After the First Opium War, the closed door of the Qing Dynasty was forced to open, and the great powers poured in to get a share of the cake, but just when the strong enemies were surrounded, a huge peasant uprising suddenly broke out in the south, almost overthrowing the corrupt Qing Dynasty rule, which is the famous Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement.
In view of the failure of the Tianping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, in fact, there are many reasons, such as the Tianjing Incident, too many kings, etc., but these are not the fundamental reasons, Chairman Mao's evaluation on this issue can be said to be to the point, he mentioned a very important point: Hong Xiuquan raised troops, comprehensively resisted Confucianism, and advocated Catholicism, which completely violated a psychological situation of the Chinese at that time, and Zeng Guofan took advantage of this loophole to extinguish him.
In fact, Hong Xiuquan was going to enter the career as an official in his early years, but his cultural level was limited, and he did not pass the examination four times, after he experienced the failure of the third imperial examination at the age of 25, he was discouraged, and by chance, he came into contact with the book "Good Words of Persuasion", was moved by the Christian doctrine in it, and began to have the idea of believing in God and pursuing the equality of all people.
And because of the failure of several imperial examinations, Hong Xiuquan was ashamed and angry, and decided to completely abandon the way of Confucius and Mencius and believe in Christianity, so he also changed the god tablet at home.
In fact, in the sixth year after Hong Xiuquan's failure in the third imperial examination, he went to take another Guangzhou academy examination, and there is no doubt that he failed again, and since then Hong Xiuquan has begun to preach wholeheartedly.
Although he had not read the Bible, Hong Xiuquan was not stupid, he preached the Christian doctrine he understood, began to depict an ideal kingdom, he created a sect of his own, called the Worship of God, at the same time he called himself God's second son, The younger brother of Jesus, at that time the worship of God religion once developed rapidly, successively absorbed Yang Xiuqing, Xiao Chaogui, Wei Changhui and other backbones, the congregation expanded to more than 2,000 people.
By 1850, the contradiction between the cult of God and the Qing court was deepening, and Hong Xiuquan simply did not stop and directly opposed the Qing, and began the vigorous Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement.
Because of the four times that he had fallen off the list, Hong Xiuquan was completely desperate for the way of Confucius and Mencius, he once listed the Four Books and Five Classics as a banned book, or under Yang Xiuqing's repeated insistence, Hong Xiuquan reluctantly agreed to print and circulate the Four Books and Five Classics after revision, but in fact, although Hong Xiuquan superficially agreed, he never published them in the field.
Although the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom used the teachings of Western religions to launch an uprising, it also appeared a huge drawback, that is, the lack of military divisions in the true sense, it should be known that our country has followed the way of Confucius and Mencius since ancient times, and Hong Xiuquan's approach is undoubtedly to push all the readers to his opposite, a regime that lacks cognition is doomed to failure.
Chairman Mao also mentioned a very crucial factor, saying that in history, the confrontation between the two powers has always failed; during the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom period, Yang Xiuqing won the support of many generals because of his youth and achievements, while Hong Xiuqing's full ability was not as good as Yang Xiuqing's, but as a founder, he was a leader-like existence, and the confrontation between the two powers naturally failed.
After the establishment of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Hong Xiuquan retreated into the background, rarely took care of the government, and the power quickly fell into the hands of Yang Xiuqing, the Eastern King, and after enjoying the scenery brought by power, Yang Xiuqing soon swelled, and in 1856, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom broke through the Qing army's Jiangnan camp and lifted the three-year siege of Tianjing.
This practice of his simply stirred up terrifying waves, at that time others expressed their dissatisfaction, with the northern king Wei Changhui reacting most fiercely, he asked Hong Xiu to kill Yang Xiuqing immediately, but Hong Xiuquan did not agree, but at this time someone informed that Yang Xiuqing was plotting to rebel, Hong Xiuquan could not sit still, he summoned the northern king Wei Changhui and the wing king Shi Dakai to eliminate the eastern king Yang Xiuqing.
However, although Yang Xiuqing was killed, but because of Wei Changhui's unwillingness, more than 20,000 of Yang Xiuqing's shogunate subordinates plus relatives were killed, which triggered the famous Tianjing Incident, Shi Dakai was grumpy, and as soon as he arrived in Tianjing, he reprimanded Wei Changhui for killing innocents indiscriminately, and the two had a big fight, after which Shi Dakai was afraid of retaliation and fled Tianjing overnight, but Wei Changhui still gave his hand to his family.
Shi Dakai was furious and demanded that Hong Xiuquan execute Wei Changhui, at that time, the tianping heavenly kingdom showed a one-sided trend, all supported Shi Dakai, so Wei Changhui was also killed, and later Shi Dakai became more and more powerful, Hong Xiuquan was afraid that his seat was not secure, and wanted to open a hand to Shi Da, Shi Dakai, in order to avoid infighting, led thousands of people to leave Tianjing and go to Anqing.
The Tianjing Incident caused the original situation to be a good situation in the Balance Heavenly Kingdom to take a sharp turn, and in the final analysis, it was because Hong Xiuquan's own ability was inferior to Yang Xiuqing's, so that the two powers were opposed, and eventually evolved into a huge infighting, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, because it was a peasant uprising, had certain limitations and was doomed to escape the fate of failure.