Self-styled saviour led a bloody revolt

QUESTION Was the Taiping Rebellion in China led by a would-be messiah? THIS rebellion was the world’s bloodiest civil war. Lasting for 14 years, from 1850 to 1864, it nearly destroyed the powerful Qing dynasty and resulted in the deaths of 20million people.

It began under the leadership of Hong Xiuquan (1814-64), a failed civil service examination candidate who had a series of visions and proclaimed himself the son of God, the younger brother of Jesus Christ, sent to reform China.

Hong’s associate Feng Yunshan utilised Hong’s ideas to organise a new religious group, the God Worshippers’ Society (Bai Shangdi Hui), among the impoverished peasants of Guangxi province.

In January 1851, Hong proclaimed his new dynasty, calling it the Taiping Tianguo, and took the title of ‘Heavenly King’. It was run as a cult-like group, but under the Taipings, the Chinese language was simplified, and equality between men and women was decreed.

All property was to be held in common, and equal distribution of land according to a primitive form of communism was planned.

The rebels swept through southern China and, in 1853, seized Nanjing. The Taiping were eventually snuffed out in 1864. By then, the rebellion had devastated more than 16 provinces with tremendous loss of life and the destruction of more than 600 cities.

Maggie Lee, London N12. QUESTION Is it true that Hitler made Austrian schoolchildren study a second language other than German? AUSTRIAN schoolchildren may not have had to do this under the Nazis, but native children on my home island of Guernsey were forced to use German during their five-year occupation during the Second World War. Len Roberts, Hemel Hempstead, Herts.