God's Chinese Son

by Jonathan Spence

  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.31

  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.32

  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.5' 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.

  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 o
n 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 pre-existing 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, t
hey 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.4' 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: