In 1851, Hong Xiuquan began to usher in the highlight moment of his life.
After the Taiping Army captured Yong'an, they broke through all the way and beat the Qing army to the ground, so it became a breeze to attack the city and seize the land, and the regular army of the Great Qing was vulnerable in front of them, so Hong Xiuquan also began to continuously consolidate the team and carried out a major adjustment of the organizational structure.
In fact, a few months ago, he ascended the throne in Wuxuan Township and became the Queen of Heaven, and at the same time he made Yang Xiuqing the King of the East, Xiao Chaogui the King of the West, Feng Yunshan the King of the South, Wei Changhui the King of the North, and Shi Dakai the King of the Wings, and that long series of titles could not be read without taking a few deep breaths.
For example, the full title of the Eastern King is "True Divine Will of the Heavenly Father, Divine Counseling Division, Divine Divine Wind, He Nai Division, Redeemer, Left Auxiliary Army Division, Rear Division Hall Middle Army and Right Army, Eastern King Yang." "Does it take a few breaths to read it?" Maybe this length exceeds all the temple numbers after the death of the previous emperor, and so on, the other kings are not short to read, of course, the length of the light title is not nothing, the most important thing is that after that, Hong Xiuquan turned the originally honorable king into a kind of "bargain", and in the late period, the head of the horse was not crowned king, which seemed to be more rigorous than the Jade Emperor.
In fact, in the beginning, Hong Xiuquan strictly controlled the number of kings, for example, in 1854, Qin Rigang was promoted to the King of Yan, Hu Yihuang was the King of Yu, and Hu Wansheng was the King of Youyu. At this time, the King of the South and the King of the West have been killed in battle, even if there is a vacancy in the throne, it is a normal arrangement to fill it, the above few big men are called the early kings, deducting four young kings, whether in 1851 or 1854, the real king is only five.
Before Hong Xiuquan was crowned king in the early days, there were several characteristics: First, the earliest few senior elders; The second is to change the old practice of non-royalty not being crowned king in some previous dynasties; Third, even the son was crowned as the young king, the hereditary king of the opposite sex, and the father and son were also crowned at the same time; Fourth, the undecided capital will be crowned king first; Fifth, the full title of the title is very long, and there are various factors such as religion, politics, authority, and praise. Although there are some injustices, they have not yet caused open contradictions. The biggest problem was to determine that Yang Xiuqing, the eastern king, "controlled the kings" and became the king of kings or the king of heaven, sowing the seeds of misfortune for the later king of the Tianjing Incident.
Therefore, the direct cause of Hong Xiuquan's crazy crowning of the king may have stemmed from an infighting in the Tianjing Incident.
Therefore, Hong Xiuquan was very suspicious of the king of the opposite sex, so he began to make his eldest brother Hong Renfa the King of An (later renamed the King of An), and the second brother Hong Renda the Prince of Fu (later changed to The King of Yong), forcing Shi Da to leave. Hong Xiuquan's nephews, clan brothers, and clan nephews were actually more than a dozen people, including a few stinking children, who were crowned kings. In 1859, his brother Hong Renhuan came to Tianjing to seek shelter, boarded a three-stage rocket, and within a month, was crowned as the King of Gan, handling the affairs of the dynasty.
However, in order to avoid the disobedience of the subordinate cadres, Hong Xiuquan, in order to appease and balance, first sealed Chen Yu as the king of England, and then sealed Li Xiu as the king of loyalty. Subsequently, he greatly appreciated Hong Renjie's suggestion and began to make a big deal of it.
His loyalty intention is to disperse the power of Li Xiucheng, Li Shixian and Yang Fuqing, with a view to changing the power structure of "weak and strong" into "strong and weak"; Moreover, in order to satisfy the desires of some people and envelop them and Hong Xiuquan's fate. At the same time, let Hong Renfa Hong Ren take the opportunity to auction the prince privately. All bribes paid to them were guaranteed, and Hong Xiuquan did not make a mistake. In this way, not only can they make a lot of money, but they can also make them more subservient.
At the beginning, a number of kings also had names, such as Chen Kunshu sealing the king, Gao Yongkuan sealing the king, each adding a series of titles that can be read in one breath. However, since then, because there have been too many kings and many people have bought them, they feel that the trouble is simply to give a name without a title, and the small clerical office responsible for reciting the will of the king finally does not have to breathe and read a long list. After that, in order to save more trouble, even the name was not given, and they were all called "kings", so regardless of surname, regardless of age, this is also the king, and that is also the king. There is also a rank of Kings than Lie, that is, even they don't know what to call, simply add "three points" to the word "king", this word I can't type. So at the craziest time, Hong Xiu's kings were sealed and sold, and there were more than 2,700 kings.
At that time, the area controlled by the Taiping Army was nothing more than some villages and towns in several provinces, and not only was the king in charge of money and grain and housekeeping affairs in a town, but anyone who had a way could hand hong Rengui silver, no matter what they did, they could get a prince, and what was more, the same king was successively given to two people. For example, after the fengwang Gulongxian surrendered to the Qing, Hong Xiuquan gave the fengwang to Huang Penghou; After Wang Anjun surrendered and was killed, he gave King Kang the title of Wang Haiyang. In the later period, the prince basically had nothing to do with his position and did not need to be reused at all. At this time, Hong Xiuquan did not have the heart to think about whether it was serious and appropriate to give the title of the rebel to someone else. Moreover, after deciding to be crowned a king, he quickly lost his temper and did not take the king seriously, coupled with the bad situation and the chaos in his heart, so that he simply called more kings without any distinction as kings, which may be the abbreviation of the listed king. As for the number of kings of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the people at that time mocked this: "There are more kings in the kingdom of heaven than carp seeds across the river." This metaphor, though crude, is very well thought out.