Third Battle of Nanjing

Third Battle of Nanjing, the last major battle, fought March–July 1864, of the Taiping Rebellion. At the time of the Battle of Sanhe in 1858, the Taiping Rebellion in China had seemed capable of overthrowing the rule of the Qing emperors. But by 1864 the bulk of the followers of Christian convert and reformer Hong Xiuquan were besieged in the Taiping capital of Nanjing. The battle was enormous, involving some one million fighters, and ended in a bloodbath for the Nanjing rebels.

The Manchu rulers of imperial China had been fortunate to find a loyal and efficient general in Zeng Guofang. Through 1863 and early 1864, aided by the Western-led Ever Victorious Army, Zeng’s Xiang Army drew a noose ever tighter around Nanjing, capturing cities and cutting off food supplies.

The defense of the Taiping capital was entrusted to General Li Xiucheng. By March 1864 Zeng had sealed off the city with a line of forts and breastworks. Zeng’s soldiers dug dozens of tunnels toward the city, intending to pack them with gunpowder and blow up the walls. The Taiping dug counter-tunnels, which led to desperate hand-to-hand fighting underground. With the capture on July 3 of Zijin Mountain, a ridge north of the city, Zeng’s artillery was able to shell the city unimpeded, causing innumerable casualties.

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Nanjing’s population, swelled by Hakka converts to the millenarian Christian rebellion, began to starve, and its defenses came under ever heavier bombardment from Zeng’s European-supplied artillery. Li Xiucheng urged that Nanjing be evacuated, but the Taiping “Heavenly King” Hong Xiuquan insisted that anyone who fled was an apostate and would be killed. After eating weeds and urging his followers to do so, Hong Xiuquan fell ill, perhaps poisoned. He died on June 1 and was succeeded by his son, Tiangui Fu. The young monarch’s reign lasted six weeks. On July 19 explosives in tunnels were fired, destroying a 60-yard (55 m) section of the city walls. Zeng’s soldiers poured into the city, embarking upon a three-day orgy of slaughter and destruction. Li Xiucheng was captured and executed. Zeng wrote to the Chinese emperor: “Not one of the 100,000 rebels in Nanjing surrendered themselves when the city was taken but in many cases gathered together and burned themselves,” preferring death to surrender. Fighting continued into 1866, but from the city’s fall onward the Taiping cause was doomed. The siege at Nanjing was a bloody late episode in what has been reckoned the bloodiest civil war in world history.

Losses: Imperial, 10,000 dead of 500,000; Taiping, perhaps 200,000 dead of 400,000 soldiers and civilians.