Li Xiucheng

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Li Xiucheng (* 1823 in Teng ; † August 7, 1864 in Jiangning ) was one of the military leaders of the Taiping Rebellion . He came from a poor peasant family and in the course of the rebellion rose to become a general with the title of Loyal King . After the death of the founder of the Taiping movement, Hong Xiuquan, he commanded the defenders of the rebel capital Nanjing until its fall. After fleeing the city to save the heir to the throne, Hong Xiuquan, he was captured and executed by Qing troops .

Origin and family

Li Xiucheng came from a poor farming family in the mountainous province of Guangxi . His family found it harder than most to keep afloat with subsistence farming and coal-burning . Li Xiucheng was functionally illiterate as a young adult because his family could not afford an education. In 1851 he joined the Taiping movement as a march through rebels.

His younger cousin also joined the Taiping and, like Li Xiucheng, achieved the status of general as king .

Taiping Rebellion

Statue of Li Xiucheng in a museum in Suzhou, PRC, 2011

Li Xiucheng planned together with Hong Rengan the military operations which should break the siege ring around the rebel capital Nanjing. It fell to Li Xiucheng's troops to divert the Qing troops by a mock attack on Hangzhou and then turn his army against the besiegers of Nanjing. In April 1860, his troops captured Hangzhou. In the following month, Li Xiucheng was able to successfully turn his units against the besiegers. In the same year he tried in coordination with Hong Rengan to establish diplomatic relations with the Western powers present in China. Here he met in 1860 with the missionary Joseph Edkins . In August 1860 he commanded the advance of a small contingent of troops to Shanghai . His aim was to establish friendly relations with the foreign powers represented there, for which purpose he also wrote to diplomats and traders residing there via the missionary Issachar Jacox Roberts . The offer was not accepted for reasons of neutrality and Li Xiucheng's troops were driven out by the western military when they marched on the city in the summer of 1860. After the unsuccessful diplomatic advances, there were increasing political differences between Hong Rengan and Li Xiucheng in dealing with the foreign powers, with Li Xiucheng ruling out an alliance with them as impossible.

Towards the end of 1860, Li Xiucheng and his troops devoted themselves to Anhui Province , which was recaptured by Zeng Guofan's troops . Li Xiucheng succeeded in severely disrupting his campaign by attacking the headquarters of the Qing general in Qimen . In the same year he arranged for operations to conquer the two rich eastern provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang . In December 1861 his troops conquered Hangzhou , whereby Li Xiucheng, contrary to the previous Taiping customs, did not massacre the local Manjub population, but assured their safe conduct. At that time, the armed forces he commanded comprised more than a million people. He was preparing an attack on Shanghai in the process. The city was to be surrounded with a methodically laid out siege ring and then finally conquered. Hong Rengan contradicted this plan, but could not prevail with Hong Xiuquan. The attempt to conquer the city failed with the British intervention at Ningbo in 1862 , where British troops supported the Qing in recapturing the city under a pretext. Li Xiucheng was unable to hold Ningbo, but he did manage to repel an attack by a Qing army led by western mercenaries near Qingpu .

In May 1862 the military situation for the rebels worsened when Zeng Guofan's Hunan army successfully re-established a siege ring around Nanjing. Li Xiucheng then withdrew to Suzhou , where he raised an army to support the rebel capital, Nanjing. The figures for this army vary widely from 120,000 to 600,000 men. Li Xiucheng's troops carried one of the main burdens of the fighting for Nanjing with the fighting over Yuhuatai Fort .

At the end of 1863, Li Xiucheng tried to encourage the leader of the Taiping to leave the capital, as he considered it unsustainable. The venture was refused by Hong Xiuquan, who believed in his divine mission. In July 1864, in a militarily hopeless situation, Li Xiucheng decided to attempt an escape in which he sought to save the heir to the throne of Taiping Hong Tianguifu . He separated from the heir to the throne shortly after leaving and was betrayed a few days later by peasants to troops of the Hunan Army. He was captured by the Qing on June 22, 1864, six days before the fall of Nanjing. Under the supervision of Zeng Guoqan and Zeng Guofan , Li Xiucheng was tortured and a detailed confession was extracted from him, which was sent to the imperial court in an edited form. Contrary to the imperial orders, Li Xiucheng was not brought to Beijing alive, but instead was executed on the spot on the orders of Zeng Guofan. As a final request, Li Xiucheng requested mercy from his opponents for his veterans. This request was not granted.

Reception and culture of remembrance

During the Second Sino-Japanese War , there was a series of plays with historical themes. Yang Hangsheng dealt with Li Xiucheng's fate in the 1938 drama The Death of Li Xiucheng . During the Cultural Revolution , Li Xiucheng became a negative example of the CCP's history and propaganda due to his capture . He was accused of defeatism and betrayal of the revolution.

Li Xiucheng's sword has been in the Chinese National Museum since 1981 ,

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stephen R. Platt: Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom - China, the West and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War. New York, 2012, pp. 56f
  2. ↑ Stephen R. Platt: Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom - China, the West and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War. New York, 2012, p. 64
  3. ↑ Stephen R. Platt: Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom - China, the West and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War. New York, 2012, pp. 64-73
  4. ↑ Stephen R. Platt: Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom - China, the West and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War. New York, 2012, pp. 80-92, pp. 140-145
  5. ↑ Stephen R. Platt: Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom - China, the West and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War. New York, 2012, p. 92, p. 163f, p. 197
  6. ↑ Stephen R. Platt: Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom - China, the West and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War. New York, 2012, pp. 237-39
  7. ↑ Stephen R. Platt: Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom - China, the West and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War. New York, 2012, pp. 264, 290
  8. ↑ Stephen R. Platt: Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom - China, the West and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War. New York, 2012, p. 293
  9. ↑ Stephen R. Platt: Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom - China, the West and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War. New York, 2012, pp. 307f
  10. ↑ Stephen R. Platt: Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom - China, the West and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War. New York, 2012, pp. 349-352
  11. ↑ Jonathan D. Spence: God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan. New York, 1996, p. 317
  12. ↑ Jonathan D. Spence: God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan. New York, 1996, pp. 326-328
  13. ↑ Bernd Eberstein: Guide to Chinese Literature 1900-1949 - Volume 4 - The Drama. Leiden, 1990, p. 34, p. 288
  14. ^ Robert P. Weller: Historians and Consciousness: The Modern Politics of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Social Research, vol. 54, no. 4, 1987, pp. 746f
personal data
SURNAME Li, Xiucheng
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 李秀成 (Chinese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Leader of the Taiping Uprising
DATE OF BIRTH 1823
PLACE OF BIRTH Teng (Wuzhou)
DATE OF DEATH August 7, 1864
Place of death Jiangning