Background
Li Xiucheng was born in 1823 near Guangxi, China.
Li Xiucheng was born in 1823 near Guangxi, China.
An educated Hakka and spectacled farm worker when he joined the Tai-ping troops in 1851, Li Xiucheng demonstrated his talent and excellent leadership as a military commander and strategist, for which he was rewarded the title "Loyal King" in 1858 by Hong Xiuquan, the supreme leader of the Taiping Uprising.
After the 1856 internal strife, which resulted in the killing of two top Taiping leaders, it was Li who saved the Taiping cause from immediate collapse through both his military campaigns and administrative skills. For almost eight years he exerted his uttermost efforts at managing the Taiping affairs. His troops were able to retake Jiangsu province despite the setback that they suffered from foreign intervention during their assault on Shanghai. Ironically Li Xiucheng,who was more willing than most of his countrymen to believe in the rationality of the Westerners in China, ended up inviting the latter to abandon their neutrality by posing a threat to their economic interests in Shanghai.
Meanwhile, his military endeavor to tackle the Qing forces west of Nanjing in 1863 did not fare well. With the food supply cut off by the government troops, Li Xiucheng tried to implement a futile plan to stockpile weapons in Nanjing. Li, though remaining loyal to Hong Xiuquan, grew increasingly suspicious of the latter’s lofty religious hyperbole. Upon Hong’s death on June 1, 1864, it fell upon the Loyal King to assist Hong's successor, his sixteen-year-old son. On July 19, 1864, a destitute Taiping capital fell to the Qing forces.
Li5s last act of loyalty was to give his own horse to Hong Xiuquan's son while helping the young king to escape at the risk of his own life. In captivity from July 30 to August 7, Li was instructed to write an autobiographical deposition by Zeng Guofan, his captor who was instrumental in defeating the Taipings. He finished a voluminous account of the Taiping movement before being executed in Nanjing on August 7, 1864. It is worth noting that Li Xiucheng at the very end of his life admitted that he did not completely understand Hong Xiuquan, the religious mystic and leader of the Taiping, and he went so far as to advise the Qing authority to purchase the best ammunition from Western powers in its efforts at strengthening China.
Li Xiucheng had a son Li Ronfar, and three daughters, whose husbands were Taiping generals (including Tan Shaoguang and Chen Binwen).