God's Chinese Son (25 page)

In making this firm declaration about morality for the Taiping follow­ers, Hong Xiuquan has no compunctions about excluding himself, for clearly he enjoys the company of women. In the edict giving the correct titles for the five subordinate kings and the other Taiping officials, he orders that his wife Lai, the mother of his oldest two daughters and of his eldest son, Tiangui, be always addressed as "niangniang" or "empress."

But in the following sentence of the same edict he adds that his other "senior imperial consorts" shall be addressed as "wang-niang," "princess- consort."
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The names of these new consorts are never clearly listed in any Taiping sources, but the Heavenly King must have chosen the first of them by February 1851, during the difficult campaign that followed the retreat from Jiangkou. For in that month, all the various "sisters-in-law" of the Taiping leaders were ordered to show no trace of jealousy to the Heavenly King, or to complain about his behavior—all those doing so would be put to death. Such "sisters-in-law," given the structure of family relationships established among the other Taiping leaders and Jesus, would have included Hong's own first wife, Lai.
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This problem of jealousy is alluded to in another moral tract that Hong issues in Yongan, the "Ode to Youth," a lengthy poem in lines of five characters that outlines the basic patterns of deference and obligation owing to God, His son Jesus, and to all the members of human families according to their positions—parent, child, in-laws, or married couples. Though most of these are bland, or at least conventionally predictable, the stanzas on husband and wife are more personal in tone:

The way of the husband is founded on firmness.

In loving his wife he must have his own methods.

If his wife is a jealous shrew

He must never give way to fear or panic.

The way of the wife lies in her obediences.

She should not go against her husband's control.

If she's the one who rules the roost

It will bring misery down on the whole family.
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Hong Xiuquan himself, in the regulations issued in Yongan on correct nomenclature for various ranks in the Taiping hierarchy, refers to the correct titles to be given to his various "royal fathers-in-law" and "royal mothers-in-law," showing that his relationships with several women were common and accepted knowledge. Given Hong Xiuquan's "imperial" rank, perhaps this is not seen as being at variance with the morality and chastity that he imposes on his subordinates.
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But Hong has no intention of allowing gossip and speculation about his private life to spread among his followers. As he puts it in an edict issued the following year, all those who discuss the "family name, personal names, or comparative ranking" of the imperial consorts, or filter information into or out from the wom­en's palace quarters, shall be instantly beheaded.
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The military fervor in Yongan, the constant exhortations and preach­ing, the titles and the promises, cannot hide the Taiping's deadly predica­ment. Despite the morale problems of the assembled Qing forces, the numbers of the government troops around Yongan grow steadily, and their repeated attacks whittle away at the Taiping outposts on the defen­sive perimeter. Regular Taiping sorties against the Qing base camps, though fought with great courage, are not successful, and slowly the Qing construct their own encircling wall around the city, severing the last Tai­ping supply routes and sources of food. The Taiping troops are forced to get their salt by boiling and filtering the soil from the floors of the former official salt depot of Yongan city, and to experiment with various methods for obtaining the sulfur and saltpeter needed for the manufacture of gun­powder. Among these are the crushing and filtering of old building bricks in an attempt to obtain the saltpeter accumulated there, and the manufac­turing of a chemical compound with the properties of sulfur by repeated boiling in alcohol and evaporation of either dogs' blood or horse dung.
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Surely this cannot be the Earthly Paradise, although it has served its purpose, and given the Taiping time to harden their discipline and formu­late their doctrines. By the early spring of 1852, Hong and the Taiping leaders are preparing plans for their breakout. Either they keep these plans so secret that even the hidden Qing informers do not know about them, or the informers have all been identified and killed in the relentless hunts for traitors conducted by Yang Xiuqing. On April 3, Hong Xiuquan issues a new proclamation in poetic form to all the men and women offi­cers in his ranks, a proclamation that those used by now to his diction might correctly interpret as the call for a strategic withdrawal:

Let the devil demons hatch their myriad schemes;

How can they escape the sure hand of our Heavenly Father,

Who in six days created all the rivers and mountains?

Each of you who believes in the Spiritual Father will be a bold warrior.

High Heaven has appointed you to slay the demon devils;

The Heavenly Father and Heavenly Elder Brother constantly watch over you.

Men and women officers, all grasp your swords,

And give no heed to changing whatever clothes you happen to be wearing now.

Unite your hearts, rouse your courage, and together slay the demons.

Forget about your valuables and your bundles of possessions.

Divest yourselves of worldly affections and uphold high Heaven,

Shimmering in the light from the golden bricks and golden mansions.

In high Heaven, in majestic splendor you will enjoy happiness.

The least and the lowliest shall all don silks and satins,

The men wear dragon robes and the women be garlanded with flowers.

Let each be a faithful officer, glorying in the battle.
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On April 5, 1852, in a carefully planned mass exodus, beginning at ten in the evening and ending before dawn, the main body of the Taiping army and their dependents leave the east gate of Yongan, where Qing defenses are weakest, cross the narrow stream that flows by the gate, and climb up into the mountain passes, heading toward the north. Before leav­ing the city, they have studded the ground with homemade mines made of gunpowder and charcoal, packed into wooden tubes and wrapped in inflammable hay or cotton wadding. As the rear guard leaves the city, it ignites long fuses made of plaited grasses or corn silk, and the erratically spaced explosions, smoke and din that follow help confuse the Qing pur­suers, just as the noise and glare of the fireworks had eased the Taiping capture of the city some six months before. The Taiping have also tied lumps of old metal and broken pots to dogs and pigs, and the terrified animals running through the smoking streets compound the din and con­fusion.
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Despite these attempted diversionary tactics, close to two thousand peo­ple in the Taiping rear guard, trying to hold off the main Qing force, are trapped and slaughtered in the retreat. To avenge the deaths of so many of their companions, the units of the Taiping army that have marched ahead into the mountains turn back and, in the driving rain that has begun to fall, bury more mines in the soft soil of the pass, and bundle great piles of rocks into rough-and-ready cages of woven bamboo, which they secure to trees on the steep mountain slopes. As the Qing troops, closely bunched together, struggle up the rain-slick pass, the Taiping explode the mines and slash the ropes holding the cages, maiming or crushing hundreds of the enemy. They then open fire and charge, routing the Qing forces completely and leaving almost five thousand enemy dead. The surviving Taiping forces seize the reprieve offered by this providen­tial victory, and tramp up deeper into the mountains, sliding through the rain and mud toward their still unidentified promised land.
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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 ot 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.

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.
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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.
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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.
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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." 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 pre-emptive, 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 semi-professional 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.
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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.
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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.
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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."

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.
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