How cruel was the Taiping Rebellion? The truth is not what you think

The Taiping Rebellion was a peasant uprising that we are very familiar with. At that time, Hong Xiuquan revolted in Jintian Village, Guangxi, and won the support of the people. He traveled to more than a dozen provinces and fought against the Qing government for more than ten years, and was eventually ruthlessly suppressed by the Qing government. It seems that the Taiping Rebellion that we have seen in many literary works in novels, movies, and TV dramas is mostly praising this great movement.

However, how much do we know about the real Taiping Rebellion? How cruel is this movement?

Many of us know that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement was a peasant uprising against the Qing Dynasty, but few people know what the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement actually caused. How many civilian casualties were caused. According to relevant research, the Taiping Rebellion also directly caused the deaths of 70 million people. After the Taiping Rebellion, China's economy dropped by 40%, with losses reaching hundreds of millions.

In 1856, Hong Xiuquan had an internal dispute with Yang Xiuqing. Not only did he murder Yang Qingxiu's family, but he also killed more than 20,000 of his men. And he asked Wei Changhui to kill Shi Dakai and his entire family. Shi Dakai killed Wei Changhui.

At that time, more than 70 million people died in the five provinces of Jiangxi, Jiangsu, Hebei, Anhui, and Zhejiang. The most prosperous areas in China at that time were also severely hit.

It was at this time that a struggle broke out between the Taiping Army and the Qing Dynasty, allowing Tsarist Russia to take advantage of the situation. The military strength of North China and Northeast China was extremely weak, allowing Tsarist Russia to occupy them. The territory of more than 600,000 square kilometers north of Heilongjiang and beyond the Daxinganling Mountains caused the British and French troops to easily control Beijing and Tianjin, and the fire was burning. The Old Summer Palace.

In this civil war, Anhui Province was a battleground between the Taiping Army and the Qing Army. For example, in Guangde County in southern Anhui, it is no exaggeration to say that almost the entire population was lost. In just five years, the population of Guangde County dropped sharply from more than 300,000 to more than 6,000.

Because the weather was very hot at that time, some people had their hair cut off because of sores on their backs, but they were falsely accused of being evil spirits. In addition to punishment, the criminal law used was to rip off his clothes, burn them red with iron, and listen to the sound of oil stains, followed by physical erosion. Including various methods of quartering the body with five horses, beheading, languishing, etc., and even more cruelly pouring hot oil into the stomach of the prisoner, causing him to die in pain.

In fact, we all find it somewhat incomprehensible. At that time, when weapons and equipment were still very backward, it was difficult to imagine that it could eventually cause tens of millions of deaths. In fact, the most fundamental reason is that the war has destroyed the normal economic production order, and both sides are looking to rob civilians of food, leading to a situation of great famine. Prolonged hunger will seriously reduce the body's resistance.