When it comes to celebrities in China's modern history, Li Hongzhang, Hong Xiuquan, Yuan Shikai and so on are all figures that cannot be avoided. Li Hongzhang We all know that when he was 31 years old, he resolutely abandoned Wen Congwu to organize the Huai Army, and since then, based on the Huai Army, he has established a powerful Beiyang Marine Division, and if it were not for the fiasco of the "Sino-Japanese War", Li Hongzhang would certainly have become an undisputed historical giant.
Yuan Shikai was a loyal follower of the imperial examination system in his early years, but he tried and failed repeatedly, and finally turned to his father's friend Wu Changqing. Wu Changqing was the commander of the Qingzi Battalion of the Huai Army, because the Qing Dynasty emphasized literature and light weapons, so he wanted Yuan Shikai to study well and continue his own path of imperial examinations in the coming year, but Yuan Shikai insisted on joining the army, which allowed Yuan Shikai to achieve a career of his own.
As for Hong Xiuquan, like Yuan Shikai, he also failed the exam repeatedly, but he did not have Yuan Shikai's fate, and he did not have relatives who were officials in the DPRK to turn to. Filled with enthusiasm, he fell ill after failing the last exam. Amazingly, when his illness was cured, he was like a divine helper, and he established the Taiping Heaven
At the beginning of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, it was indeed vigorous, and it almost overturned the decaying ship of the Qing court, but the heavens did not go according to people's wishes, and this fierce peasant uprising finally ended in failure. The failure of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom allowed many objective factors to exist, but the corruption of Hong Xiuquan himself also played a very important role.
Feudal ideas that cannot be ripped off
At the beginning of the uprising, Hong Xiuquan shouted slogans of democracy, freedom, and equality, and he did honor his slogans, but all those who followed him were crowned kings. During the 14 years of the Taiping Rebellion, more than 2,700 kings were crowned before and after.
However, when people were shocked, Hong Xiuquan had just established political power in Nanjing, and immediately issued the "Tianchao Tianmu System", which clearly stated that "the noble and the lowly should be divided into upper and lower levels, and the system must be judged to be respected and inferior", which runs counter to his slogan of equality. It can be seen from this that Hong Xiuquan's bones are still full of feudal ideas.
Totalitarian rule that cannot be ripped off
Since the establishment of the political power, it must have a political core, and the political core of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is still centralized feudal rule, which is no different from the decadent Qing Dynasty. In order to maintain this centralization of power, Hong Xiuquan changed his previous style of employment and placed his cronies in positions with important functions, and those with lofty ideals and ambitions could not be reused for a long time, which was really regrettable.
The older you get, the more confused you get
After entering the city of Nanjing, Hong Xiuquan began to rarely go out of the palace, and he consciously kept a distance from the masses, the reason for which was that he not only recovered his feudal consciousness, but also had the concept of hierarchy, felt that he was the ruler, and began to enjoy the drunken gold fans of the ruling class. In his later years, this behavior became even more crazy, which also led to Hong Xiuquan's behavior being no different from that of ordinary feudal emperors, especially in enjoying women.
His harem
According to the records of the "Notes on Spring Dreams in Jiangnan", after Hong Xiuquan established the capital, he first collected beautiful women in Nanjing and sent them to the harem, and there were a thousand famous positions set up in the harem, and these famous positions were also strange, such as loving niangs, frolicking maidens, and so on. But Hong Xiuquan later found a problem, that is, there were more women, she couldn't remember who was who, so he had the ingenuity to number the women one by one, and if he wanted to let any beauty serve, he only needed to call out her number.
But this thousand beauties are not all the women in the palace, because there are no eunuchs in this Heavenly Palace, and all the work of the eunuchs in the Previous Imperial Palace was done by the "female officials", and in general, the number of female officials in the Heavenly Palace was at least twelve hundred. In this way, there must be at least two thousand three hundred women in Hong Xiuquan's Heavenly King's Palace, and these people are all his forbidden. This figure is truly staggering and unacceptable. It should be known that the Kangxi Emperor, who had the largest number of harems in the Qing Dynasty, was only 36.
summary
On one side, Hong Xiuquan was intoxicated in the gentle township, while the other half shouted equality, which made the soldiers who fought outside indignant. Therefore, the outbreak of civil unrest in TaipingTian is inevitable. Although Hong Xiuquan later used tactics to quell the civil unrest, the Taiping Army was seriously injured and it was difficult to recover. In the final analysis, Hong Xiuquan is no different from those insurgents who are proud and complacent after gaining a little merit, so his end is also doomed to defeat.