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Updated: June 13, 2025
I answered M. Jules Favre that we had had in China for millions of years socialists and socialistic uprisings; that the French Communists were but rough imitators of our Chinese Taipings; that we had had in 1230 a siege at Nankin which had lasted seven years, etc. In short, these Europeans are only beginning again our history with less grandeur and more barbarity. VERSAILLES, May 15, 1871.
The new taxation, likin, which, like the income-tax in England, is in origin purely a war-tax, by gripping inter-provincial commerce by the throat and rudely controlling it by the barrier-system, was suddenly disclosed as a new and excellent way of making felt the menaced sovereignty of the Manchus; and though the system was plainly a two-edged weapon, the first edge to cut was the Imperial edge; that is largely why for several decades after the Taipings China was relatively quiet.
This was supposed to be in revenge for the treachery of the Taipings, already alluded to, and they contended that these seven men were specially to blame.
This small force, which, after a few preliminary successes, received from the Chinese Government the title of the 'Ever Victorious Army', was able to hold the rebels at bay, but it could do no more. For two years Shanghai was in constant danger. The Taipings, steadily growing in power, were spreading destruction far and wide.
The great attack was fixed for the 11th of May. On the 10th Gordon determined to find out all he could about the position of the rebels on the city wall, so taking a small party, which included Hart and two of his faithful bodyguard, he went out to reconnoitre. No sooner had the Taipings recognized the Ever-Victorious Leader than they pelted shots at him.
Our old dynasty has had to fight against the invasions of the Mongols and against the insurrections of the Taipings. But three legitimate sovereigns for the same country, for a single throne! One has to come to Europe to see such things. However, the three Parisians gayly discussed the matter, and seemed to be the best friends in the world. LONDON, November 15, 1870.
The Taipings themselves were awed into a strange reverence. More than once their leaders, in a frenzy of fear and admiration, ordered the sharp-shooters not to take aim at the advancing figure of the faintly smiling Englishman. It is significant that Gordon found it easier to win battles and to crush mutineers than to keep on good terms with the Chinese authorities.
Five years later Gordon was fighting with the English and French armies in China. Shortly after he was made commander of a force that was commissioned by the Emperor of China to put down a rebellion of the Taipings, of so dangerous a character that it threatened to overturn the monarchy.
Historically, 1911 was the lineal descendant of 1900, which again was the offspring of the economic collapse advertised by the great foreign loans of the Japanese war, loans made necessary because the Taipings had disclosed the complete disappearance of the only raison d'être of Peking sovereignty, i.e. the old-time military power.
After the Taipings had got rid of Burgevine and his followers, they began to lose heart, for they felt that the principal reason why these men had deserted their cause was that it was a losing one.
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