As we all know, the main reason why the Taiping Rebellion eventually failed was their infighting. Since the beginning of the Tianjing Incident, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom has been full of contradictions and internal strife. Yang Xiuqing and Hong Xiuquan, Shi Dakai and Hong Xiuquan, Chen Yucheng and Li Xiucheng, Chen and Li and Hong Xiuquan, all clashed and infighting endlessly.
In addition to the fact that they, the leaders at the highest level, have never been able to work together, the generals below are even more unpleasant to each other, and there will rarely be times of sincere unity. In this way, they made trouble all the way to the capital city of Tianjing, and there were only a few remnants of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom left, so at such a time, they still had to start infighting and engage in infighting, until they finally failed completely.
This article will introduce you to the final internal tragedy of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom: the assassination of Li Shixian by King Wang Haiyang of Kang.
(i)
In July 1864, Tianjing City was attacked by the Xiang Army, and neither King Hong Xiuquan nor King Li Xiucheng was able to escape.
At this time, in the north and south of the Yangtze River, plus the Twist Army, the Taiping Army also had about a million people and horses, which seemed to be quite powerful.
However, so many remnants of the Taiping Army were leaderless. The Twist army in Jiangbei was soon organized and jointly elected Lai Wenguang and Zhang Zongyu as commanders. Because the Twist army had a unified command, the Twist Army once achieved very good results.
However, the Taiping Army in Jiangnan was different. The Taiping Army in Jiangnan never formed a whole, everyone just fought for themselves, and eventually they all went to failure.
Why couldn't the Taiping Army in Jiangnan form a unified and centralized leadership? Mainly because there are too many "kings" of all kinds, and everyone has their own thoughts, no matter what, they can't pee into a pot, so there is a situation of going their own way.
At that time, the highest-ranking people who escaped from Nanjing City, except for the ignorant young Heavenly King Hong Tianguifu, then they had to count the highest status of the GanWang Hong Rengui. But it is a pity that Hong Rengui, the number one intellectual of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, has only blindly imagined a better future in the Tianjing City for several years, and has written a "New Chapter of Senior Administration" for this purpose. But he was completely unaware of the things that he should do the most.
What should he do in Nanjing? Of course, it is to find a way to build a force of absolute loyalty to the Hong family! With his own gun barrel, he could get rid of the dilemma that Hong Tianwang was subject to others and had to desperately sell the crown in exchange for support!
The image of Hong Renjie in film and television works
Unfortunately, Hong Renjie didn't even think about this at all, and Hong Xiuquan didn't think about it either. It can be seen from this that the political level of the Hong family is really low enough.
As a result, when Hong Rengui escaped from Nanjing City and began to ask troops from all over the country to rescue Tianjing, he found that he was already farting and not speaking, and few people were willing to take care of him.
Hong Renjie could only take the Young Heavenly King to join Huang Wenjin, the King of Blockade. After the unfortunate death of king Tuo, Hong Rengui did not command the army of TuoWang at all, and finally only ended up being defeated and captured.
Many of the princes outside tianjing city, after a battle with the Xiang army, one by one was dead and descended, and soon only two people and horses were left to "stand out". These two armies were the forces of Li Shixian and Wang Haiyang, the King of Kang.
(ii)
In the ranking of military generals in the late Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Li Shixian was actually a cattle man in the third place, second only to Chen Yucheng and Li Xiucheng.
The image of Lee Se-hyun in film and television works
Li Shixian was not very old, and by 1864 he was only thirty years old. However, he has distinguished himself in battle and has extraordinary qualifications. In 1857 he was made one of the chief generals of the Five Armies, and in 1860 he was made a squire. At that time, except for the Hong family brothers and Chen Li, it was counting him.
In February 1864, Li Xiucheng, who was trapped in the city of Nanjing, gave Li Shixian an order to lead his troops into Jiangxi to fight. The purpose of this was, first, to find a way to mobilize the Xiang army and reduce the pressure on Nanjing; second, to ask Li Shixian to go to Jiangxi to collect grain and grass, and then to Nanjing to relieve the siege.
Li Shixian then entered Jiangxi and engaged in a series of fierce battles with the local Qing army. Due to the serious decline in the combat quality of the Taiping Army at this time, Li Shixian encountered walls everywhere in Jiangxi, which was very difficult, and there was no way to complete the task of collecting grain and grass and returning to the division to rescue Nanjing.
However, Li Shixian's fame was there, so after the Taiping army everywhere could not stand up, they all ran to Jiangxi to defect to Li Shixian. One of the people was the troops under the command of Wang Chen Bingwen and Wang Haiyang, the King of Kang.
The image of Wang Haiyang in film and television works
Chen Bingwen and Wang Haiyang were both from Anhui, and they had joined the Taiping Army very early. In 1853, when the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom hit Anhui, the two of them joined the army one after another. Chen Bingwen was incorporated into Li Xiucheng's troops, and Wang Haiyang was incorporated into Shi Dakai's troops.
The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was originally the world of the two Guangdong people, and Chen and Wang, as Anhui people, were able to rise step by step, and it was entirely dependent on them to fight and fight for their lives.
Wang Haiyang once fled with Shi Dakai, and later returned to Hong Xiuquan's command. After that, he also came under the command of Li Xiucheng. In 1862, because of the sale of Hong Xiuquan's crown, the two received two king hats, respectively, King Tingwang and Kangwang.
According to Li Xiucheng's orders, the two men were guarding Hangzhou. However, under the step-by-step advance of Zuo Zongtang's troops in the Xiang Army, Hangzhou really could not hold on. Therefore, the two of them had to abandon Hangzhou and come to Jiangxi to join Li Shixian.
After the fall of Tianjing City, Li Shixian became the new core that attracted the most attention. At this time, his troops were stationed in Chongren County, Jiangxi, and the goal was to attack Fuzhou, Jiangxi. Chen Bingwen, Wang Haiyang, and Huang Wenjin, the King of Blockade, led by King Gan and King Youtian, and Lin Caixin, the king of the columns, all gathered towards him one after another.
If the above Taiping Heavenly Kingdom troops can successfully gather together and establish a leadership core under the banner of the Young Heavenly King, then the remnants of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Jiangnan are estimated to be able to hold out for a few more years.
However, due to both subjective and objective factors, this goal was not achieved at all.
(iii)
Subjectively speaking, Li Shixian is very unimpressed with the Hong family. He had already persuaded Li Xiucheng to kick away the Hong family and do it alone. Now that everything was up to him, of course, he wouldn't even take any young heavenly kings in his sights. Li Shixian had no intention of accepting the Young Heavenly King at all, and he did not even understand such a simple principle as "holding the Son of Heaven hostage to order the princes", which also fully showed that Li Shixian's political level was really very low.
Objectively speaking, at this time, the taiping heavenly kingdom was scattered, and many generals began to look for a way back, including Wang Chen Bingwen. Chen Bingwen had basically decided to surrender to the Qing court. Even those Taiping Army troops who did not surrender became demoralized due to the persecution of the situation, and their combat effectiveness was greatly reduced. At this time, after conquering Tianjing, the Xiang army sent the main force Bao Chao's Thunder Zi Battalion to Jiangxi. All this has made the situation between the enemy and ourselves grim.
In August 1864, the Battle of Huwan in Fuzhou, Jiangxi, broke out, which determined the fate of the remnants of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
At that time, Li Shixian was concentrating his forces to attack Fuzhou. Bao Chao led his army to help, and Wang Haiyang volunteered to lead his men and horses to meet Bao Chao in Huwan.
Bao Chao's men and horses were only more than 10,000, and Wang Haiyang's troops were as many as 70,000 or 80,000, but in terms of elite level, the Thunder Character Battalion was by no means comparable to the Taiping Army. On August 5, the two armies launched a fierce battle, the Thunder Character Battalion slammed into the fierce charge, Wang Haiyang's troops soon collapsed, suffering heavy casualties. Wang Haiyang was forced to lead the remnants to flee to Jianchang.
Li Shixian, who was attacking Fuzhou, saw that Wang Haiyang had lost, lest he be attacked from both sides, so he also hurriedly withdrew his army and led his army to retreat to Yihuang County.
The Battle of Huwan was one of the most crucial battles of the Taiping Army in Jiangnan after the fall of Tianjing City. After this battle, several evil consequences were produced that determined the fate of the Taiping Army.
First of all, the young king was killed because of this. Huang Wenjin and Hong Renjiu abandoned Huzhou at the end of August to join Li Shixian, but Li Shixian had already withdrawn to the Gannan area. Huang Wenjin and Hong Renjie lost Li Shixian's reception and were ambushed by the Qing army, and the entire army was defeated. Huang Wenjin was killed in battle, and both Hong Renjie and The Young Heavenly King were captured.
The second was to hear Wang Chen Bingwen surrender to Bao Chao.
Chen Bingwen did not want to mix with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom for a long time, but Li Shixian and Wang Haiyang's army was around, and he did not dare to act rashly. Now, Li and Wang fled in defeat, and he just surrendered to Bao Chao.
The third is the most important, because Chen Bingwen's surrender caused a contradiction between Wang Haiyang and Li Shixian.
Wang Haiyang already knew that Chen Bingwen wanted to surrender, but Chen Bingwen had 90,000 men and horses under him, as well as 7,000 foreign gun teams, and his strength was so strong that Wang Haiyang could not deal with him on his own. So Wang Haiyang suggested to Li Shixian that the two sides join forces to get rid of Chen Bingwen. But Lee was vague about this and did not take any action. This naturally caused Wang Haiyang to be extremely dissatisfied with Li Shixian.
Li Shixian's idea was probably that now that the enemy was at present, he should not lose his strength in infighting at this time. Chen Bingwen really wanted to surrender, then it would rain and his mother would marry, so he would go with him. However, he did not communicate well with Wang Haiyang on this, and as a result, Wang Haiyang lost trust in Li Shixian from then on.
Since Chen Bingwen had been fighting under Li Xiucheng, his relationship with Li Shixian was much closer than that of Wang Haiyang, and it was only natural that Wang Haiyang would have doubts about this. Although after this incident, the two people did not immediately turn their faces, but it buried the foreshadowing of the future Wang Li tragedy.
After the defeat at the Battle of Huwan, Li Shixian's efforts to create a base area in Jiangxi failed. He and Wang Haiyang had to move through Gannan to Guangdong and Fujian.
(iv)
In October 1864, Li Shixian and Wang Haiyang successively led troops into Fujian. At this time, the combined strength of the two of them was still around 100,000 people. However, south of the Yangtze River, only their two Taiping Army troops remained.
On October 11, Wang Haiyang led an army to attack Wuping County. According to the envoys of Fujian, Zhang Yunlan, the general of the Xiang Army, hurriedly led five hundred horsemen to the rescue. Wang Haiyang set up an ambush circle outside the city and cleanly annihilated Zhang Yunlan and his five hundred men and horses in one fell swoop. Zhang Yunlan, a hero of the xiang army at the beginning of its founding, was captured by the Taiping Army and dismembered and killed.
On October 14, Li Shixian also conquered Zhangzhou, and the two men joined forces to establish a base area in southern Fujian. Li Shixian's troops were stationed in Zhangzhou, and Wang Haiyang's troops were stationed in the Longyan area, and the two sides still assisted each other and cooperated in the battle.
Of course, the Qing court would not sit idly by and immediately ordered Zuo Zongtang to be responsible for suppressing the Taiping Army of Li and Wang.
Zuo Zongtang led tens of thousands of Xiang troops of the Left Clan and the local Green Battalion in Fujian to launch an attack on Li Shixian and Wang Haiyang.
In early December, when The Fujian Admiral Lin Wencha led his army to Wansongguan in Zhangzhou, Li Shixian sent troops to launch a counterattack, annihilating Lin Wencha's troops in one fell swoop, and Lin Wencha himself was killed.
In mid-December, the Xiang general Liu Dian led an army to attack Longyan, wang Haiyang set up an ambush at Mayangdong, defeated the enemy army, and Liu Dian fled back to Liancheng in a panic.
After these two battles, Zuo Zongtang realized that Li Shixian and Wang Haiyang's troops still had strong combat effectiveness. At the same time, he also realized that if Li Shixian and Wang Haiyang cooperated with each other, their combat effectiveness would be multiplied. The Qing army had limited strength and was difficult to defeat two Taiping armies at the same time. Therefore, Zuo Zongtang formulated a combat strategy to divide Wang and Li's troops, and at the same time drive Wang into Guangdong and isolate Li Shixian.
After that, after several months of bitter fighting, Zuo Zongtang's battle plan gradually succeeded. Wang Haiyang's troops were getting closer and closer to Guangdong, while Li Shixian had been holding on to Zhangzhou, hoping to regain his strength with the help of foreigners. Zuo Zongtang's forces gradually separated the two Taiping armies.
In April 1865, the situation became increasingly unfavorable for the Taiping Army. After consultation between Li Shixian and Wang Haiyang, the two jointly decided to move to Guangdong.
In May, the two Taiping armies moved to Guangdong. Zuo Zongtang concentrated his forces against Li Shixian. On his way out of Zhangzhou and toward Guangdong, Li Shixian was intercepted by the Qing army.
At the critical moment, Li Shixian hurried to Wang Haiyang for help. However, Wang Haiyang concentrated on the siege of The Xiang Army's Ding Changsheng Department at this time, and did not take Li Shixian into account at all.
In the Battle of the Archery Concave, the Taiping Army won a great victory. After annihilating more than 2,000 people in six battalions of the Lao Xiang Army, Ding Changsheng, the commander-in-chief of the Qing Army, was killed. This battle was the last great victory of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and the losses of the six battalions of the old Xiang army made Zuo Zongtang's heart ache.
After Wang Haiyang won this great victory, he successfully led his troops to Zhenping County, Guangdong (present-day Jiaoling County, Guangdong).
However, this tactical victory led to a strategic fiasco. Since Wang Haiyang did not come to support Li Shixian as agreed in advance, as a result, Li Shixian's entire army was eventually defeated, and Li Shixian himself was forced to flee in disguise. Wang Haiyang thus became a lone army, and its fate of eventual defeat was already doomed.
After Li Shixian's rout, some of his troops broke through the siege and rendezvoused with Wang Haiyang, all of which were taken in by Wang Haiyang one by one.
After receiving the remnants of Li Shixian, Wang Haiyang quickly showed a narrow-minded side. He treated the king's subordinates very harshly, and also eliminated dissidents and killed Li Yuanmao, one of Li Shixian's most trusted generals. All these actions made the army of the king very disappointed in Wang Haiyang, and some people began to secretly surrender to the Qing army.
However, at this moment, on August 19, 1865, Li Shixian, who was already widely believed to have died in the rebellion, suddenly came to Wang Haiyang's military camp.
(5)
After Li Shixian fled in defeat, it is said that he disguised himself as a beggar, mixed with the refugee team, and trekked all the way to find Wang Haiyang. After Li Shixian came to Zhenping, Wang Haiyang initially welcomed him. However, after Li Shixian came, soon many former subordinates came to him to cry about Wang Haiyang's tyranny. Although Li Shixian did not lash out at Wang Haiyang, he also showed his dissatisfaction with the killing of Wang Zong Li Yuanmao.
Wang Haiyang was very nervous about this. He had no sense of trust in Li Shixian at all, lest Li Shixian gather the old ministry and embarrass himself. Therefore, Wang Haiyang decided not to do anything and not to stop, and to strike first to be strong and get rid of Li Shixian.
On the night of August 22, Wang Haiyang took advantage of Li Shixian's rest and sent people to assassinate Li Shixian and four other generals one by one. At the end of the matter, Wang Haiyang preached to the whole army, claiming that Li Shixian had surrendered and that this time he had returned to do internal response.
This is the last tragedy of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the murder of Li Shixian, the king of the taiping.
The impact of Li Shixian's assassination on the fate of the remnants of the Taiping Army was enormous. Lu Shunde was originally a fellow of the same village as Chen Yucheng, Li Xiucheng, and Li Shixian, and he was also loyal to the cause of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. After Li Shixian was assassinated, Lu Shunde left Wang Haiyang with more than 20,000 Taiping troops to find the armed forces of the Guangdong Heaven and Earth Society. Lu Shunde's departure is of course a big loss for Wang Haiyang.
There were also those old subordinates of the king who remained by Wang Haiyang's side, most of them were also alienated and demoralized, and the combat effectiveness of the entire army was greatly affected.
It can be said that Wang Haiyang's approach is extremely stupid, purely digging his own grave.
Of course, Wang Haiyang was still extremely loyal to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. At this time, only his lone army was left in the entire south of the Yangtze River, and under such circumstances, he still preferred to die, clenched his teeth, and desperately fought with the Qing army.
Under siege by the Qing army, Wang Haiyang withdrew from Zhenping in October 1865 and moved toward Jiangxi. In Huangpi, Jiangxi, he skillfully set up an ambush and annihilated more than 500 people of the Xiang Army's Gao Company in one fell swoop, achieving the last victory against the Xiang Army in the history of the Taiping Army. Then, in December, Wang Haiyang suddenly returned to Guangdong and conquered Jiaying Prefecture (present-day Meizhou).
After occupying Jiaying Prefecture, Wang Haiyang's troops were only more than 30,000 people left, and only 10,000 soldiers could fight. However, Wang Haiyang was still not discouraged, and he reorganized his troops, built fortifications, and prepared to meet the incoming enemy.
The Qing army followed. On January 28, 1866, the main force of the Xiang Army reached Tazi pass outside the city. In order to win the initiative, Wang Haiyang led all the elites to attack with all their might, and launched a fierce battle with the Xiang army at Tazi pass.
During the fierce battle, Wang Haiyang was shot in the head and fell into a pool of blood. His subordinates rescued him back into the city, but he died that night.
There have always been different theories about Wang Haiyang's death, one theory is that during the fierce battle, the Taiping Rebel General Ding Taiyang recognized Wang Haiyang, so he summoned the Qing army to shoot at Wang Haiyang with a foreign gun and hit him in the head; another theory is that Li Shixian's old part of the Taiping Army at that time took the opportunity to shoot at Wang Haiyang and hit him in the back of the head.
After Wang Haiyang's death, the Taiping army in Jiaying Prefecture elected Tan Tiyuan, the king of Kai, as his commander. Tan Tiyuan, besieged by a strong enemy, decided to break through. On February 7, 1866, Tan Tiyuan led an army to highlight Jiaying Prefecture, but was surrounded by Qing forces in Huangsha Ridge, and finally the entire army was destroyed. In this way, the Taiping Army south of the Yangtze River completely withered away.