The Tianjing Incident is a turning point in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement from prosperity to decline, and it is also a landmark event in the complete degeneration of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, from a political point of view, if the leadership of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in the early period had an unavoidable power struggle, but it is far from reaching the point of intolerable water and fire, many historians have simply summarized the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Tianjing Incident as a power contradiction between The Two Hong Yangs, but ignored that the Tianjing Incident was actually a concentrated outbreak of the latent crisis in the early days of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Hong Xiuquan gathered believers by worshipping God, claiming to be the second son of the Heavenly Father, thinking that he could monopolize theocracy, but he did not expect that Yang Xiuqing's mind was extremely flexible, and he easily usurped the divine power with a trick from the Heavenly Father.
When Yang Xiuqing first began to pretend to be a ghost to borrow the Heavenly Father's subordinate fan to instruct the Taiping Army, Hong Xiuquan felt panic about the fall of power, and the gap between the two was also generated at this time, the contradiction between Hong Yang from the beginning of the uprising to the Tianjing Incident, more and more intense, Hong Xiuquan's commitment to retreat, TaoGuang yang obscure caused Yang Xiuqing to look down on Hong Xiuquan from the bottom of his heart, as his personal reputation continued to increase, Yang Xiuqing completely lost himself, wanted to sit on an equal footing with Hong Xiuquan, so he forced Hong Xiuquan to seal himself as a long live, The next step is definitely to get rid of Hong Xiuquan and completely monopolize the power of heaven.
If you simply look at the Tianjing Incident, many people will think that Yang Xiuqing lost himself for a while because of his high merit and pride, and made such a "great rebellion", but if we turn the history from the early days of the Taiping Rebellion to the Tianjing Incident, we will find that every step Yang Xiuqing took seems to have been designed in advance.
With Yang Xiuqing's shrewdness, in fact, he had long been preparing for himself to usurp the power of the heavenly kingdom and drive Hong Xiuquan off the altar, why Yang Xiuqing wanted to suppress Hong Xiuquan with the possession of his heavenly father, and why he used his divine power to suppress Hong Xiuquan again and again after fixing the capital Tianjing, Yang Xiuqing had extraordinary talents in the military, and he did not waste this talent, and his outstanding military performance made him a god of war in the hearts of the Taiping Army and the common people.
Li Xiucheng, the loyal king of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, commented on Yang Xiuqing in his "Self-Description of Li Xiucheng":
"The Eastern King's government affairs, everything is strict and orderly, the legislation is safe for the people, and the people's hearts are admired."
Hong Rengui, a division of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Army, also commented:
"In the past, when the Eastern King was alive, he expanded the territory and opened up the territory, as if it were a hundred miles in the day, but now it is advancing and retreating, defeating the attack, and being inferior to the time!"
It can be seen that Yang Xiuqing has become an irreplaceable key figure in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, so it is normal to have some ambitions.
Just when Yang Xiuqing was in the degree of legislation, tree prestige, and led the heavenly kingdom military and civilians to expand hundreds of miles, Hong Xiuquan did not come out of the door for eleven years, except for Yang Xiuqing who was ill and went to visit once, Hong Xiuquan almost disappeared from the vision of everyone, and in these 11 years, Hong Xiuquan mainly did three things: repairing the palace, accepting the king's wife, and writing books, the last thing was still relatively serious, but it could not stop the sunset of its authority, and the taiping heavenly kingdom understood in its hearts that Hong Xiuquan had become a puppet. As an intellectual preacher and the founder of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, he could only be offered up from a high place, treated as a mud bodhisattva, and eventually replaced by the Eastern King.
Although it may seem cruel, it is not impossible to happen. The reason why Wei Changhui, Shi Dakai, and others opposed the Eastern King was because Yang Xiuqing was arrogant and arrogant, and offended many people, not because he wanted to replace Hong Xiuquan, but out of consideration for his own interests, he raised the banner of "Honoring the King" and jointly attacked Yang Xiuqing, and later it turned out that this was indeed the case, Wei Changhui after suppressing Yang Xiuqing, monopolized power, and even wanted to search the Tianwang Mansion, and did not take Hong Xiuquan in his eyes, Shi Dakai led the army back to Beijing to suppress Wei Changhui, but because of a word, he led 100,000 soldiers and civilians of Tianjing to leave Beijing, resulting in the emptiness of Tianjing. At stake. The bloody struggle resulting from this power brawl is, in the final analysis, only a redistribution of power by the kings for their own benefit.
But the price paid for the distribution of power was too great, Wei Changhui destroyed the Eastern King's Mansion, killing all the family and deployment of the Eastern King Yang Xiuqing, a total of more than 5,000 people, Yang Xiuqing deployed to hate Wei Changhui, rebelled, there was a bloody war between the two sides, and 20,000 or 30,000 people fought each other and died, this struggle lasted more than two months, many elites of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom died in this infighting, and since then the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom has gone downhill. After the Tianjing Incident, the people's hearts in Taiping Tiantian began to be scattered, and the military situation was reversed, even if the Taiping Army later attacked the Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas, the situation was always at a disadvantage. Although the military rookies Chen Yucheng and Li Xiucheng were used in the later period, they still failed to save the defeat, and even if they won a few victories, they were only a return to the light.
In "Li Xiucheng's Self-Description", he once pointed out that the Tomorrow Beijing Incident was a big mistake:
The East King and the North King killed each other, which was a big mistake. The wing king and the lord are not in harmony, the monarchs and subjects are jealous, and the wing is suspicious, and the good Wenwu generals of the He Dynasty are brought away, which is the greatest mistake.
It can be seen that the Tianjing Incident had a great impact on the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
After the Tianjing Incident, the Xianfeng Emperor clapped his hands and applauded, gritting his teeth and cursing the long hair to die too little, he urgently ordered Zeng Guofan to counterattack in an all-round way, believing that the opportunity could not be lost, he once asked Zeng Guofan and Jiangxi Governor Wenjun to take advantage of this enemy chaos to "quickly conquer the city of The Plurals, so that the retreat will be returned, and it is not difficult to capture it in a desperate way." However, Zeng Guofan repeatedly used various excuses to prevaricate, in the face of the Xianfeng Emperor's eagerness to fight, Zeng Guofan did not dare to act rashly, the Xianfeng Emperor wanted to complete his contribution to the battle as soon as possible without increasing the financial burden of the Qing Dynasty, at this time the Qing Dynasty's finances had already appeared in crisis, completely dragged down by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement.
However, Zeng Guofan, Hu Linyi and others had to consider the actual situation, although the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom experienced civil strife, but it had not yet reached the point of collapse at a touch, after the Tianjing Incident, Hong Xiuquan also realized the location of the crisis, promptly activated the rising star, fought several big victories in succession, Chen Yucheng, Li Xiucheng were young and promising, broke the encirclement circle of Tianjing many times, and quickly occupied most of Jiangsu and Zhejiang with the momentum of breaking bamboo, the Qing army in Jiangnan almost completely disintegrated, and the Qing generals and Chun committed suicide in despair.
However, just when everyone thought that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was about to be revived with the momentum of the burning plains, perhaps it was destined by heaven, and in 1862 Chen Yucheng was captured when he fled Shouzhou, according to the "Chronicle of captivity":
The president was the founding father of the country in the Heavenly Dynasty, and the president washed Hubei three times, nine times under the Jiangnan, and ran when he saw the battle. At the Twenty-fifth Battalion of Baiyun Mountain, the whole army was destroyed, and Er led more than ten horses to hold their heads, and I told you to spare your life. How can I be worthy of kneeling on you? Good not to be self-respecting objects! ”
On June 4, 1862, Chen Yu was only twenty-five years old, the smoke of the Tianjing Incident had not yet dissipated, and the Kingdom of Heaven lost its bravery, and only two years later, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement ended in failure. Hong Xiuquan fell ill and died before the fall of Tianjing, and was later exhumed by the Zeng Guofan brothers, who loaded their bones into shells, ignited and blew them up, which shows how much the Zeng brothers hated Hong Xiuquan