordered to gather at Chin-tien village in the foothills of Tzuchingshan in Guanxi Province. They pooled all their resources, money, clothing and food, and trained together as a fighting unit. In defiance of Manchu edicts, which required that all their Chinese subjects shave the front of their heads and wear the remaining hair in a queue or pigtail, the rebels grew their hair and wore it unbraided, glorying in their soubriquet Chang Mao , the ‘longhaired warriors’. On 11th January, Hung solemnly announced the uprising of the Chang Mao against the Manchu and proclaimed the establishment of the Tai Ping Tien Guo , the ‘The Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace’. The great Tai Ping rebellion had begun.
Alarmed by these events, the Qing government transferred troops from Hunan, Guizhou, Yunnan and other provinces in an attempt to encircle and crush the insurgents. But the imperial troops, the descendants of Nurhachi’s ‘Romans of the East’, had been softened by years of comfortable existence in their sinecures. The Tai Ping’s disciplined army, hardened by the rigours of their previous peasant existence, and strengthened by faith in their leader’s divine origin, destroyed all that were sent against them.
While the Dynasty’s prospects were shaken by these reverses, in the Forbidden City Yehonala’s personal fortune was in the ascendant. Thanks to her abilities in the bedchamber, she had already begun her rise to prominence: soon after spending their first night together Hsien Feng had promoted her one grade to the rank of P’in concubine. But even better fortune was to follow, for by September 1855 Yehonala knew she was pregnant by Hsien Feng. The news could only have inflamed her ambitions. Although several of the Emperor’s ancestors had sired male heirs by the time they were fifteen years old, Hsien Feng, now in his mid-twenties, had still not produced the longed-for son that would guarantee his tottering Dynasty some measure of stability. Were Yehonala to present the Emperor with a son, her position in court would be assured, unassailable. To the mother of the heir many previously closed doors would fly open. The months of her confinement must have dragged by in an unbearable mélange of elation and fear. Nothing was said openly, but everyone knew that miscarriage, or a female child, would disappoint the Emperor, shame Yehonala before the whole palace, and return her to the obscurity she loathed. The climax of this quiet drama came in the spring of 1856, on 27th April, when all her dreams were realised–Yehonala gave birth to a healthy man-child, a baby boy who was destined to become the eighth Emperor of the Manchu Dynasty
But Hung’s powers of persuasion and oratory were phenomenal. With his cousin, Hung Jen-kan, and classmate, Feng Yun-shan, Hung established a group known as the Pai Shang Ti Hui (Society for the Worship of God). People were impressed by their sincerity and by the moral transformation of those joining the Society, and many converts were made, especially among the peasantry. Over the next six or seven years Hung’s triumvirate travelled widely in the south, establishing groups of Pai Shang Ti Hui . Despite his punishing schedule, Hung felt that the real work of his life had not yet begun. He wrote: ‘At the moment I am idle like a fish leaping in a deep pool as I bide my time for men to congregate.’
By the beginning of 1851, he felt he was ready. Ten thousand members of the Pai Shang Ti Hui were ordered to gather at Chin-tien village in the foothills of Tzuchingshan in Guanxi Province. They pooled all their resources, money, clothing and food, and trained together as a fighting unit. In defiance of Manchu edicts, which required that all their Chinese subjects shave the front of their heads and wear the remaining hair in a queue or pigtail, the rebels grew their hair and wore it unbraided, glorying in their soubriquet Chang Mao , the ‘longhaired warriors’. On 11th January, Hung solemnly announced the uprising of the Chang Mao against the Manchu and proclaimed the establishment of the Tai Ping Tien Guo , the ‘The Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace’. The great Tai Ping rebellion had begun.
Alarmed by these events, the Qing government transferred troops from Hunan, Guizhou, Yunnan and other provinces in an attempt to encircle and crush the insurgents. But the imperial troops, the descendants of Nurhachi’s ‘Romans of the East’, had been softened by years of comfortable existence in their sinecures. The Tai Ping’s disciplined army, hardened by the rigours of their previous peasant existence, and strengthened by faith in their leader’s divine origin, destroyed all that were sent against them.
While the Dynasty’s prospects were shaken by these reverses, in the Forbidden City Yehonala’s personal fortune was in the ascendant. Thanks to her abilities in the bedchamber, she had already begun her rise to prominence: soon after spending their first night together Hsien Feng had promoted her one grade to the rank of P’in concubine. But even better fortune was to follow, for by September 1855 Yehonala knew she was pregnant by Hsien Feng. The news could only have inflamed her ambitions. Although several of the Emperor’s ancestors had sired male heirs by the time they were fifteen years old, Hsien Feng, now in his mid-twenties, had still not produced the longed-for son that would guarantee his tottering Dynasty some measure of stability. Were Yehonala to present the Emperor with a son, her position in court would be assured, unassailable. To the mother of the heir many previously closed doors would fly open. The months of her confinement must have dragged by in an unbearable mélange of elation and fear. Nothing was said openly, but everyone knew that miscarriage, or a female child, would disappoint the Emperor, shame Yehonala before the whole palace, and return her to the obscurity she loathed. The climax of this quiet drama came in the spring of 1856, on 27th April, when all her dreams were realised–Yehonala gave birth to a healthy man-child, a baby boy who was destined to become the eighth Emperor of the Manchu Dynasty
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