God's Chinese Son (22 page)

With only minor adjustments, this same system can be used if the demons attack on two fronts at once. For instance, if the east and south come under attack at once, the center will hoist both the blue and the red banners, alerting the west and north commanders to prepare to relieve their embattled brothers.
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Fighting begins the next day, January 1, 1851. As the Manchu colonel Ikedanbu tries to force his seven battalions through the center of the Tai­ping line, Xiao and Yang curve in from the flanks in a coordinated assault, severing Ikedanbu from his rear guard, and trapping him against a small hill. The Qing forces soon begin to break, and the break becomes a rout, with a dozen officers and three hundred or more dead on the Qing side. The horse of Colonel Ikedanbu skids on the bridge as its rider flees the scene of his defeat. Ikedanbu is pounced on by Taiping foot soldiers and cut to death. Next day, reinforcements sent by the commanding officer in Guiping are also defeated, and the remaining Qing troops pull back across the river.
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January 11, 1851, is Hong Xiuquan's birthday, but there is little time to celebrate, for despite their astonishing victory the Taiping forces are again in disarray. There are massive arguments and quarrels with the various Heaven-and-Earth Society recruits, who rebel against the excessive levels of discipline in the Taiping forces, and also perhaps at the absence of promise of further loot or income. To clarify his own position, just after the victory the Heavenly King, Hong Xiuquan, summarizes all his various preceding pronouncements into five simple orders:

1.
  
Obey the [Ten] Commandments.

2.
   
Keep the men's ranks separate from the women's ranks.

3.
   
Do not disobey even the smallest regulation.

4.
   
Act in the interests of all and in harmony; all of you obey the restraints imposed by your leaders.

5.
   
Unite your wills and combine your strengths and never flee the field of combat.
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With resources dwindling, and with the disturbing news that Big-head Yang, the woman leader Qiu Erh, and several other secret-society leaders have not only abandoned the Taiping camp but offered their services to the Qing forces in exchange for official positions and pardons, Hong and his fellow leaders decide to abandon fintian, and move to a base with better defensive possibilities. Their choice falls on the prosperous market town of Jiangkou, fifteen miles to the east, on a fork of land where two rivers converge, making it a good base both for controlling commerce and for supplying reinforcements. Since Jiangkou is also the chosen base for Big-head Yang's renegade forces, as well as the hometown of Wang Zuoxin, the gentry and militia leader who so often crossed and harried the God-worshipers in the past, the town offers a nice focus for revenge. By mid-January the Taiping have left Jintian, ahead of any counterat­tacking Qing forces, and by the end of the month they have taken over Jiangkou and refurbished their forces. They are crucially aided in this endeavor by the one major Heaven-and-Earth leader who has not defected, the sincere God-worshiper Luo Dagang; from this time onward Luo becomes one of Hong's key advisers, bringing the Taiping crucial skills in the command and execution of water-borne campaigning, naviga­tion, and supply.
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But Jiangkou is too well chosen for the Qing to allow the Taiping to keep it as their base. This time, learning from past defeats, the newly appointed coordinating general for all Guangxi forces, Xiang Rong, with two other generals commanding troops from Yunnan and Guizhou, leads three massive columns of troops by land to Jiangkou, supported by two water-borne columns—some ten thousand troops in all. By mid-February they have reached the Jiangkou area. For three weeks the Taiping hold the town, but the forces against them prove too strong, and in early March the Taiping leaders slip out of the city at night and head back to their original base areas near Guiping, settling in the area of Wuxuan township, west of Guiping. During their retreat, the city of Jiangkou is burned to the ground, each side blaming the other for the disaster.
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For the rest of the spring of 1851 the fighting is bitter in the region, if sporadic.

It is in the midst of this chaotic period, perhaps in March 1851, that Hong Xiuquan declares the formal existence of the Taiping Heavenly
Kingdom, a concept long promised yet long delayed. Oddly, however, there is no single ceremony, not even any single day, to point to, and the Taiping themselves never celebrate any particular anniversary for their founding. An unexplained illness of Hong Xiuquan in the spring— described in one Taiping source as the "pestilence"—may have further delayed the dates of key decisions on organization. But from this spring­time on, the year known in the West as 1851, and to the Qing dynasty as the first year of the Emperor Xianfeng, is called by the Taiping themselves the First Year of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom."
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Starting from March 30, 1851, a new kind of public ritual is inaugu­rated, one that combines celestial advice on the kingdom, rewards for the virtuous, and stern punishments for the backsliders. On this day, Jesus (through Xiao) talks of the growing strength and complexity of the Heav­enly Kingdom now on earth, and his special desire "to discipline those who disobey the Heavenly Commandments." After this introduction, Jesus gives voice to a fuller exposition of confidence in the Taiping king­dom's future:

All of you should be at ease and try your hardest. When undertaking this Heavenly enterprise, you cannot take all the weight on your own head. This enterprise is directed by Heaven, not by men; it is too difficult to be handled by men alone. Trust completely in your Heavenly Father and Heavenly Brother; they will take charge of everything, so you need not worry or be nervous. In the past I tried to save as many mortals as possible from among those who were threatened with destruction by demons. Now we have so many followers of God, what should you fear? Those who betray God won't be able to escape Heavenly Father's and Heavenly Brother's punishment. If we wish to have you live, you will live; if we want you to perish, you will die, for no one's punishment will be postponed more than three days. Every one of you should sincerely follow the path of Truth, and train yourselves in goodness, which will lead to happiness.
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Following this statement Jesus gives his blessings to a long list of Taiping leaders and staff officers—some twenty-three in all—who are taken to Heaven and initiated into its mysteries. Jesus then gives specific instruc­tions to the five military leaders, identified by their army corps: front, left, rear, right, and wing—in other words, to Hong's five associates Yang, Feng, Xiao, Wei, and Shi. They are told that disobeying a military order is the same as disobeying the word of God, of Jesus, or of the Heavenly King, Hong Xiuquan. To underline this sense of discipline, an opium smoker in the Taiping ranks is publicly tried—"Can you fill your stomach by smoking opium?"—savagely beaten (with "one thousand blows" according to the text), and then given a last meal of glutinous rice before being publicly executed. Another battalion commander is given one hun­dred blows for not being watchful for traitors within his own unit, and Jesus then gives each commander authority to "kill any such rebels before reporting them to higher authorities, since killing these rebels won't lessen the strength of our armies, whereas having rebels in our army ranks harms the entire kingdom." No units, Jesus emphasizes, are free from such trai­tors, so eternal vigilance is needed.
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A brief reminder to all the faithful of Hong Xiuquan's kingship, and of the awe due to him as the ruler of the world sent down by God, is given by God Himself, speaking through Yang Xiuqing, on April 15, 1851.Then, on April 19, while the Taiping troops are still fighting for survival in the same area of Wuxuan, another solemn meeting is held, containing the same general elements as that of March 30 though in differ­ent order: a public trial of a wrongdoer followed by mass expressions of devotions and religious commitment and a general pronouncement on policy. This time, the wrongdoer is a man who has abused his trust as the bodyguard to the family of the Triad leader and pirate-turned-Taiping general, Luo Dagang, by stealing a golden ring and a set of silver tooth­picks from Luo's wife while she was in a religious trance.
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Like his opium-smoking predecessor the previous month, the thief is to be given one thousand blows, prior to receiving his final meal of glutinous rice and being consigned to the executioner's sword and "a life in hell." The solemn ceremony this time is for all the unit commanders, at the army, divisional, and battalion levels. Jesus' words on this occasion are not only remem­bered; they are made a written part of one of the Taiping movement's most sacred texts:

All of you, my younger brothers, must keep the Heavenly Commandments and obey military orders; you must be harmonious with your brothers. If the leader has more to do than he can manage, let his subordinates assume some of the duties; if the subordinates cannot carry out their duties, then let their superiors take on some of them. You must absolutely not consider people as enemies and hate them because of some chance sentence they uttered that you then committed to memory. You should cultivate goodness and discipline yourselves. When you are in a village you must not ransack people and their possessions. In combat you must never flee from the field when going into battle. If you have money, you must recognize that it is not an end in itself, and not consider it as belonging to "you" or "me." Moreover, you must, with united heart and united strength, together conquer the hills and rivers. You must clearly discern the road to Heaven and walk upon it. At present there is some hardship and distress; yet later you will naturally be given high titles. If, after receiving these instructions, there are any of you who still violate the Heavenly Commandments, still disobey military orders, still willfully contradict your superiors, and still, when advancing into battle, flee from the field, you should not blame me, the Heavenly Elder Brother, if 1 give orders for your execution."
²⁹

From this time on, also, as a heightened proof of the religious discipline now to be expected, those who fail to attend meetings when summoned, or even those who are late, or stumble in their responses to the religious ritual questions, can be beaten with one hundred blows, dismissed from their military posts, or both.
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The frustrating, circular fighting over all-too-familiar ground continues through the spring and summer heat of 1851. The most important of the battles is one the Taiping fail to win. Seventy miles to their south, on April 19—the same day as the major Taiping trial and rally—God-worshipers from a fifth base area have crossed the border from Guangdong province and managed to seize the town of Yulin. The leader of these God-worshipers, Ling Shiba, a Guangdong native, is known to the Heav­enly King. Ling had been converted to the God-worshipers' religion while laboring as a migrant indigo gatherer in the Pingshan Mountain area, between 1848 and 1849, and became a passionate believer. Moving between his Guangdong native place in Yixin township and the Thistle Mountain base area, Ling converted hundreds to the cause, and prospered in business. Early in 1850 he sold all his accumulated land—paddy field, unirrigated land, and mountain land—and put all the proceeds, more than 340 ounces of silver, into the common Taiping treasury.

Even earlier than other leaders in Thistle Mountain, Ling began secretly to make and stockpile arms, store gunpowder, and prepare red cloth and sashes for his fledgling army. But when he approached Hong Xiuquan in the summer of 1850, asking to join him in Jintian, he was told to wait for a more propitious time. While waiting, he built up his military base by holding off the local militia, and roused popular support by seizing granaries and opening them to the poor, and by posting placards in vil­lages attacking the greed and selfishness of local landlords and officials. Now, in mid-1851, with three thousand or more of Ling's troops holding Yulin and ready to move north to join up with Hong, the times are propi­tious indeed. But realizing the fateful nature of this planned union of Taiping forces, the Qing generals concentrate all their resources to stop

Ling from moving north, and to stop Hong's troops from moving south. Despite repeated attacks on the Qing lines, neither army of the God- worshipers can break through.
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The key figure in preventing the linkup between Hong Xiuquan's troops and Ling's is the same former pirate leader Big-head Yang, whose riverine forces prevent all Hong's attempts to cross the Qian River. And by June 1851 the incessant counterattacks of the Qing and local militia troops force Ling to abandon Yulin, and to retreat back eastward into Guangdong. To strengthen their morale after this setback, Hong's Tai­ping troops are told in mid-June to shed their doubts and fears, and not only to protect their "kingdom" as it is now constituted, or to look to eternal rewards in Paradise at God's right hand, but to fix their sights on the coming "Earthly Paradise," or "Heaven on earth" (
xiao tian tang),
where all God-worshipers "would receive rewards beyond their expecta­tions." Though the exact location of this yearned-for place is not disclosed, this is the first indication Hong Xiuquan has given that the Taiping forces may soon have a permanent base in which they and their families can live in joy and peace.
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