Taiping War (All Mexico)

The Taiping War was a conflict waged from 1850 to 1864 between the Qing Dynasty and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, later supported by the United States on a semi-official basis. The war would eventually trigger the disintegration of the Qing Dynasty, starting the Ten Years' of Chaos within China and resulting in its division into numerous successor states. The war created long-lasting hatreds which still exist to this day, especially against the United States, which is perceived as the instigator of civil strife which would claim tens of millions of lives.

Background
Hong Xiuquan, a failed scholar, suffered from a lengthy illness, in which he experienced visions naming him the younger brother and successor of Jesus. He decided that it was his mission to exterminate China's evils, including traditional social structure, opium, alcohol, and the Emperor, and to replace it with his millenarian version of Christianity. He contacted American missionary Issachar Jacox Roberts, who enthusiastically agreed. He began smuggling in Western weapons to supply the nascent sect. He was also able to use his contacts in the West to secure funding and support from a number of Christian Evangelists, including wealthy businessmen and merchants, who formed the Society for the Succour of Chinese Christians. Hong was able to secretly recruit tens of thousands of men and arm them with rifles. He gradually gained the support of local communities by suppressing rampant bandits, bring much of Guanxi province sunder his de facto rule.

Armed Uprising
The Qing finally decided it was necessary to curb Hong's power, and ordered him to stand his private army down. He refused. His troops crushed a Qing force sent to subdue them and declared the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, initially ruling only Guanxi. His troops forcibly conscripted hundreds of thousands of peasants, implementing a policy of forced conversion.

The Qing counterattacked, seeking to cut Hong off from arms shipments along the coast. The badly-armed, badly-trained Qing army was no match for Hong's well-armed troops, who shattered the Qing offensive in a series of battles along the coast, leaving around 50,000 dead on either side. A Taiping offensive successfully took the city of Nanjing, which was renamed to Jianing, or "Heavenly Capital", by the victorious Taiping forces. The Taiping offensive expelled the Qing from Jianxi and Hunan, isolating the wealthy Gaungdong province in the south and triggering uprisings among the Hmong in Yunnan.

The second year of the war opened with a Qing "Winter Offensive", aiming to retake Nanjing. Over the winter, however, Hong had imported massive amounts of foreign (mainly American) artillery and small arms. His troops' greater firepower enabled them to again halt the Qing on the Yangtze River. This left the Emperor largely discredited, and several generals attempted a palace coup in February of 1852. For three days, fighting raged in the streets of Beijing before imperial forces were victorious. The Emperor recalled and executed almost all of his senior officers for fear of trachery, hamstringing his troops' effectiveness, and leaving almost all under the command of junior officers.

While the Qing were rocked by internal unrest, Hong's troops launched a lighting advance on Canton, besieging 200,00 Qing troops in the city. Homg's adviser Roberts successfully used his contacts to have Chinese Christians open the city's gates to Hong, and it fell on June 8th. This was a significant blow to the Qing.