In China's modern history, there are many characters that cannot be forgotten, and Hong Xiuquan, who founded the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, is one of them. He created a regime that nearly subverted the Manchu Qing Dynasty as a peasant son, and sun Yat-sen, the founding father of the Republic of China (on April 1, 1940, the Nationalist government officially honored Sun Yat-sen as the founding father of the Republic of China) said that he wanted to become "Hong Xiuquan's second". Before the 1980s, Hong Xiuquan appeared in various books and materials as a revolutionary, but over the years, due to the discovery of some other historical materials and the rendering of film and television works, Hong Xiuquan's image has also undergone a 180-degree change. When some people discuss Hong Xiuquan, they often refer to him as a faint and incompetent person, saying that the establishment of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was the credit of Feng Yunshan, Yang Xiuqing, and others; saying that Hong Xiuquan coveted beauty and hid in his own Heavenly King's Palace to spoil all kinds of beautiful women after capturing Nanjing. So, what kind of person is Hong Xiuquan in history?
To fully understand Hong Xiuquan, we must respond to some of his most concerned questions. That is, whether the examination is not smooth indicates that his intelligence is mediocre, whether he does not personally preach, whether it indicates that his propaganda ability is insufficient, whether the delegation of power to Yang Xiuqing indicates that his management ability is not strong, whether nepotism, and whether the wanton kingship indicates that he is the same essence as Xianfeng.
On the issue of the imperial examination, many people like to take hong xiuquan keju for many years and even xiucai can not pass the examination, and finally can only take the road of overthrowing the Qing dynasty to argue that Hong Xiuquan's material is mediocre. What's more, he used Hong Xiuquan's poems to argue this point, such as exhorting his subordinates to faithfully "practice Ertiness and take care of Er's life." If you don't practice your sex well, you're afraid you'll kill you," or "Why do you go against your will, always with red eyes." Tang Er went to the ghost beak food and quickly broke free of the heavens. "It is true that these poems have no level, but are Hong Xiuquan's other poems also like this? The answer was not necessary at the time, such as this "Ding Qiankun Poem": "The dragon dives into the cape and frightens the sky, and temporarily jumps in the abyss; waiting for the wind and clouds to gather together and soar to the six-in-one Ding Qiankun." "Although it is not a good poem, it is not something that can be written by people with very mediocre qualifications. Moreover, let's take a look at the estimation of the number of Qing Dynasty talents, there have been discussions on the Internet, whether the Qing Dynasty only produced more than 30,000 talents in ten years, and some people estimate that it may be 170,000 people in 10 years, I have not carefully examined this problem, it is estimated that 100,000 people in a moderate 10 years, then there are 10,000 people a year. Hong Xiuquan lived for 50 years, which means that during his lifetime, about 500,000 people passed the examination for Xiucai, and the number of people in the Qing Dynasty at that time was 400 million. Compared with the two, it can be seen that xiucai is not so good at the test. Therefore, we can't take Hong Xiuquan's failure to pass the xiucai exam as his mediocre intelligence. Taking a step back, a mediocre man could not have realized that a missionary's "Persuasion to the World" should be used to create a new Chinese religion.
And Hong Xiuquan did not participate too much in the spread of the God Worship Society, and the growth of the God Worship Society basically relied on Feng Yunshan to step by step in the mountains of Guangxi. However, in the early years, it was also Hong Xiuquan himself who took Feng Yunshan deep into the Yaoshan area of The Eight Rows, and then Feng Yunshan insisted on preaching in the Yaoshan area. In addition, religious leaders are generally more mystical, if Hong Xiuquan personally went to preach, then how to establish his own religious authority, how can people believe that he is not an ordinary person but the second son of God? Moreover, if Hong Xiuquan's propaganda ability was not strong, how could Feng Yunshan be persuaded by him? Later, Yang Xiuqing and Wei Changhui seized power, but there were still a number of subordinates loyal to him, which did not show that he had a strong propaganda ability?
Decentralization of power to Yang Xiuqing is actually a measure that Hong Xiuquan had to do. First, Yang Xiuqing is indeed capable, and in the development process of the Worship of God Society, he played a great role, and at a critical juncture, he also stabilized the situation under the pretense of heavenly father. The smooth march of the Taiping Army also had a lot to do with Yang Xiuqing's planning. Therefore, from the perspective of the development of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Hong Xiuquan must reuse Yang Xiuqing. Second, Yang Xiuqing is a native of Guangxi, born of poor miners, and like most of the believers in the Cult of God, Hong Xiuquan can be attributed to a reader after all, and using Yang Xiuqing to give orders can better unite the congregation. Although Yang Xiuqing was reused, Hong Xiuquan's management ability was also one of the best, and while he cultivated Yang Xiuqing, he also reused Feng Yunshan and Xiao Chaogui, and after the death of the two, he also supported Wei Changhui and Shi Dakai to divide Yang Xiuqing's power. In the Tianjing Incident, he effortlessly solved yang xiuqing and Wei Changhui, who were flying and stumbling, which actually reflected that Hong Xiuquan still had a strong control over the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Including the later period, he could not leave the Heavenly Palace, but Chen Yucheng, Li Xiucheng, and others did not dare to violate his will in the slightest. This can be done not by the charisma of the leader's personality, but by absolute control over the entire regime. Therefore, Hong Xiuquan is actually similar to Liu Bang, has no superior military ability, and covets beauty, but his management ability is super first-class, and the imperial art is very good.
Around Hong Xiuquan's reuse of his brothers An Wang, Fu Wang, and later on the kingship, many people had a discussion, and many people hoped to use this as a breakthrough to argue whether the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was a revolutionary regime or a peasant uprising regime. In fact, taking this as a breakthrough is itself debatable. Hong Xiuquan's early banner was "Junping" and his attempt at the capitalist road, which already shows that the revolutionary nature of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom regime is beyond doubt. After all, Hong Xiuquan received a long-term Confucian education (although he later rejected Confucianism and Confucius extremely), and the idea of monarchy and family world was profound in his mind. Moreover, he has experienced the usurpation of power by Yang Xiuqing and Wei Changhui successively, and it is also normal for people with foreign surnames to be uneasy. Before the Tianjing Incident, Hong Xiuquan strictly controlled the number of kings, plus himself and the five kings of the east, west, south, and north wings, as well as Hu Yihuang and Qin Rigang, who were only eight kings. However, after the Tianjin Incident, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was hit hard, in order to stabilize the hearts of the army, Hong Xiuquan knew that relying on the doctrine of worshiping God could not satisfy the heavenly generals who held real power and enjoyed a rich and noble life, and could only give various preferential treatments, and the king worship was the highest honor in the hearts of ordinary people in that era, so Hong Xiuquan could only use this trick to continue to maintain his political power. From these two aspects, Hong Xiuquan and Xian Feng are indeed no different. However, there is also an essential difference between Hong Xiuquan and XianFeng, xianfeng can cooperate with the British and French troops who invaded China in order to continue the regime, while Hong Xiuquan resolutely resists the Intervention of Britain and France in China. In terms of national integrity, Hong Xiuquan is more than one notch higher than Xianfeng.
In short, it is absolutely impossible for straw bales to start from scratch and maintain a regime that has been attacked from all sides for 13 years, and Hong Xiuquan is definitely not a mediocre and incompetent person, and his historical evaluation should not be too low.
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