The final phase of the Taiping war joined three converging pressures: Zeng Guofan's Xiang Army advancing on the middle and lower Yangzi to tighten a ring around Nanjing; Li Hongzhang's Huai Army securing the Shanghai region and pushing westward through Jiangsu; and the progressive inability of the Taiping court to mount a coherent strategic defense. Between 1861 and 1864, the Taiping lost their western shield, their best remaining field commander, the support of the wealthy lower Yangzi cities, and finally their capital. The war ended with the fall of Tianjing in July 1864, but the killing continued for months as Qing forces hunted down survivors.[1][2]
Loss of Strategic Depth: The Fall of Anqing
The fall of Anqing on 5 September 1861 to Zeng Guoquan's besieging forces was a strategic disaster for the Taiping. Anqing, the capital of Anhui province on the north bank of the Yangzi, had been the principal western fortress of the Taiping state since 1853. Through Anqing passed the grain, troops, and supplies from the middle Yangzi territories that sustained Tianjing. Once Anqing fell, the Xiang Army could advance down the Yangzi without a major fortified obstacle between it and the capital.[1][3]
Chen Yucheng had fought desperately to relieve Anqing. During the winter and spring of 1860–1861, he launched repeated attacks on the Xiang Army siege lines, attempting to coordinate with forces inside the city. Each attempt failed. After the city fell, Chen retreated north into Anhui with a depleted army. His position deteriorated rapidly: the loss of Anqing meant the loss of his supply base, and his relationship with Hong Xiuquan — already strained by mutual suspicion — collapsed. Hong blamed Chen for the loss of the fortress and stripped him of some titles and commands.[1][4]
Chen Yucheng's Capture and Execution
In early 1862, Chen Yucheng found himself trapped in the northern Anhui-Henan border region, with Xiang Army and Qing provincial forces closing in. His army was reduced to a few thousand men. In May 1862, while moving through Shouzhou (寿州, Shòuzhōu), he was betrayed — according to most accounts, by the local militia leader Miao Peilin (苗沛霖, Miáo Pèilín), who had alternately cooperated with and fought against both the Taiping and the Qing. Miao delivered Chen to Qing authorities.[1][3]
Chen Yucheng was transported to the camp of the Qing general Senggelinqin (僧格林沁, Sēnggélínqìn), the Mongol prince who commanded imperial forces in the north China theater. He was interrogated and killed — most sources say executed, though the exact circumstances are disputed — in June 1862. He was twenty-five years old. Chen's death removed the Taiping's most aggressive field commander and the only figure besides Li Xiucheng capable of coordinating large-scale military operations. The northern Taiping forces in Anhui and Henan, already fragmented, disintegrated without him.[1][4]
Li Xiucheng's Eastern Campaigns
While Chen Yucheng fought for Anqing, Li Xiucheng conducted the eastern campaigns that represented the Taiping's last major offensive. After the breaking of the Jiangnan Great Camp in May 1860, Li's forces swept through the lower Yangzi, capturing Suzhou (June 1860), Changzhou, Wuxi, Jiaxing, and much of southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang. These were among the richest prefectures in the empire, and their capture gave the Taiping access to grain, silk revenues, and a large population from which to recruit.[1][3]
Li moved toward Shanghai in August 1860. Shanghai, with its foreign settlement and its concentrations of British and French troops, was a different proposition from the Yangzi interior. The city's defense was organized by a combination of Qing loyalists, local gentry militia, foreign volunteers, and the small but growing force under Frederick Townsend Ward. The Taiping surrounded the city but could not take it. Foreign firepower — particularly British and French naval guns and artillery — inflicted heavy casualties on Taiping assault columns. Li Xiucheng withdrew in late 1860, leaving Shanghai in Qing-aligned hands.[1][5]
The failure at Shanghai mattered not because the city itself was strategically essential, but because it demonstrated that the Taiping could not win a battle where modern weapons and foreign-military cohesion were concentrated against them. It also set the stage for the Qing counter-offensive in the lower Yangzi: once Li Hongzhang's Huai Army reached Shanghai in 1862, the force that Li Xiucheng could not defeat in 1860 became the base from which Qing forces retook Jiangsu.[1][2]
In 1861–1862, Li Xiucheng also campaigned in Zhejiang, capturing the provincial capital Hangzhou in December 1861 and Ningbo briefly thereafter. But these gains were fleeting. Zuo Zongtang's forces entered Zhejiang in 1862 and began a systematic reconquest that recovered most of the province by 1863. Li Xiucheng's forces were stretched across too many theaters — defending Suzhou, holding Zhejiang, and trying to relieve pressure on Tianjing — and they could not sustain the effort.[1][3]
The Tightening Siege of Tianjing
By mid-1862, Zeng Guoquan's Xiang Army had reached the outskirts of Nanjing and begun constructing siege lines around the city. The encirclement was not yet complete — the Taiping could still move forces and supplies through gaps in the lines and across the Yangzi — but the noose was tightening. Zeng's forces dug trenches, built artillery positions, and methodically reduced the outlying Taiping fortifications that defended the approaches to the city.[1][2]
Li Xiucheng mounted a major effort to break the siege in late 1862. He gathered a force of perhaps 200,000 troops (the number is contested and likely includes large numbers of non-combatant followers) and attacked the Xiang Army siege lines through October and November 1862. The attacks failed. Xiang Army trench works, defended by rifles and artillery, proved too strong for Taiping assault tactics that had succeeded against Green Standard troops a decade earlier. After this failure, Li Xiucheng could not assemble another relief force of comparable size.[1][3]
The siege of Tianjing lasted for more than two years. Conditions inside the city deteriorated progressively: food ran short, the Sacred Treasury could no longer provision the population, disease spread through the crowded quarters, and the court's authority contracted to the palace district. Hong Xiuquan, increasingly detached from military reality, reportedly assured his followers that the Heavenly Father would provide manna from heaven. The defenders were reduced to eating wild vegetables, leather, and — according to Qing siege accounts — the dead.[1][4]
Li Xiucheng, back inside the city after his failed relief attempt, urged Hong to abandon Tianjing and break out to the south or west, where Taiping forces still held territory in Jiangxi and remnants operated in Zhejiang. Hong refused. He had staked his kingship on the sacred status of Tianjing; to abandon the city was to abandon the Heavenly Kingdom's legitimacy. He remained in the palace while the city starved around him.[1]
Hong Xiuquan's Death
Hong Xiuquan died on 1 June 1864, at the age of fifty. The cause of death is disputed. The Qing government's official account, drawn from the confession of Li Xiucheng, claimed that Hong committed suicide by poison as Xiang Army forces closed in. Some Taiping accounts suggest he died of illness — likely malnutrition or illness exacerbated by starvation — after refusing to eat anything but "heavenly dew" (wild herbs and grasses). The victors' account is inherently suspect, and there is no reliable independent source.[1][6]
Before his death, Hong designated his fifteen-year-old son, Hong Tianguifu (洪天贵福, Hóng Tiānguìfú), as his successor — the Young Heavenly King (幼天王, Yòu Tiānwáng). The boy's succession was nominal. He had no military experience, no independent authority, and no adult supporters capable of organizing a functioning court. The real power inside the dying city lay with the military commanders who still commanded troops, and they were preparing to flee.[1]
The Fall of Tianjing
The Xiang Army's final assault began in early July 1864. Zeng Guoquan's sappers had been tunneling under the city wall near the Taiping Gate (太平门, Tàipíng Mén) for weeks, filling a chamber with gunpowder. On 19 July 1864, the explosives were detonated. The blast breached the wall, and Xiang Army troops poured through the gap. Street fighting continued for three days.[1][4][3]
What followed was a massacre. Zeng Guofan's own reports acknowledged the killing of more than 100,000 people inside the city — soldiers and civilians — but the real number is unknown and probably unknowable. The Xiang Army looted the city systematically, burning buildings (including the Taiping palaces), seizing valuables, and killing most of the surviving defenders. Fires burned for days. The city that had been the Taiping capital for eleven years was reduced to rubble and ash.[1][7]
Li Xiucheng escaped the city on horseback, carrying the young Hong Tianguifu. They fled south but were separated during the chaos of the breakout. Hong Tianguifu evaded capture for several months before being caught and executed in November 1864. Li Xiucheng was captured by Qing forces on 22 July 1864 near Fangshan, outside Nanjing.[1]
Li Xiucheng's Confession
While in Qing custody, Li Xiucheng produced the text known as the Li Xiucheng zishu (李秀成自述, "Li Xiucheng's Own Account") — a document of approximately 50,000 characters, written over several days under Zeng Guofan's supervision. The text describes the Taiping movement from its origins through the final campaigns, focusing on military operations, internal politics, and Li's own role. It is the single most important first-person account of the Taiping war from the rebel side.[1][3]
The document's authenticity and reliability have been intensely debated. The original manuscript was reportedly edited by Zeng Guofan before being forwarded to Beijing — passages that might have embarrassed the Qing authorities (such as descriptions of Xiang Army looting or Li's offer to negotiate with his captors) were removed or altered. The surviving versions differ, and a complete, unedited original has never been publicly confirmed. Chinese scholars, particularly Luo Ergang, devoted decades to reconstructing the most reliable version from the available manuscripts. Western scholars treat the text as a remarkable source but note that it was produced by a captive facing imminent execution, addressed to his captors, and almost certainly shaped by his awareness of the audience.[1][4]
Li Xiucheng was executed by slow slicing (凌迟, língchí) on 7 August 1864. Zeng Guofan reportedly commuted the sentence to beheading after the first cuts, though this cannot be confirmed.[1]
Mopping Up and Final Resistance
The fall of Tianjing did not end all Taiping resistance. Remnant Taiping forces operated in several regions through 1866: - In Jiangxi and Fujian, a force under Li Shixian (李世贤, Lǐ Shìxián, a cousin of Li Xiucheng) and Wang Haiyang (汪海洋, Wāng Hǎiyáng) fought against Zuo Zongtang's pursuing forces through 1865–1866 before being destroyed. - In the north, Taiping remnants joined with the Nian Rebellion (捻军, Niǎnjūn), a large mounted bandit-insurgent force that had been operating in the Henan-Anhui-Shandong borderlands since the early 1850s. The combined Taiping-Nian forces fought Qing armies in the north China plain through 1868, long after the Heavenly Kingdom's central state had ceased to exist. - In the southwest, scattered Taiping groups held out in the Guizhou-Yunnan borderlands for several years. - Shi Dakai's remnant force in Sichuan, as noted, was destroyed in 1863.
By 1868, the last organized Taiping and Taiping-allied forces had been eliminated. The rebellion that had begun in Guangxi in 1851 was over.[1][2]
Debates
The question of whether the Taiping could have avoided defeat after 1860 — whether different strategic choices by Li Xiucheng, Hong Rengan, or the court could have produced a negotiated settlement or a stable territorial partition — remains open. Some historians argue that the Taiping's failure to concentrate forces against the Xiang Army at critical moments (especially during the Anqing campaign) reflected command paralysis rooted in the Tianjing Incident. Others emphasize structural factors: the Qing's ability to mobilize gentry support, foreign arms, and lijin revenues gave it resources the Taiping could not match once the war became one of positional siege warfare rather than mobile campaigns.[1][2][3]
Li Xiucheng's confession continues to generate controversy. Some Chinese historians have seen in Li's text evidence of a "capitulationist" tendency — a willingness to negotiate with the class enemy that marked him as insufficiently revolutionary. Others, including Luo Ergang, treat the document as a precious record produced under extreme duress, to be read critically rather than condemned. Western scholars generally avoid the "capitulationist" framing and instead focus on what the text reveals about Li's perspective on the war's closing phase and the internal dynamics of the Taiping court.[4][1]
Meyer-Fong's work has shifted the debate from military operations to the human experience of the war's end. Her analysis of the Nanjing massacre, the burning of the city, and the subsequent treatment of the dead emphasizes that the Qing victory was not a restoration of order but a continuation of violence by other means — punishment, erasure, and the deliberate destruction of Taiping sites and memories.[7]
Sources Used in This Page
- Franz Michael, The Taiping Rebellion: History and Documents, Vol. I (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1966)
- Philip A. Kuhn, Rebellion and Its Enemies in Late Imperial China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970)
- Tobie Meyer-Fong, What Remains: Coming to Terms with Civil War in 19th Century China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013)
- Luo Ergang 罗尔纲, Taiping tianguo shi 太平天国史 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1991)
- Mao Jiaqi 茅家琦, ed., Taiping tianguo tongshi 太平天国通史 (Nanjing: Nanjing daxue chubanshe, 1991)
- Andrew Wilson, The "Ever-Victorious Army" (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1868)