The Taiping were gradually beaten down; with the capture of Anqing, the capital of Anhui, in October 1861 by the Hunan Army, the revolutionary cause was doomed. But the fall of Nanjing was accelerated by the cooperation of Chinese mercenaries equipped with Western arms, commanded by an American, Frederick Townsend Ward; a Briton, Charles George Gordon; and others. Nanjing’s fall in July 1864 marked the end of one of the greatest civil wars in world history. The main cause of the Taiping failure was internal strife among the top leaders in Nanjing. Not only did they give themselves over to luxury, but also their energy was exhausted and their leadership lost by an internecine conflict that erupted in 1856. In addition, religious fanaticism, though it inspired the fighters, became a stumbling block that interfered with the rational and elastic attitude necessary to handle delicate military and administrative affairs. The intolerance toward traditional culture alienated the gentry and the people alike. Presumably, the failure of the land-redistribution policy also estranged the landless paupers from the Taiping cause.
The Nian Rebellion
Often in the first half of the 19th century, plundering gangs called nian ravaged northern Anhui, southern Shandong, and southern Henan. In mid-century, however, their activities were suddenly intensified, partly by the addition to their numbers of a great many starving people who had lost their livelihood from repeated floods of the Huang He in the early 1850s and partly because they had become emboldened by the Taiping advance north of the Yangtze. From 1856 to 1859 the Nian leaders consolidated their bases north of the Huai River by winning over the masters of the earth-wall communities, consolidated villages that had been fortified for self-defense against the Taiping. The Nian strategy was to use their powerful cavalry to plunder the outlying areas and carry the loot to their home bases.
Many influential clans, with all their members, joined the Nian cause, and the clan chiefs played an important role among the Nian leaders. Gentry of lower strata also joined the Nian. The greater part of the Nian force consisted of poor peasants, although deserters from the government-recruited militias and salt smugglers were important as military experts. The real cause of their strength was supposed to be the people’s support and sympathy for their leaders, but creating a power centre proved to be difficult because the Nian’s basic social unit was the earth-wall community, where a powerful master exercised autonomy. In 1856 Zhang Luoxing received the title “lord of the alliance” of the Nian, but he was far too weak to form a centre. Imperial pacification was launched by General Senggelinqin, who led a powerful cavalry into the affected area in 1862, but his pursuit was ineffective, and the general himself was killed in Shandong in May 1865. Thus, the last imperial crack unit disappeared. Zeng Guofan succeeded Senggelinqin as general and enforced a policy of detaching the earth-wall masters from their men and of employing the latter as his troops. Finally, Li Hongzhang succeeded Zeng in 1866 and set up encirclement lines along the Huang He and the Grand Canal, using that strategy to destroy the revolts in 1868.
Muslim rebellions
Muslim rebellions in Yunnan and in Shaanxi and Gansu originated from clashes between the Chinese and Muslims in those provinces. Religious antipathy must be taken into account, but more important were social and political factors. In the frontier provinces the late-dynastic confusions were felt as keenly as elsewhere, which aggravated the problems between the Chinese and the Muslims. Yunnan had been haunted by Muslim-Chinese rivalries since 1821, but in Shaanxi small disturbances had been seen as early as the Qianlong reign. Government officials supported the Chinese, and the Muslims were obliged to rise up against both the Chinese and the authorities.
Rivalry between the Chinese and Muslim miners in central Yunnan triggered a severe clash in 1855, which developed into the slaughter of a great many Muslims in and around the provincial capital, Kunming, the following April. This triggered a general uprising of Yunnan Muslims, which lasted until 1873. Lack of a unified policy weakened the Muslims, and the rebellion was brought to an end partly through the pacifiers’ policy of playing the rebel leaders off against one another.
Another Muslim uprising, in Shaanxi in 1862, promptly spread to Gansu and Xinjiang and lasted for 15 years. The general cause of the trouble was the same as in Yunnan, but the Taiping advance to Shaanxi encouraged the Muslims to rebel. The first stage of the uprising developed in the Wei River valley in Shaanxi; in the next stage the rebels, defeated by the imperial army, fled to Gansu, which became the main theatre of fighting. Encouraged by the Nian invading Shaanxi at the end of 1866, the core of the rebel troops returned to Shaanxi, and sporadic clashes continued in the two provinces. In the last phase, Zuo Zongtang, a former protégé of Zeng Guofan, appeared in Shaanxi with part of the Huai Army and succeeded in pacifying the area in 1873.
There were many independent Muslim leaders in Shaanxi and Gansu at that time, but they had neither a common headquarters nor a unified policy, nor were there any all-out revolutionaries. Pacification was delayed because the imperial camp was preoccupied with the Taiping and the Nian and could not afford the expenditure needed for an expedition to the remote border provinces.
Effects of the rebellions
The Qing authorities had to rely on local armies, financed by the provincial and local gentry class, to combat the large popular uprisings. To meet this need, a special tax on goods in transit—called the likin (lijin)—was started in 1853, the proceeds of which remained largely outside the control of the central government. The provincial governors-general and governors came to enlarge their military and financial autonomy, bringing about a trend of decentralization. Moreover, the locus of power shifted from the Manchu to those Chinese who had played the main part in putting down the rebellions. The Hunan Army was gradually disbanded after Nanjing had been retaken from the Taiping, but the Huai Army, after its success against the Muslims, served as a strong basis for the political maneuvers of its leader, Li Hongzhang, until its defeat and collapse in the Sino-Japanese War in 1894–95.
The rebellions brought immeasurable damage and devastation to China. Both the Taiping and the pacifiers were guilty of brutality and destruction. A contemporary estimate of 20 million to 30 million victims is certainly far less than the real number. In the course of the Taiping Rebellion, the lower Yangtze provinces lost much of their surplus population, but thereafter the region was resettled by immigrants from less-damaged areas. Its ruined industry and agriculture had not fully recovered even by the beginning of the 20th century. The area of the Muslim rebellions too suffered catastrophic devastation and depopulation.
During the first half of the 19th century, a number of natural disasters left large hordes of starving victims who had no choice but to join the Taiping and other rebel groups. The worst calamity, however, was a drought that attacked the northern provinces of Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Henan in 1877–78 and caused hardship for perhaps as many as 13 million people. These disasters were a serious setback to China, which had just begun to promote industrialization to meet the Western challenge.
The Self-Strengthening Movement