3.32 Fall and Rise of China: Taiping Rebellion #9: Li Hongzhang and the Anhui Army

Last time we spoke the Qing dynasty was looking dreadful. More and more peoples were flocking to the Taiping, as the European forces were humiliating the Qing government. Yet the more independent figure of Zeng Guofan and his Xiang army was making headway with its siege of Anqing, so much so it forced the shield king to depart from Nanjing to meet the enemy on the field. The foreign community had not completely lost its faith in the Taiping and sent envoys to see what relations could be made. Then the grand pincer attack of the Taiping kings failed horribly and they were unable to stop the Xiang army from capturing Anqing. Nanjing was now threatened yet again and it seemed no headway was being made with the foreigners to earn their support. Can the Taiping come back from such defeats?

#32 This episode is The Taiping Rebellion part 9: Li Hongzhang and the Anhui Army

 

Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War.

On August 22nd of 1861, Emperor Xianfeng died at the age of 30. The probable cause of his death was tuberculosis, but many romanticize it as him dying of shame and disgrace, never returning to Beijing. I think his rampant abuse of opium may have contributed also. Zeng Guofan received the news on September 14th and had this to write “Heaven has collapsed, the earth is split open. My emperor, from the time he came to the throne until today, over the course of twelve years, never knew a day when he wasn’t consumed by worry over our dangers. Now Anqing is finally conquered, and the longhairs have begun to weaken. It looks as if the war has reached a turning point. But my emperor did not live long enough to hear the report of victory, so his dejection and melancholy will follow him into eternity. What a terrible agony that is for me, and for all of his ministers.” Xianfeng had died after just 11 years of rule and to make matters worse, the throne was supposed to go from father to son, but Xianfeng was notably infertile. In spite of spending almost his entire time with a harem of 18 concubines and wives for years, Xianfeng had managed to only father one son. This son in 1861 was 5 years of age. Hong Rengan began to preach and boast about the situation. “Xianfeng left behind a little demon who is several years old and will find it difficult to continue the demon rule. This is precisely the time for us to seize the opportunity to uphold Heaven, and render ourselves not unworthy in our role as heroes of the world.” Confidence in the dynasty was crumbling, many of the elites within Beijing began to compare the previous Qing emperors' reigns to the current situation. Yet while many of these elites lamented about how the dynasty was in decay, none offered any remedy to the situation, much like our politicians today ahah. 

 

As much as Beijing was in disarray, the Taiping were in no position to march upon it, afterall they had just lost Anqing. However the death of Xianfeng reinfigerated the Taiping nonetheless. Chen Yucheng and the remnants of his battered army were cut off in northern Anhui while Li Xiucheng was marching east into Zhejiang province. Zhejiang at this time held around 26 million people and Li Xiucheng planned to conquer the province and gain further independence from Hong Rengan. Hong Rengan did not want Zhejiang province, well at least not at this time, what he wanted was for the Taiping to consolidate and take back Anqing. Control over the Yangtze region was the key to his strategy of consolidating a southern empire and for that Anqing was a major component. He began to beg Li Xiucheng sending letters from Nanjing to turn his army back around to smash Zeng Guofan. “the Yangtze has been described as a serpent, with its head at Hubei, its body in Anhui, and its tail in Jiangnan. We don’t have Hubei, and if we let go of Anhui as well, the serpent will be sundered, and the tail won’t survive for long on its own.” To all of this Li Xiucheng simply replied that Anqing was a hopeless cause and that he would not leave Zhejiang. Hong Rengan was livid, but what could he really do. Now the way Hong Rengan described the Yangtze as a serpent, was something Zeng Guofan also ascribed to. Both men understood the enormous advantage Wuchang and Anqing presented; they both controlled vast regions of agriculture. But along the eastern coast, particularly the port cities held enormous wealth and this is what attracted Li Xiucheng to Zhejiang. As a result of him taking forces into Zhejiang, now the overall momentum of the Taiping strategy skewed to the east.

 

Hong Rengan had changed after his military disaster at Tongcheng. He was more bitter, angry that the foreigners would not support their cause. And the second he had left Nanjing, the Hong brothers had done everything they could to belittle him. One major thing they did was take away the need for Hong Rengans seal to forward information to the Heavenly Kings, thus taking the mediator monopoly from him. This also came at a time Hong Xiuquan’s son was older and sitting in on important meetings, learning the ropes. The Heavenly son was gradually becoming more important than Hong Rengan, he was no longer the undisputed second in command of the movement. Despite this, Hong Rengan still remained in charge of foreign relations and much of the administration of Nanjing. While Hong Rengan was out of Nanjing, a ton of setbacks had occurred. The worst were the demands imposed upon the Taiping by Admiral Hope and Parkes, that the Taiping must stay at least 30 miles away from Shanghai and other treaty ports such as Hankou and Wuchang.

 

The new 5 year old heir to the Qing dynasty was the son of one of Xiangfeng’s concubines, a pretty Manchu woman named Yehonala. She gave birth to the boy at the age of 20 and since he was the sole male this made her status rise as she was the mother of a soon reigning emperor, a rank that compared to that of being the wife of the emperor. Her title became known as Empress Dowager, and she is quite infamous in modern Chinese history, her name since becoming the Empress Dowager became Cixi. She is often compared to Queen Victoria, as both would be the most powerful women of the 19th century. When Xianfeng died, he issued an edict naming his 8 closest Manchu advisers as regents for his son. Traditionally when a new emperor was too young to rule, power was entrusted to regents or family members until the emperor became old enough. With the boy being 5 years of age, the regents could expect to rule over the empire for at least a decade, not a bad gig. Many of these regents hated the Europeans and dreamed of breaking the treaties. Yet Prince Gong, who many thought was too soft on the foreigners, sought a plan to appease the foreigners by creating a office of foreign affairs, so that in the meantime all the strength of the Qing empire could be brought down upon the Taiping.

 

Now the only check to the powers of the new regents was the pair of Empress Dowagers, Cixi and the Xianfengs widow . Before his death he had given them each an imperial seal. While all edict would be composed by the regents, the Dowager empresses would hold veto powers using their seals. The widow proved compliant to the regents from the offset, but Cixi did not follow the regents without question. She began to assert her independence and threatened to withhold approval for some of the regents' policy decisions, creating a tension between the 8 male regents and the mother of the emperor. The tensions came to a head in late October when Xianfeng’s remains were finally brought back to Beijing. In the grand funeral procession, 124 bearers carried the dead Emperor and at their head was Sushun the top ranking regent. The two dowager empresses traveled with a forward party escorting the young emperor in a closed palaquin. The empresses would have a single day in the capital before Sushun would get there and they quickly went to work.

 

The empresses met with Prince Gong immediately, using their private guards to thwart some of the other regents who were with them from preventing the audience. Some of the regents even tried to stop the boy emperor from meeting with Prince Gong, but Prince Gong had become quite popular in Beijing, having been the only one who stayed to do anything to help the city when the foreigners attacked, thus the population, and more importantly the Beijing guards stopped the regents forces. It also turns out Cixi had spent weeks secretly meeting with Prince Gongs brother at the hunting retreat in Rehe and they formed a plan. Prince Gong accompanied the empresses into Beijing making sure the regents were nowhere near them. Then Prince Gong read out an edict in the emperors name using the empress dowagers seals, charging Sushun and the other regents of treason, who could have seen that one coming. A detachment of Manchu guards led by Prince Gongs brother rode out to confront Sushun, arresting him and the other regents. They were accused of causing a war with Britain and France by misleading the late Emperor Xianfeng with treacherous advice. They were blamed for the kidnapping of Harry Parkes and other envoys, breaking faith with the foreign community and provoking Elgin to march on the capital. They also prevented the emperor against his will from returning to Beijing and faked the Emperor's will to make them regents, this is some real game of thrones shit right here. 

 

The trail was quick, as you would imagine, and within a week the regents were found guilty of all charges, gasp. 5 of them were striped of their rank and banished to the western frontier. The 3 most powerful regents, Sushun, Duanhua and Zaiyuan were sentenced to death, but in display of compassion, Cersei Lanister, I mean Empress Dowager Cixi, no idea how I mixed up those two figures, I see what you did Mr. George R Martin, Cixi granted Zaiyuan and Duanhua the privilege of strangling themselves with silk, but it turned out to be a symbolic gesture as they were hung in a dungeon. For Sushun who proved to be her true rival, he was beheaded in public on November 8th in a cabbage market. Now edicts proclaims empress dowager Cixi would quote “should in person administer the government and by assisted by a counselor or counselors, to be chosen from among the princes of the highest order, and immediately allied to the throne”. Thus Empress Dowager Cixi with Prince Gong as her chief adviser became the new ruler of the Qing dynasty. 

 

Now coming back to a point I made quite awhile back, I think during the first episode of the series, Karl Marx predicted in 1853 that the Taiping rebellion would cripple British trade in China and he was quite wrong, at least initially. Ironically, the civil war severed the internal trade networks within China causing merchants to dramatically look to external trade thus booming British trade. Figures rose about 30 percent from 1860-1861, but then another large event unfolded, another civil war, this time in America. Britain was thus trapped between two large civil wars. British commerce relied heavily upon both these nations. The United States, aka King Cotton in the south, provided the cotton for British textiles, which they sold in the far east. ¾’s of Britain cotton came from the US south and because of the tricky political situation now Britain could not afford to deal with those southerners lest they get caught up in the civil war. Now until the cotton dried up from the US, Britain was able to undersell the Chinese domestic cotton market, but with the outbreak of the war, the prices rose too high and now the Chinese were not buying their stuff. British exports dropped dramatically, causing textile factories to shut down. Cotton was just one part of the conundrum, because alongside it, the Americans consumed around 2/3rd of the green tea purchased by British merchants from China. Thus the British tea and textile trade was being torn to bits.

 

There was one gleaming light of hope however. The new treaty ports in China offered some new opportunities. The British could trade between the ports, especially those along the Yangtze river. Hell the internal trade networks were shattered as a result of the civil war, but the British enjoyed steamship power along the rivers and the ability to go freely from port to port. Now Britain sought profit, to do so they needed to expand the Chinese markets, and this meant doing some business with the Taiping who held some of the good ports. Until now Britain had avoided open relations with the Taiping. Now on May 13th of 1861 Britain announced recognition of the confederacy meaning Britain would treat the south as a separate government contending for power and not a lawless rebellion. This meant Britain could loan money and purchase arms and supplies for the Confederacy. To the merchants in China this seemed to be the ideal situation that should be adopted there. Many called for treating the Taiping the same as the confederacy, hell the confederacy was recognized after mere months, while the Taiping had been around for 10 years. The house of commons debated the matter and after long a tedious back and forths it was decided the neutrality stance must be sustained, given however that the Taiping did not hinder British trade within the provinces they controlled.

 

Meanwhile Li Xiucheng’s army was running rampant in Zhejiang province, taking the capital of Hangzhou in December of 1861 after over 8 weeks of siege. The city had 2.3 million inhabitants and it proved quite easy to starve them out. Li Xiucheng had his men fire arrows with messages into the city stating the people would not be harmed and would be given the choice to join the Taiping or be left to leave freely. As one Qing commander at Hangzhou put it “Because the Loyal King issued orders not to harm the people, the people didn’t help fight against him … Thus, none of the people suffered at the hands of the longhairs, and they all turned around and blamed the Imperials for their afflictions.” Thus the Manchu garrison burnt themselves alive while Qing officials slit their throats, but the common people went unmolested, nice for a change. It also seems Li Xiucheng took notice of the horrifying atrocities performed by Zeng Guofan at Anqing and wanted to earn the high ground with the commoners by pointing out how terrible the Manchu were. He even let the Manchu and Qing officials in Hangzhou go free, though as I said many took the alternative path of suicide. 

 

Hangzhou was the capital and lynchpin of Zhejiang province, an enormous blow to the Qing. But there was another city that was significant, Ningbo, a treaty port, on the other side of Hangzhou bay, and just due south of Shanghai. To go from Ningbo to Hangzhou by land was around 200 miles, roughly double the distance of that by ship. The Qing forces at Shanghai hoped Ningbo’s close proximity would mean the foreigners might defend the city as well. But Bruce stamped that down pretty quick sending word to the consul of Ningbo that if the Taiping were to attack, the BRitish would not get involved. He also told Admiral hope “I do not think we can take upon ourselves the protection of Ningpo, we should not display British naval power near that city lest we get compromise ourselves in this civil contest”. Admiral Hope seems to have seen things differently as upon learning in may of 1861 that the Taiping were going to march on Ningbo, he dispatched Captain Roderick Dew in the 14 gunship Encounter to dissuade the rebels. Captain Dew was also told to try and make contact with any Taiping commanders nearest to Shanghai and to relay the same type of messages Parkes had when it came to Hankou. “Point out to the commander that the capture and destruction of the town of Ningpo would be extremely injurious to British trade and that he should desist from all hostile proceedings against the town. Don't commit yourself to the necessity of having recourse to force, but do remind him of what took place last year at Shanghai”.

 

After giving the veiled threat to the Taiping Captain Dew went into Ningbo and told the Qing officials to mount every possible defense they could. Dew was told by Hope that under no circumstances could he open fire on the Taiping, it really was just a bluff. But Hope also asked Dew to investigate Ningbo and figure out the quote “amount of auxiliary european force which you think sufficient for its defense”. It seems the real politik at play was this. Both Admiral Hope and Frederick Bruce were planning ahead for what they assumed would be a major policy change. Both men expected their government to change its mind and wanted to be ready at a whims notice to defend any British interests from the Taiping. But in essence as you can see their actions were also drawing in conflict with the Taiping, the old self fulfilling prophecy. Both men did not want to see the Qing overthrown by the Taiping, because they seemed the worse choice as far as trade was concerned. All the customs duties from treaty ports were being used by the Qing to pay the reparations to the British for the second opium war, ahaaaaa there it really is. If the Taiping took a port, well the British could expect no return, but to prop up the Qing meant an endless cash flow. Nonetheless the Taiping represented a large threat, the British simply did not have enough forces to defend all their interests for the meantime they had to play a sort of ballet between the Taiping and Qing.

 

Captain Dew ended up bringing 12 large cannons from the British armory at Shanghai and installed them on Ningpo’s walls, figuring if it was not British manning them, well that didnt breach neutrality. But low and behold the Qing officials did not lift a finger to help defend the city, and why would they, if they made the situation worse perhaps the British would become more involved. When the Taiping approached Ningpo, the city emptied, well all those who could flee did. On November 26th the Taiping were 30 miles off from Ningpo and by December 2nd just a days march when the British sent a party to parley with them. The British pleaded for the Taiping to give the city one more week before assaulting it and they agreed to this for some unknown reason. On december 9th, 60,000 Taiping advanced in 2 columns towards the city gates as Taiping naval units rowed over to scale the walls from the sea. It was a relatively peaceful conquest as just about all Qing officials had fled prior. Of course the usual looting was done, but very little murders were performed. The French, American and British officials came to Ningpo to talk to the Taiping demanding they respect their trade privileges and the Taiping commanders agreed enthusiastically offering to execute anyone who dared lift a finger on any foreigner.  Thus for the Taiping this was an incredible victory and one step closer to establishing good relations with the foreigners. 

 

1862 was a year of many unknowns for China, both Beijing and Nanjing were re-forming themselves and no one could accurately predict how the war would go. Zeng Guofan was building up his Xiang army now using Anqing as an HQ. His power base was now Anhui province. To the east, Li Xiucheng controlled Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces, nearly a quarter of China’s yearly income came from these combined territories. After grabbing Ningbo, the only logical step forward was, Shanghai. It was a gleaming gem, unbelievable revenues could be earned by its control. The past 2 years had shown Li Xiucheng that the British simply would not pay the Taiping proper recognition nor respect and so he sought to finally do something about it. Li Xiucheng began to prepare his army to return to Shanghai, this time not so lightly armed. Li XIucheng was never one to believe the foreigners could have ever been won over in the first place and now Hong Rengan’s authority was widely diminished in Nanjing, as for out here in the east it was honestly Li Xiucheng’s show. 

 

As for the British, Ningbo seemed to not be trading much at all since the Taiping came, Anqing had fallen to Zeng Guofan and all the meanwhile Bruce was sending reports back home of endless Taiping atrocity stories whenever they took cities, most were fabricated. Bruce was trying to make parliament see that the stance of neutrality would eventually lead to the death of British trade. Harry Parkes also traveled back to Britain who would have a lot to say to the public about his time in China, his mistreatment afterall was the rationale for the burning of the summer palace. The very last deed he performed before sailing off was a last ditch attempt to stop the Taiping from approaching Shanghai, which they refused. In fact the negotiations had gone so terribly, one of Admiral Hope's commanders threatened to attack the rebels if they dared come near Shanghai.

 

Back to Zeng Guofan, he finally had Anqing, but now he faced the daunting need for more and more men. By taking Anqing he now gained the vast territory around it, holding tens of millions of people spreading towards the east. The Taiping still controlled many towns in northern Anhui and Chen Yucheng was in full retreat going downstream towards Nanjing. Everything east of Nanjing was pretty much a hopeless cause. Zeng Guofan’s men were exhausted, they spent basically a year besieging Anqing, many wanted to go back home, morale was low. Zeng Guofan began to rebuild in Anqing using his own men as laborers. Under his direction they rebuilt the confucian academy and examination hall, repaired the walls and restored the markets. Next he set up relief stations to help the famine stricken population and helped them restore the agricultural output of the region. He also sent his brother Guoquan back to their homelands of Hunan to recruit another 6000 Hunanese soldiers, because the next push was going to be against Nanjing. Now Zeng Guofan was taking a bit of a risk sending his brother to do such a thing. There was a coup going on in Beijing, the Cixi Cersei Lannister one I spoke of, he did not know what the outcome was going to be from said coup and his actions could be judged as anti Qing since he was gaining more and more power independently from Beijing. Zeng Guofan already had a growing number of critics within Beijing who saw him as a growing threat to the central government. Thus he simply dispatched word back to the capital stating he needed to gather as many forces as he could to be able to march upon Nanjing to ride the dynasty of the Taiping menace. But this was all a facade, in order to actually defeat Nanjing, it had to be strangled from supplies, similar to ANqing. Yet Chen Yucheng loomed around in northern Anhui, and he was still yet to consolidate all of southern Anhui. He would need to take vast territory in southern Anhui towards Hangzhou in Zhejiang province and this would require colossal forces. But a strategy formed in his mind, he envisioned 3 separate armies attacking in unison: one from Anqing going east downriver to Nanjing; another led by Zuo Zongtang would march through Jiangxi into Zhejiang to smash Hangzhou; the last would march through Jiangsu and fight towards Suzhou and then Nanjing. But such feats required vast amounts of men, and he was beginning to think his homelands of Hunan were being drained dry of youthful men. Thus he cast aside his conservative methods for the first time and began to cast a wider net, he was going to trust a non Hunanese man to help him in his endeavors, one of my favorite figures in modern Chinese history, Li Hongzhang. Li Hongzhang was 38 years old at this time, a scholar from Anhui province and he was asked to help form a new provincial militia that could supplement Zengs Hunanese one. Just like Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang was a Hanlin scholar, an elite who scored top of the examination system. He was 11 years younger to Zeng Guofan, his father literally passed the Jinshi examination in Beijing in the same group as Zeng Guofan in 1838. The two men became close early on, when Li arrived in Beijing in 1844, fresh from passing his provincial examination, it was Zeng Guofan who agreed to serve as his teacher to help prepare him for the Jinshi, which he passed with distinction in 1847. They were tied by friendship through Li’s father, making Zeng Guofan something like an uncle to him, but even more than that, Zeng Guofan was his teacher and mentor. Within the Confucian culture, a student and teacher were akin to a son and father.

 

Despite such close ties, it took Zeng Guofan a long time to come to the point where he would trust Li Hongzhang with his own army. Zeng Guofan knew the man was brilliant, he also knew he was ambitious. Li’s older brother served on Zeng Guoan’s staff, but when Li Hongzhang came to Zeng Guofan’s military HQ in Hunan in 1858 looking for employment he was turned away. He was not just turned away, he was literally ignored for over a month. Yes Li spent a month hanging around until he got so frustrated he demanded Zeng Guofan given him a answer, which Zeng did, through an aid with some sarcasm he said to Li “perhaps the Hunan army was a bit to shallow a beach in which to harbor so large a ship as Li”. What Zeng was doing and would continue to do for a few years was to break Li’s arrogance. He did this by various means, such as having guards drag Li literally out of bed if he ever overslept. Zeng was trying to toughen the man up, to test his grit. Li for his part hung in there, trying to convince Zeng of his loyalty and humility. They got in fights of course and this led Li to leave for a time, but by 1862 their relationship was solid and Zeng either through his trust in the man or in desperation entrusted him with basically being his second. Now there were some negatives to all of this. Zeng Guofan had very experienced military commanders at this point, much more experiences than Li Hongzhang, but Zeng Guofan was a scholar more than anything else and he valued Li Hongzhangs hanlin scholarship above all else.

 

In early 1862, Li Hongzhang began to form a regional militia using the same model as the Xiang army, which would be known as the Anhui army. He performed the same type of recruitment scheme, going first to his home district, forming companies of troops from the same homes to serve officers who they had connections to. Several thousand Anhui commoners were brought to Anqing by February to begin training under the guidance of veteran officers of the Xiang army. This new army would have the same structure, same training and for all intensive purposes was a mirror image of the Xiang army. The only real difference was that Li Hongzhang took orders from Zeng Guofan whom was supposed to be taking orders from Beijing but was increasingly becoming more and more independent. Empress Dowager Cixi and Prince Gong basically had no choice, but to allow Zeng Guofan his autonomy, because he was proving to be one of the very few commanders capable of dealing defeats to the Taiping. In November they issued edicts appointing Zeng Guofan as the governor-general and imperial commissioner of Anhui, Jiangsu and Jiangxi alongside military control over Zhejiang. This was some pretty crazy stuff, he basically controlled 4 of the richest and most densely populated provinces. 

 

Zeng Guofan received the news of his new appointments at the same time as the news of what occurred during the coup, he was pretty surprised to say the least. Control over Zhejiang was a miserable part of the news, as it was literally being attacked with Hangzhou and Ningbo falling. He was a bit overwhelmed by it all and wrote in his diary “This power is too great, my stature will be too high, and my undeserved reputation has outgrown itself. This terrifies me to the extreme.” Despite his anxiety over it all, Zeng Guofan set to work and basically ordered his subordinates to perform a complete takeover of the civil administration of eastern China. Zeng Guofan’s top subordinates became the individual governors of each province under him with Li Hongzhang receiving Jiangsu, Zuo Zongtang Zhejiang and two other proteges taking Jiangxi and Anhui. Now Zeng Guofan was able to redirect tax revenue from the provinces under his control, meaning he could hire and supply more troops. 

 

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Emperor Xianfeng was dead and Empress Dowager Cixi was in charge. Zeng Guofan was making a ton of progress, but there simply was not enough men so he had his student Li Hongzhang form a new Anhui army.