Yang Xiuqing was one of the political and military leaders of the Taiping Revolutionary movement.
Background
Yang Xiuqing was born to a poor peasant family in the Guiping district of Guangxi around 1820. Both of his parents were deceased by the time he had reached the age of nine. Thereafter, he was raised by a paternal uncle whose family he assisted in farming and making charcoal.
Education
Yang had no opportunity for education and could read and write only a few simple characters. Nevertheless, his native intelligence and resourcefulness enabled him to rise to a position of leadership among the farmers and workers of the Guiping district.
Career
In 1846, he met Hong Xiuquan and Feng Yunshan who convinced him to join the God Worshippers a Christian revolutionary society headed by Hong. His kinsmen in the Guiping district followed Yang into the God Worshippers, greatly improving the status of the organization among local people.
In early 1848 while Feng was imprisoned and Hong was absent from Guiping seeking his release, Yang claimed that he had been possessed by God, empowered to speak God's will, and to transfer the sicknesses of others to his own body. Following the return of Hong and Feng to Guiping, in the summer of 1849, they formed a blood brotherhood of seven including Jesus Christ themselves Yang Xiao Chaogui Wei Changhui and Shi Dakai pledging themselves to overthrow the Manchus and establish a Christian kingdom. In May 1850, Yang claimed to have been stricken deaf and dumb. His affliction seriously disrupted the God Worshippers' mobilization of forces. A few months later when Yang claimed to have been miraculously cured by divine intervention, his status within the leadership of the society was greatly enhanced. In December of that year, he dispatched a force from the Guiping district to the adjoining Pingnan district to rescue Hong and Feng who had been held there by government forces.
Full-scale military action by the God Worshippers began in early 1851 at Jintian in the Guiping district following attacks by government forces against village strongholds of the God Worshippers. After the God Worshippers' initial victory at Jintian, Hong disclosed his dynastic intentions, proclaiming the Taiping Tianguo (Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace) and placing Yang in command of the central Taiping army. The Taiping forces advanced westward from Jintian and then reversed course to the northeast taking the walled city of Yongan (present-day Mengshan).
At Yongan, Hong organized the Taiping government and appointed the members of his court. Yang was named Central King, one of five directly subordinate to Hong, the Heavenly King. An imperial army of 30,000 besieged Yongan during the winter of 1851-1852 but the Taipings managed to slip through the imperial encirclement on April 5, 1852. They headed north toward Guilin pursued and attacked by government forces en route. Unable to force entry to Guilin, in late May the Taipings raised their siege of the city and headed north again. After a bitter battle at Quanzhou they withdrew eastward into Hunan occupying Daozhou (present-day Daoxian) in preparation for a strike northward at the provincial capital Changsha. In the summer of 1852, while at Daozhou, Yang and Xiao Chaogui issued a call to the entire nation to rise up against Manchu impotence and ineptitude to establish a God-fearing kingdom of peace and prosperity.
The Taiping attempt to subdue Changsha in the late summer of 1852 resulted in the death of Xiao Chaogui opening the way for Yang to assert greater authority. In November, however, the Taipings abandoned their campaign to take Changsha and marched north into the Yangzi valley. Advancing eastward they captured Nanjing, capital of the Liangjiang Viceroy- alty,in late March 1853. There,Yang exhorted the populace to submit to God and to Hong, to defend the new kingdom, and to enjoy its benefits. Yang was named prime minister of the Taiping kingdom at Nanjing, which became its capital.
Yang directed the new government as Hong became more and more disposed to remain secluded in his palace. The numerous pronouncements on taxation, security, social reforms, the calendar and the like that defined the nature of the Taiping regime were the work of Yang. He launched two major military campaigns from Nanjing: a thrust northward to capture Beijing faltered in the suburbs of Tianjin late in 1853. Undermanned and poorly supplied this force suffered a disastrous defeat in Shandong in late spring 1855. A westward offensive designed to take the principal Yangzi River ports upstream from Nanjing and occupy the surrounding agricultural areas, also foundered when it encountered the determined opposition of Zeng Guofan's Hunan army. Nevertheless, in 1856, the Taipings held the principal river ports along a 300-mile stretch from Wuchang in the west to Jinjiang in the east. In that year, Yang directed the defense of Nanjing against a massive onslaught by imperial forces. Yang's strategy succeeded in dispersing the enemy and inflicting a crushing defeat that freed Nanjing from the threat of further attack by imperial forces. His ambition and arrogance buoyed by military success, Yang attempted to usurp Hong's royal prerogatives. Hong retaliated by inducing Yang's fellow king Wei Changhui, who was bitterly resentful of Yang's lust for power, to assassinate him. The strife that ensued among the Taiping leaders resulted in a purge that brought the movement to the brink of extinction. Much of the responsibility for these events must be laid at the feet of the brilliant but overly ambitious Yang Xiuqing.