The divine power in heaven and the imperial power on earth -- an inextricable knot of history

In China's feudal society, where the productive forces were very backward, the oppressed and exploited poor peasants often took a mysterious form when they tried to overthrow the rulers who did not have enough strength to overthrow them. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 infoIn the early days of the Taiping Revolution, in order to win the support of the masses, Hong Xiuquan and others also adopted this form. Hong Xiuquan claimed to have gone to the heavens, and the all-knowing and all-powerful emperor God once gave him a sword and a golden seal, and ordered him to go down to earth to be "the true son of heaven, cut the evil and leave the right". In this way, Hong Xiuquan turned himself into a "god", becoming the second son of God the Father, the brother of Jesus, and the human monarch carried by heaven. The core of China's feudal monarchy is "I am the country", and the world is set in one place. Since Hong Xiuquan ascended the throne of the Heavenly King, he has always called himself "I", and repeatedly emphasized that "the Celestial Empire is serious, close to the power of heaven, life and death are up to the Son of Heaven, and all officials have no disobedience". After Hong Xiuquan deified himself as the second son of God, Yang Xiuqing and Xiao Chaogui also pretended to be possessed by God the Father and Brother Jesus respectively. In this way, there are two conflicting power systems within the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom on earth. In the world, Hong Xiuquan is the supreme commander of the Taiping Army and the monarch of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and Hong is the monarch and minister of Yang and Xiao; However, in the Cult of God, the relationship between Hong and Yang and Xiao has changed from a king and a minister to a relationship between son and father and brother and brother, that is, Hong Xiuquan, who is the king of heaven, must also obey the orders of Yang and Xiao who are rumored to be the father and brother of heaven. As a result, between the religious fathers and sons and brothers and the political monarchs and ministers, between the divine right and the monarchy, the power intersected, and the dignity and inferiority were reversed, forming an unbreakable knot in the system of the unity of politics and religion in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. This kind of contradiction between divine power and imperial power is not only the result of Yang Xiuqing's conspiracy, but also creates conditions for him to further specialize and eventually want to replace Hong Xiuquan.

Before the establishment of Tianjing, Yang Xiuqing, the king of the east, was still able to maintain the authority of the king Hong Xiuquan, but after that, Yang Xiuqing gradually regarded himself as the father of heaven, acted arbitrarily, and always coveted the throne of imperial power. Hong Xiuquan wanted to "have the four seas and care for all directions", and Yang Xiuqing proposed that "there is the king of the East within the four seas"; Hong Xiuquan wants "all the countries in the world are unique", and Yang Xiuqing's deployment of the door is openly written, "Worship the Heavenly Father will always be my father, and protect the East King as soon as the king of people". Yang Xiuqing was "majestic and unassuming, and did not know how to be jealous", and finally developed to the point of scolding the king of heaven and forcing him to be sealed long live, as a result, between Hong and Yang, the contradiction between the imperial power and the divine power became more and more intense, and it could not be reconciled, and a tragic internal strife in Tianjing inevitably broke out.

After the Tianjing Incident, although the imperial power and the divine power were ostensibly unified, the myth that God was "omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent" had been completely shaken in the Taiping army. At the same time, because Hong Xiuquan ignored the government and still regarded himself as the head of the church, the imperial power was also declining. First of all, the winged king Shi Dakai returned to Beijing to assist the government, Hong Xiuquan saw that he was expected to return, and was worried that the power would fall again, so "the lord is what I do, and the military division is also what I do", and named his brother Hong Renfa as the king of An and Hong Renda as the king of blessing, in order to contain the winged king, and there is a intention to murder. As a result, Shi Dakai didn't want to be Yang Xiuqing's second, so he left Beijing angrily. Shi Dakai's expedition did not return, and although he avoided the second bloodshed of Tianjing, he led more than 100,000 elite divisions on a divisive journey, which greatly weakened the power of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. In the later period of the Heavenly Kingdom, Hong Xiu handed over all the political affairs in Beijing to his brother Hong Renda; The phenomenon of "taking care of oneself and others and ignoring one's selfishness and ignoring the public" in the Taiping Army became increasingly serious, and even "privately engraved letters", "privately gave official certificates", and "privately related to official positions". Hong Xiuquan was afraid that Li Xiucheng and other rising kings would not be able to lose their tails, and they built kings to divide their powers, and as a result, after indiscriminately sealing the princes, more mountain forces were formed that supported the army and respected themselves and divided one side, so that there was a serious situation in which the king of heaven could not control the main general and the main general could not command the army.

Heaven on earth, feudalism - the breeding ground and soil for corruption

The Church of God founded by Hong Xiuquan differs from Christianity and some traditional Chinese religions in that it is not only satisfied with the solace of ascending to heaven after death, but also wants to establish a "little paradise" on earth. The leaders of the Kingdom of Heaven also called on each other, such as Hong Xiuquan before the breakthrough of Yong'an, the edict said: "Kill demons with one heart and boldness, and the burden of Jinbao is eased." Get rid of all the feelings and top the sky, and the gold brick house is glowing. The high heavens enjoy the blessings and majesty, and the smallest and most humble satin. Men wear dragon robes and women arrange flowers, each as a loyal minister, Lao Ma Khan. Yang Xiuqing, the king of the East, also said: Stay in the small heaven, "out of the royal service, the attendants are listed, there are people who are horses, there are people who play fans, there are people who call and hug, and the pomp and circumstance can be described as world-famous." Many of the congregations of God who participated in the Kaneda Rebellion came with the intention of being "generals" and "ladies." Therefore, after the establishment of the capital Tianjing, the idea of "no merit is not punished, merit is sufficient, and the work is taken care of, and later enjoy great blessings" first spread among the senior leadership of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

The ultimate cause of all social and political changes depends on the economy of the times, and any economic system has its corresponding superstructure. In the middle of the 19th century, when the landlord economy and the small peasant economy were dominant, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, which was tasked with overthrowing the autocratic and decadent late Qing Dynasty, did not create "the material conditions for a new society, so no strong ideological or volitional force could free them from this fate", that is, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom regime established by Hong Xiuquan could not get rid of the trap of the traditional feudal imperial system. As early as the Yong'an period, the feudal system of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had already taken the rudiments of feudal power; After the establishment of the capital Tianjing, its internal hierarchy became more and more strict, and the distinction between respect and humility became more and more clear. From the point of view of the official system, from the Heavenly King Hong Xiuquan to the grassroots two Sima, it is divided into 16 levels, regardless of the court, title, crown and uniform, flag, honor guard, style and style, all of them are "the noble and the low, and the system must judge the inferior." The strict hierarchical system and the imperial power system of "I am the world" were not only the basic structure of the feudal autocracy, but also the hotbed and soil for the cultivation of corruption in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. After entering Nanjing City, Hong Xiuquan handed over the affairs of a country to Yang Xiuqing, and he lived in the palace. The soldiers in front fought bloodily, and the husband and wife could not get together, but he had 88 wives and indulged in pleasure. History, the Tianwang Mansion is surrounded by "several and ten miles", the building is magnificent, "carved and beautiful, decorated with gold, painted with five colors, the courtyard pillar carves the dragon with vermilion lacquer, the kiss is gilded, the doors and windows are pasted with satin, the wall is painted with mud and gold, and the marble is paved", the brilliance shines. And Yang Xiuqing's Dongwang Mansion is also six or seven miles around, "extremely poor and ingenious, to show off the same thing". Under the influence of Hong, Yang and others and driven by the hedonistic idea of "Little Paradise", the kings of the Taiping Army and their generals also built a large number of buildings, from Wuhan, down to Suzhou and Hangzhou, the palace of the palace, and looked at each other. This kind of arrogant and lascivious decadent life, even Li Hongzhang and others couldn't help but sigh: "However, if extravagance and indulgence are at this extreme, the rebellion of the ancients may not be the same!" "The kings are extravagant, and so are the armies.

Although the heroes of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom raised the banner of anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism and dealt a heavy blow to the rule of the Qing Dynasty, their inherent limitations of the peasant class were also exposed after the phased victory. Internally, especially within the high-level leadership group, the wind of competition for power and profit and competition for corruption spread rapidly, ruthlessly eroding the body of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

Juye God's Religion, Liye God's Religion - Religion's great influence on the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed, the emotion of the unforgiving world". On the one hand, the king of heaven Hong Xiuquan used the ideal of "having land and ploughing, eating and eating, everywhere is uneven, and everywhere is full and warm" to mobilize the people; On the other hand, it is also used to say, "Those who are willing to worship God will have no calamity and no trouble; Those who do not worship God will be harmed by snakes and tigers" and other religious theories to avoid evil and enjoy pleasures to confuse the people.

After Hong Xiuquan ascended to the pole in Wuxuan or Yong'an, if he could follow the example of Zhu Yuanzhang, the Taizu of the Ming Dynasty, abolish the Cult of God in time, concentrate the great power in one, and correct the political system of the intersection and contradiction between divine power and imperial power, he might have avoided many tragedies that occurred later. But Hong Xiuquan was trapped in the quagmire of religion and could not extricate himself. He not only engraved the so-called "Countless Miracles and Almighty Credentials" displayed by the Heavenly Father and Heavenly Brother into an edict and printed them widely, but also attributed the victories of the Taiping Army in the bloody battle to "the omnipotence of the Heavenly Father and Heavenly Brother"; And threatened, "Today, the Heavenly Father and Brother are doing things, if they want to make the demons born and live, and if they want to make the demons die, they can sweep away the demonic atmosphere and level the four seas", completely ignoring what human beings do.

After the capital was set up in Tianjing, the "Heavenly Dynasty Tianmu System" further stipulated: where 25 families set up a chapel, all marriages and auspicious things must be sacrificed to God, 25 families have children to go to the chapel, and the two Sima teach to read the "Old Edict Sacred Book" and "New Testament Sacred Book", etc., and on all Sundays, the chief of the army leads men and women to the chapel, and the men and women are respectively walking for men and women, listening to the reasoning, and reciting sacrifices to God. In addition to worshipping God on seven days, the Taiping Army also worshiped God every morning and evening, and thanked God every day before meals. At the same time, ideologies other than the Religion of God, including the books of the Hundred Schools of Thought, were all rejected, and "anyone who dared to recite the teachings was killed." In addition, the Bible is also the main topic of the annual entrance examination, and the level of knowledge of the Bible is used as the criterion for selection and tenure. This theocratic organizational system and religious education throughout all strata integrated God's dogma with political, legal, and cultural education, so that the thinking of the entire Taiping Army was completely imprisoned by religious superstition, and every soldier of the Heavenly Kingdom was a faithful believer in God's religion. Therefore, foreign officials at the time recorded that the Taiping army "was very devotional and dedicated, and they were very disciplined, even fanatical, in observing religious rituals and rituals." But religion is an upside-down world after all, following the death of Feng Tianshan, the third son of the Heavenly Father, and Xiao Chaogui, the spokesperson of the Heavenly Brother, Yang Xiuqing, the spokesman of the Heavenly Father, in the midst of internal strife. Thus, the myth of God's omnipotence was completely shaken in the Taiping army. At that time, the folk song in Tianjing City said: "Heavenly Father kills Heavenly Brother, the country can't get through, the long hair is not the right master, and Xianfeng is still allowed."

In the later period of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Hong Xiuquan repeatedly emphasized the divine authority of the monarch and constantly deified himself. In late December 1863, when the Xiang army of Zeng Guofan had besieged the Tianjing regiment, and when the situation in the heavenly kingdom was in great crisis, Li Xiucheng proposed to "let the city go", and Hong Xiuquan actually rebuked: "In accordance with the holy will of God and the holy decree of the heavenly brother Jesus, go down to the mortal world, and be the only Allah of all the nations under heaven, why fear?" I don't help the iron bucket, you don't help, someone helps, you say that there are no soldiers, there are more heavenly soldiers than water, why are you afraid of the demons? "But God the Father cannot save the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. On July 19, 1864, Tenkyo fell. The body of Hong Xiuquan, who died of illness in advance, was exhumed from the Tianwang Mansion by the Hunan army and burned to it. Since then, the myth of God has been reduced to ashes along with the fire of the Heavenly King's Mansion that has not been extinguished for seven days.

If you win someone, you will prosper, and if you lose someone, you will die -- Hong Xiuquan's policy of being alone and widowed

"Survival lies in winning souls", this is a famous saying of Liu Xiang in the Han Dynasty. In terms of winning and employing people, Hong Xiuquan adopted a policy of being alone, far inferior to Zeng Guofan, the leader of the Hunan army who met him with his sword soldiers. In the small family of God's religion, there are not only the almighty Heavenly Father and Heavenly Brother, but even Hong Xiuquan, Yang Xiuqing, Xiao Chaogui and others are all "gods" sent by God to the world. Therefore, they do not need the talent and wisdom of the mortal body, "where there is an attack, there is a miracle of heaven", "In fact, the Heavenly Father has already arranged, so they are invincible and invincible". But in fact, Hong Xiuquan and others also understood that in order to build a heavenly kingdom on earth, a large number of talents must be available. Therefore, they also tried their best to recruit intellectuals, or to open a science or a scholar, or to set up a list to recruit talents. However, the anti-Confucian policy pursued by the Church of God and the radical behavior of "Buddhist temples and monasteries, city god shrines, no temples, no statues, no destruction" caused most intellectuals to retreat. At the same time, for the cultural people who entered the Taiping Army, Hong Xiuquan and others only used them and did not reuse them. History: "The thieves kidnapped my officials and gentry to study with scheming people, or frustrated to death, or divided into various museums to act as bookkeepers, called successively, and did nothing more than write chapters, edicts, seals, notices, family books, military books, etc., all military orders are not heard, and the use of useful talents is counted as oneself." Therefore, after Li Xiucheng was captured, when asked about the good and bad things between the officers and soldiers and the Taiping Army, he said: The officers and soldiers mostly use scholars, but there are no scholars in the Taiping Army. In fact, the Taiping army is not without talents with both civil and military skills, such as the winged king Shi Dakai, the loyal king Li Xiucheng, etc., are all intimidating figures for the Qing army, but they have not been very important to Hong Xiuquan.

At the same time, according to the regulations of the Religion of God, all those who worship God are the children of the Heavenly Father, and those who do not worship God are demons and ghosts, and they are all among the beheaded. In this way, the division of friend and foe by obedience and shemales has seriously expanded the attack area. Similarly, the narrow religious tenets cost the Taiping army many allies and allies. For example, after the uprising of the Shanghai Little Knife Society, the leader Liu Lichuan and others desperately wanted to return to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and wrote to Hong Xiuquan to be driven, but the Heavenly Kingdom never sent troops to respond, leaving it isolated and helpless, and finally defeated. Others, such as the Xiaodao Society and the Red Money Society in Fujian, the Bian Qian Society in Jiangxi, the Shengping Heavenly Kingdom and the Dacheng Kingdom in Guangxi, and the Twist Army on both sides of the Huai River, were all unable to unite well with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. As a result, the peasant rebel armies were suppressed by the Qing army.

The Northern Expedition to the West was like a major strategic mistake of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom

Throughout the history of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, it is difficult for us to see a kind of strategic plan that runs through the overall situation, but there are often strategic mistakes that sit in the trap and break through the encirclement, and are relatively random. For example, after the Jintian Uprising, Hong Xiuquan did not lead his troops north in time, but was stationed at the mouth of the Great Yellow River for 57 days; After ascending to the pole in Wuxuan Dongxiang, he also stationed troops for two months; Later, in Yong'an's "Yuer Mountain City", he hurriedly sealed the king and established the government, and the panhuan was more than half loaded, giving the Qing court the opportunity to calmly transfer troops and send generals. The series of military victories made the leaders of the heavenly kingdom get carried away, thinking that "the power of the heavenly father and heavenly brother is really the work of the heavenly father and heavenly brother to break the million copper barriers", rather than the work of manpower. Therefore, after the establishment of the capital Tianjing, Hong, Yang and others ignored the Jiangnan and Jiangbei camps established by the Qing army outside Tianjing and Yangzhou, and divided their troops into the northern expedition and the western expedition.

At that time, although the Taiping army claimed to be one million, excluding the old, weak, women and children, there were only about 100,000 soldiers who could fight. If we concentrate our forces to first destroy the Jiangnan and Jiangbei camps of the Qing Dynasty that threaten Tianjing (the strength of the two battalions was less than 30,000 at the time), and then take Wuhan, Jiujiang, and Anqing from the top and Shanghai, Suzhou, and Hangzhou with Tianjing as the center, and then establish a consolidated base area in the south of the Yangtze River, and finally wave the Northern Expedition to compete with the Qing court for the world, perhaps we will win the victory of Liu Bang and Zhu Yuanzhang. However, the leaders of the Heavenly Kingdom could not calculate this, but hurriedly divided all the Taiping troops into three, and as a result, whether they stayed in Tianjing, or the Northern Expedition or the Western Expedition, their forces did not have an advantage, and in fact gave the Qing army a chance to break through.

If we do not cultivate moral politics, we will govern the country in a disorderly manner -- a review of the policies of Hong Xiuquan and others

The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom began as a religion and was a theocratic organization, so the dogma of the Church of God was both a military rule and a law. Before the establishment of the capital Tianjing, this kind of religious dogma, which was both legal and military, undoubtedly played a huge role in the battle between the Taiping army and the Qing army. However, after the establishment of the capital, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom did not have a complete set of policies for governing the country, but directly implemented the canons of God for governing the army in the society, which not only did not work, but also greatly failed the people's support.

In terms of economy, before entering Nanjing, the Taiping Army also adopted a policy of protecting agriculture and industry, "buying food for pulp, and giving more market value." However, after the establishment of the capital, Yang Xiuqing issued the "Regulations on Treating the People", implementing the policy of abolishing industry and commerce and returning the acres of land to the public, "shops and shops are bought and sold as usual, but the profits are all owned by the king, and the people are not allowed to use them", "no money, but the people's fields are all the fields of the king, and all the grains are collected by the king." The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom also set up a hundred craftsmen to gather all kinds of craftsmen to serve the kingdom, "but there are rations, and there is no money for hiring." This policy, which deprives the peasants and craftsmen and violates the laws of the economy, is simply unworkable.

In terms of culture, after the Jintian Uprising, driven by the idea of the only true god and God, the Taiping army regarded "all gods and goddesses as demons, and the statues of temples were burned down", so that "the temples and ancestral temples they passed, whether they were in the shape of civil or wood, or the statues of the gods and goddesses, were all stripped." After the establishment of the capital Tianjing, Hong Xiuquan's anti-Confucian policy heated up even more sharply, "where it was trapped, the two wooden masters of the main hall of the school palace were also destroyed and abandoned, and they practiced at will, or piled up arms, or for stables, and the Jiangning school palace was changed to the butcher's ya, and the place of Bishui Yuanqiao was used as a field for cone cattle and dogs." For the Confucian classics, the prohibition is endless, and the destruction is inexhaustible. Subsequently, due to Yang Xiuqing's different opinions, Hong Xiuquan issued an edict to set up a book deletion office, announcing that the Confucian and Mencian scriptures would be allowed to be read only after they were deleted, modified and published. However, until the fall of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the book of deletion and modification was not published, and the book of Confucius and Mencius was still banned. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's destruction of Confucianism, a symbol of Han culture, and the burning of all ancient books, contrasted sharply with the Qing Dynasty, which promoted Confucianism, and the result was nothing less than pushing the entire scholarly class and even the common people against itself.

In terms of social management, in the areas occupied by the Taiping Army, all urban residents, regardless of their beliefs or hobbies, first collected their property in the sacred treasury and divided them into the museum according to men and women, and then strictly performed the ritual of worshiping God, reciting the rules of heaven, and praising the emperor God. This kind of abstinence policy, which abolishes the family and goes against human ethics, has aroused strong dissatisfaction among the majority of the people, so much so that the "voice of resentment" has persisted for a long time. At the same time, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom also forcibly promoted the Cult of God into society, forcing people to change their customs. For example, it is forbidden to worship Buddha and worship gods, worship ancestors, and "prohibit people from worshiping family halls"; It is forbidden for people to celebrate the New Year according to the traditional old calendar, and all old customs that are contrary to the feelings of the people during the festival are banned; It is forbidden to drink alcohol and smoke among the people; This series of policies of governing the country based on religion inevitably clashed fiercely with traditional society, so there were many punishments and killings at that time. Luo Xiaoquan, who was the prime minister of the Kingdom of Heaven, said: "Their political system is as weak as their theology. I don't believe they have any political organization, and I don't believe they know how to organize a government. It seems that all priorities are completely subsumed by military law, and those in power from the highest to the lowest level are on the line of killing. If the slander is removed, this view is not unreasonable.

The vigorous Taiping Rebellion that broke out 150 years ago finally failed, and she made countless heroes hate them for the rest of their lives. Although her great achievements in history and the gains and losses of her rise and fall can be commented on, the tragic lessons she forged with her blood and life will always be worthy of vigilance for future generations.

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