God's Chinese Son (23 page)
The Qing forces keep up their pressures throughout the Taiping base area, and despite these promises of an Earthly Paradise Taiping morale begins to sag. Taiping leaders single out for praise the women's units, which with some divine help repulse formidable militia attacks.
33
But instructions issued to unit commanders at the newly instituted roll calls for soldiers suggest that attrition is taking its toll: a name board is now to be prepared for each unit, with the names of soldiers assigned to the unit written on it. Those who have "ascended to Heaven" since the fighting began—that is, have died in combat—have their names marked with a red dot; those who are ill are marked with a red circle; those wounded are marked with a red triangle; and those who have recently deserted are marked with a red cross. "Thus," says the Taiping instruction, "the person who calls the roll, upon reading the name board, will know immediately the number of available soldiers."
34
In his constant hunts for traitors in the Taiping ranks Hong—aided at times by timely warnings from Jesus relayed to earth by Xiao Chaogui—orders public executions for those caught, and placards hung around their necks, reminding all that "Jesus our Elder Brother showed us the treacherous heart of this demon follower."
35
By mid-August 1851 Hong and the other Taiping leaders have come to a difficult decision. Despite the hallowed role of Thistle Mountain in their movement's founding and growth, they must make a breakout. To do this successfully calls for extraordinary secrecy and meticulous planning. Special orders are given forbidding any record of the discussions about the decision; even so, there is obviously bitter disagreement, and many God-worshipers are castigated for their selfishness and pettiness as the time for departure approaches.
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It is Hong Xiuquan who has to explain this collective decision to his followers, and he does so in both celestial and strategic terms:
In the various armies and the various battalions, let all soldiers and officers pluck up their courage, be joyful and exultant, and together uphold the principles of the Heavenly Father and the Heavenly Elder Brother. You need never be fearful, for all things are determined by our Heavenly Father and Heavenly Elder Brother, and all hardships are intended by our Heavenly Father and Heavenly Elder Brother to be trials for our minds. Let every one be true, firm, and patient at heart; and let all cleave to our Heavenly Father and our Heavenly Elder Brother. The Heavenly Father previously made a statement, saying, "The colder the weather, the more clothing one can remove; for if one is firm and patient, one never notices such things." Thus, let all officers and soldiers awake. Now, according to a memorial, there is at present no salt; it is then correct to move the camp. Further, according to the memorial, there are many sick and wounded. Increase your efforts to protect and care for them. Should you fail to preserve a single one among our brothers and sisters, you will disgrace our Heavenly Father and Heavenly Elder Brother....
Whenever the units advance or pitch their tents, every army and battalion should be equally spaced and in communication, so that the head and tail will correspond. Use all your strength in protecting and caring for the old and the young, male and female, the sick and the wounded; everyone must be protected, so that we may all together gaze on the majestic view of the Earthly Paradise.
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Once again, there is no sign of where the Earthly Paradise lies. But there are indications of its general direction, since the breakout is made to the northeast. In military terms, the maneuver is stunningly successful: fast, disciplined, coordinated, and leaving the Qing troops off-balance. But it is ruthless too, for the masses of the God-worshipers are told to burn their houses as they prepare to leave, as proof of their total commitment to the Taiping cause. And as each village is abandoned, it and the surrounding hills are combed for hidden supplies of food that will be needed on the march.
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The vanguard land forces of the Taiping are led by Xiao Chaogui and Shi Dakai, and the river forces by Luo Dagang; they move swiftly up the Meng River valley toward the walled city of Yongan, some sixty miles north-northeast of Thistle Mountain. Unable to work out what route the Taiping are taking, two pursuing columns of Qing troops move either too far to the west or too far to the east to stop them. Hong Xiuquan, guarded by Yang Xiuqing's central army, moves behind the vanguard by river, with his family. Feng Yunshan and Wei Changhui are given the dangerous task of guarding the rear of the massive column.
The city of Yongan, though stoutly walled, is unprepared for such an onslaught, and not strongly defended. The Taiping vanguard forces reach the edges of Yongan on September 24, 1851, and in a strategy later lauded in Taiping accounts, they bewilder and shatter the nerves of the city's defenders by riding their few horses around the city walls with baskets of rattling stones to amplify their sound and exaggerate their numbers, and by lighting and hurling into the city, throughout the night, a large store of fireworks that they have found in the suburbs. The next day, with the city's residents dazed and sleepless from the explosions, fumes, and colored lights, the Taiping forces train what cannon they have on the city's east gate, and send scaling parties over the walls—some protected from the defenders' fire by coffins held on long poles over their heads, others laying ladders horizontally onto the walls from the roofs of nearby houses that the defenders have failed to demolish. By evening, eight hundred Qing troops are dead, and their senior officers have been killed or have committed suicide. It is September 25, 1851, and fourteen years after Hong's first celestial battle the Taiping have acquired a solid earthly city.
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Yongan is a good-sized walled city, home to a large population; before the Taiping arrived, it was also home to the magistrate and his extended staff, but now they are dead or fled. Hong Xiuquan, entering the city on October 1, 1851, a week alter its capture, at once takes up residence, with his family, in the former magistrate's residence. With its spacious courtyards, reception rooms, library, and the ornamental streams and ponds around the private family quarters, it must seem like a paradise indeed after the years of hiding and fighting.
1
But Hong realizes that all the exhausting maneuvering and marching and the presence in the Taiping ranks of new and untried troops, as well as former secret-society members, have created serious risks of looting and other abuses by his followers. So his first official act in the city is to issue a warning and an exhortation, combining the need for order with the promise of the new community.
An order to officers and soldiers of all ranks in each army corps and battalion:
All of you must think of the public good, not of your private interests;
and with single-minded determination cleave to your Heavenly Father, Heavenly Elder Brother, and myself. From this day on all soldiers and officers are ordered that, every time you kill demons or capture their cities, you must not hoard away for yourself the gold and valuables you find, the silks, and other precious objects, but must hand over everything to the sacred treasury of our Heavenly Court. All violators will be punished.
2
Such an order surely helps in preventing abuses by the Taiping troops, but it is also essential to gain the active loyalty of the people of Yongan and those in the surrounding villages, many of whom are Hakka, but still frightened and suspicious. The Taiping leaders spread the word that they have no desire to harm the people, only to kill the demons and follow the commandments of the Lord in Heaven. The people of Yongan are reassured that they do not have to join the Taiping armies, or adopt the God- worshipers' religion. It is enough if they follow certain rules of behavior toward the occupying troops, one of which is to hang a simple circlet of bamboo strips above their house doors as a sign that they welcome their occupiers. Special rewards are given to those in Yongan or nearby villages who bring members of their communities to promise obedience to the Taiping, who report on the movements and morale of the "demon troops," who make contributions of cash and grain, or help the Taiping transport military supplies. To temper this generosity with rigor, swift execution is promised to any in Yongan who provide supplies to the demon troops, enroll in local anti-Taiping militia units, and take advantage of the exigencies of war to rape women or plunder and murder local residents.
3
To further bolster local support, the Taiping try to get the city and village markets functioning as they were before the Heavenly Army arrived, and to ensure that all goods obtained from the locals are properly paid for at current prices. In cases of wealthier landlords fleeing from the area to avoid expressing loyalty to the Taiping, the Taiping send out sizable groups of troops to raid the fugitives' homes and seize their grain stores, livestock, salt and cooking oil, and even their clothing. In one of these raids, some two thousand Taiping troops—both men and women— move against the Li and the Luo families, and need five days and nights to list and carry away the families' accumulated stores. On other occasions troops are sent to cut the grain from landlords' fields. Some of these purloined goods are shared out among the local villagers, and the remainder deposited in the Taiping's common treasury in Yongan city.
4
The idea of all things being pooled in common in this "sacred treasury" draws both on past Chinese historical traditions and on the voice of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount: if the Heavenly Father is omnipotent and creates all things, then of course His delegates on earth can furnish all supplies to all their followers.
5
But those showing such a communal sense— whether out of love for their fellow beings, or fear of reprisals if they disobey—also need reassurance that their courage will be rewarded on this earth. Accordingly Hong's second imperial pronouncement in Yongan, issued on November 17, orders all the sergeants in the Taiping army to make a meticulous recording of the performance of the twenty-five corporals and private soldiers under their personal command. Courage in battle and obedience to orders will be marked with a circle against each man's and woman's name; cowardice and disobedience, with a cross. As each record book is filled, it is to be passed up the chain of command to the senior generals themselves, when all the circles and crosses will be tallied. Those of the highest merit will be rewarded with the highest offices when the Taiping army at last makes its home in "the Earthly Paradise." As with the promises made earlier in June and in August, no indication is given yet of where or when this Earthly Paradise will be found.
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To prepare for that projected event, Hong Xiuquan uses the breathing space provided by Yongan to declare the advent of Taiping time, by promulgating a new calendar first devised by Feng Yunshan some three years earlier. This Taiping calendar rejects the dates prepared by the astronomers in the Qing court, which set the rhythms for the festivals and seasons of the country as a whole. Nor does it follow the exact contours of the Western countries' calendar, which Hong Xiuquan (and probably other Taiping leaders) would have been familiar with in Canton, despite that calendar's Christian structuring. Instead, it reaches back to China's early classical texts, and combines them with some aspects of the West, to create a year of 366 days, divided into twelve months and seven-day weeks, with the odd-numbered months having thirty-one days, and the even ones thirty days. Though the familiar Chinese twenty-four solar terms are kept, and the lunar mansions, the new calendar with its Sabbath day for prayer and rest is believed to be purified of its old superstitious elements, which are now seen to have been no more than "the demons' cunning scheme to deceive and delude mankind." By contrast, the new calendar, with "its years, months, days, and hours all determined by our Heavenly Father," will ensure that every moment of future Taiping time is both "happy and peaceful."
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On December 4, 1851, in a third decree, Hong Xiuquan makes his promises broader and grander. Honorary hereditary titles are granted to all those officers who have already given their lives in the Taiping cause. And for the living, who have been fighting for the Taiping, there are— depending on their rank—awards of the caps and coats worn by officers, or of the ceremonial cowls worn by the sergeants. Hong promises too that all loyal followers shall be treated with equal dignity, henceforth, until the day they reach that Earthly Paradise of which Hong has spoken thrice before. At that joyful time, more honorary titles will be handed out, and all "in dragon robes and horn-encrusted girdles" will be welcomed in Hong's Heavenly Court.
8
To supplement these promises of future bliss, the Heavenly King drafts lists of ritual titles and ranks for the Taiping leaders, along with the correct terms of address to be used for each of them, their wives, and their children. Hong Xiuquan's own son, Tiangui, now two years old, is to be called "the Young Monarch, of ten thousand years." Hong's future sons, as many as there may be, shall be called "Heir to the Heavenly King, for one thousand years." Hong's daughters shall be known as "Princesses." The senior generals shall be called "Excellencies," the medium officers and sergeants addressed as "Your Worship." Their male children shall be called "Sons of the Just," and "Sons of the Commander," and their daughters be known as "Jade" or "Snow." Women commanders shall be termed "Chaste Ones," and the wives of officers as "Noble" with terms appropriate to their husband's rank: "Noble Lady," "Noble Beauty," "Noble Nurse," and "Noble Bride."
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The same decree provides the forms of the honorific titles for each of the five senior God-worshiper leaders, those celestial voices and military commanders who have brought the Heavenly Army from its fragmentary life in Thistle Mountain to the heart of Yongan city: Hong Xiuquan, as Heavenly King, is hailed as the Lord of Ten Thousand Years. Yang, as the East King, is Lord of Nine Thousand Years, and Xiao, West King, Lord of Eight Thousand Years; Feng, South King and Lord of Seven Thousand Years, while Wei, the North King, will be Lord of Six Thousand Years, and Shi Dakai, still in his early twenties but proven again and again in combat, shall be Wing King and Lord of Five Thousand Years. The honorific terms by which they were known in the previous months— "Kingly Fathers," or "Wang-ye"—will be dropped, for
ye
is part of the Lord's name Jehovah (Ye-huo-hua), and to suggest that such earthly men share in this fatherhood partakes of the "twisted usage of our mortal world" and has proved "somewhat offensive" to the Lord God Himself.
10
Following similar logic, Hong Xiuquan declares that he himself must never be addressed as "Godly"
(di),
"Supreme"
(shang)
or "Holy"
(sheng)
but only as "Sovereign"
(zhu),
while the word
wang
itself—"prince" or "king"—will be used for no other mortals but these Taiping chosen ones. To underline the special status of these leaders, in Taiping texts henceforth all references to those figures in China's past who used to be called
wang
or king will be written with a character that has the addition of the "dog" component on its left-hand side; in regular usage this character is pronounced "kuang" and bears the basic meaning of "wild" or "cruel."
11
While Hong drafts the decrees that are meant to reassure his followers that their hardships and self-denial will be rewarded, it is Yang and Xiao—speaking this time as the two "chiefs of staff' of the "Taiping Heavenly Kingdom," rather than as the voices of God and Jesus—who give the rationale for the battles that the Taiping now are fighting. What the Taiping faithful are now experiencing, they tell their followers, is the fourth manifestation of God's divine rage and power. The first manifestation was when God—"spiritual father, father of the soul, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent"—having created all the heavens, earth, and living things in six days, sent down a great flood for forty days and forty nights. The second manifestation was when He rescued the Israelites from the land of Egypt. As the third manifestation, He sent His own son, "the Savior, Lord Jesus," to be born on earth, suffer, and redeem the sins of men. And as the fourth, he sent an angel to bring Hong Xiuquan up to Heaven, where Hong received his orders to kill the demons, rule the world, and save the people. To help Hong in this task, both God and His son Jesus descended regularly to the world, "manifesting their innumerable powers" and "exterminating great numbers of the demons in pitched battles." The leaders of these demons are the new emperor of China, the "Manchu devil Xianfeng, descendant of barbarians," and his ally the old serpent devil. These two and all their slavish minions have misled many true Chinese, and even the members of the Hong brotherhoods of Triads and the Heaven-and-Earth Society, although at their secret-society initiations these men had "formed blood pacts to exterminate the Qing, with united hearts and strengths."
12
In appealing to the secret-society followers of the Taiping, the leaders admit that some of the purity of the earliest God-worshiping congregations has been lost. They also imply that they know there are traitors in the ranks, and indeed much of the prestige of both Yang and Xiao springs from their using their heavenly voices to identify and condemn Taiping turncoats secretly working for the Qing, or planning to desert to them. Some of these schemes go back six months or more, and involve hundreds of men, elaborate deceptions, and dual allegiances, as when Qing supporters pretend to be Taiping loyalists hiding out in Qing encampments until they can enter Yongan to "serve" the Heavenly King. On several past occasions such suspected traitors were executed or savagely beaten—even during the most difficult months of campaigning that preceded the capture of Yongan—and new cases are constantly coming to light, even within Yongan's walls.
13
There is of course no certainty that Yongan, despite its greater size, will prove a firmer base than those earlier ones around Guiping. For though the approximately twenty thousand Taiping troops have defended Yongan with greater care than any base before—they have ringed the walled city itself at a distance of about one mile with peripheral defensive earthworks, set up a second line of patrolled defenses that reaches far beyond these earthworks into the countryside, put their boats to patrol the nearby river Meng, and erected high wooden towers to act as watching posts and bases from which to launch projectiles—the Qing armies are not leaving them in peace.
14
More and more Qing troops have gathered, forming a massive armed base camp to the southwest of the city, and a smaller encampment to the northwest. They are backed by local provincial officials, militia groups, and defected bandits, so that the total government forces exceed forty-six thousand by the end of 1851. Even though these troops are not that reliable—many of them are often willing to trade clandestinely with the Taiping, bartering meat, fish, and pickles with the enemy under cover of dusk or the smoke of their campfires—nevertheless at regular intervals they have been launching probes or full-scale counterattacks, either to cut the Taiping lines of communication to north and south or to move against the now fortified villages that serve as the Tai- ping's defensive outposts.
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