The Battle of Nanjing (1853) () began after the fall of

Wuhan Wuhan (, ; ; ) is the capital of Hubei Province in the People's Republic of China. It is the largest city in Hubei and the most populous city in Central China, with a population of over eleven million, the ninth-most populous Chinese city an ...

on March8, 1853, and ended with the fall of the capital city of

Nanking Nanjing (; , Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and the second largest city in the East China region. T ...

on March19, 1853, to Taiping troops, a few days after the Qing Government evacuated the city. The remaining Qing garrison surrendered to the Taiping, but they were nonetheless executed.

Background

Taiping forces captured

Wuchang Wuchang forms part of the urban core of and is one of 13 urban districts of the prefecture-level city of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province, China. It is the oldest of the three cities that merged into modern-day Wuhan, and stood on the ri ...

in January 1853, but instead of marching north and directly attacking Beijing they decided to head east and first take control of

Nanjing Nanjing (; , Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and the second largest city in the East China region. T ...

with a force of 500,000+ men. The floating bridges initially used to in the siege of Wuchang were burned and destroyed to delay Qing advances led by

Xiang Rong Xiang Rong (; 18019August 1856) was a Chinese military general and politician. He was born in Wuxi County, Chongqing, and was promoted from the rank of a foot soldier during the later years of the Qing dynasty (16361912). He was involved in early ...

. Taiping forces took

Jiujiang Jiujiang (), formerly transliterated Kiukiang or Kew Keang, is a prefecture-level city located on the southern shores of the Yangtze River in northwest Jiangxi Province, People's Republic of China. It is the second-largest prefecture-level city ...

and Anqing in

Anhui province Anhui , (; formerly romanized as Anhwei) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the East China region. Its provincial capital and largest city is Hefei. The province is located across the basins of the Yangtze River ...

virtually unopposed. The Taipings reached Nanjing on March 6, with a force that had grown to almost 750,000. The Taiping besieged the city for thirteen days, until three tunnels had been dug beneath city walls in order to plant explosives. Two of them exploded on time but the third one detonated late, killing many Taiping troops in

friendly fire In military terminology, friendly fire or fratricide is an attack by belligerent or neutral forces on friendly troops while attempting to attack enemy/hostile targets. Examples include misidentifying the target as hostile, cross-fire while en ...

. On March 20, Taiping forces reached the

Imperial City In the Holy Roman Empire, the collective term free and imperial cities (german: Freie und Reichsstädte), briefly worded free imperial city (', la, urbs imperialis libera), was used from the fifteenth century to denote a self-ruling city that ...

, the home of the Manchu Garrison and defended by more than 30,000 Manchu bannermen families. Qing forces were unable to contain a Taiping

human wave attack The human wave attack, also known as the human sea attack, is an offensive infantry tactic in which an attacker conducts an unprotected frontal assault with densely concentrated infantry formations against the enemy line, intended to overrun an ...

and the Inner City fell quickly. The Taipings murdered about 30,000 manchu families of the defeated manchu soldiers after capturing the city. During the battle the Taiping forces used

spies Spies most commonly refers to people who engage in spying, espionage or clandestine operations. Spies or The Spies may also refer to: * Spies (surname), a German surname * Spies (band), a jazz fusion band * Spies (song), "Spies" (song), a song by ...

disguised as

Buddhist monks A ''bhikkhu'' (Pali: भिक्खु, Sanskrit: भिक्षु, ''bhikṣu'') is an ordained male in Buddhist monasticism. Male and female monastics ("nun", ''bhikkhunī'', Sanskrit ''bhikṣuṇī'') are members of the Sangha (Buddhist ...

who successfully entered the city. They set fires alerting the Taiping where the weak points in the city were.

References

Draft History of Qing The ''Draft History of Qing'' () is a draft of the official history of the Qing dynasty compiled and written by a team of over 100 historians led by Zhao Erxun who were hired by the Beiyang government of the Republic of China. The draft was publ ...

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