Hong Xiuquan's madness began with his third failure in the government examination.
In the Qing dynasty, if you want to be admitted to a freshman, that is, a scholar, you need to pass several exams, including county exam, government exam and academy exam. There is also a boy's fame before students, as long as they pass the county exam and the government exam.
Hong Xiuquan was born in a farming and reading family, formerly known as Hong Renkun and nicknamed Huo Xiu. Although his family is not rich, he can get by. Therefore, Hong Xiuquan was able to study with the teachers hired by the village at an early age and read Confucian classics such as the Four Books and the Five Classics.
When Hong Xiuquan 15 years old took the county exam, he lived up to expectations and scored among the best. As a result, Hong Xiuquan became the star of hope for the Hong family. No one in his family has been admitted to fame for generations, and people are looking forward to Hong Xiuquan's success.
Hong Xiuquan was also full of ambition and took the subsequent government examination. As a result, I was so sad that I didn't even pass the exam three times. At this time, the 25-year-old Hong Xiuquan could not withstand repeated blows. He was very ill and was unconscious several times.
During this period, he dreamed that he met his father God under the guidance of his mother in heaven. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. The heavenly father gave Hong Xiuquan a seal and a sword named "Snow in the Clouds" and named it "King of Heavenly King Avenue in Taiping", so that he could slay human demons.
The name of God is Jehovah, which was translated as "Lord of Fire" at that time. Hong Xiuquan was influenced by China's traditional thought. In order to avoid taboo, he changed the name of Hong Huoxiu to "Quan" given by God, and the name "Hong Xiuquan" came into being.
When Hong Xiuquan was ill, he often shouted beheading and killing people. When he woke up, he was silent and behaved strangely. He doesn't even recognize his father as his father, saying that God is his father. When the neighbors saw him, they all thought he was crazy.
After a period of rest, Hong Xiuquan slowly returned to normal, and everyone thought he was well. Hong Xiuquan himself was not willing to fail in the examination room, so he took the official exam again and failed in Sun Shan again. This time, Hong Xiuquan was completely disappointed. He began to read the advice of Christian Liang Fa. Combined with his dream when he was seriously ill, Hong Xiuquan thought that he was the youngest son of God, the younger brother of Jesus, and with the help of his good friend Feng Yunshan and his brother Hong Rengan, he founded the worship of God.
Hong Xiuquan's thoughts of equality between men and women, filial piety to parents, prohibition of killing, prohibition of prostitution and prohibition of stealing. , soon matched, the number of believers is increasing. By 185 1, when Hong Xiuquan was 47 years old, he launched the jintian uprising to establish the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and added similar slogans: plow the fields, eat rice, wear clothes and earn money. Under the call of these slogans, the scale of the rebel army grew rapidly. Two years later, Nanjing was captured and renamed Tianjing, and its capital was here.
With the base camp, Hong Xiuquan became even crazier.
The first thing he did was to ban Confucian classics such as the Four Books and Five Classics, and ordered them all to be burned. Although under the intervention of Wang Yang of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Hong Xiuquan made a concession and agreed to revise and publish the four books and five classics, it was not until the demise of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
However, banning books is not the craziest place for Hong Xiuquan. On the one hand, he criticized Confucian classics and advocated equality for all, but on the other hand, he made a strict hierarchy and vigorously promoted the dross of Confucianism such as monarch, monarch, minister, father and son, husband and wife. Then there are big rows of seats, paying attention to ostentation and extravagance, emphasizing that there must be a distinction between seniority and inferiority.
When meeting Hong Xiuquan, all officials of the civil and military departments should kneel down and shout "Long live", and when meeting the king, they should kneel down and shout "Chitose" or avoid. Otherwise, the lighter will be fined and imprisoned, and the heavier will be beheaded directly.
Then, Hong Xiuquan began to collect money.
He ordered that all trophies, such as gold and silver, must be turned over to the sacred state treasury. Among them, except a small part as munitions, all became luxuries enjoyed by senior bureaucrats of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom began a capital construction frenzy, building palaces and palaces on a large scale. Then with gold and silver jewelry, countless decorations were created. Even the clean buckets and chamber pot are inlaid with pure gold.
When the property was insufficient, they began to search for the people's fat and paste.
Is this equality? Therefore, the demise of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is just around the corner.
With money, the rest is to collect beautiful women.
Hong Xiuquan ordered monogamy under the banner of equality. However, kings, princes and officials at different levels can get married more. According to Tianguifu Hong, the son of Hong Xiuquan, Hong Xiuquan has 88 concubines. When Tianguifu Hong was a teenager, she was accompanied by four women.
High-level officials of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom hold beauty contests from time to time for their own enjoyment, one for you and one for me. According to the level, everyone has one.
Let's look at the soldiers and civilians at the bottom. Strict monogamy, separate camps for men and women, and the establishment of a women's club. Men must be in men's camp, women must be in women's camp, and even husband and wife must be separated. Hong Xiuquan and his ministers and bureaucrats, holding beautiful women one by one, lie in a gentle township, but let the soldiers and the people separate, which is simply inhuman. Even some people, after being discovered, were directly executed because of private meetings, which was extremely cruel.
With money and beautiful women, the next thing to fight for is to kill people, that is, the struggle for power.
Although Hong Xiuquan has lived in Tianwangfu for more than ten years, he has hardly left the palace, but he has no desire to control power. In particular, East Wang Yang often suppressed his heavenly father under the pretext of coming, which made Hong Xiuquan even more dissatisfied. As a result, Hong Xiuquan created the craziest event in the history of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom-Tianjing Event.
With the help of North Wang Wei Changhui, Wing Wang Shi Dakai and Yan Wang Qin Rigang who were dissatisfied with East Wang Yang, they successfully provoked civil strife. As a result, the East King, the North King and the Prince all died, and Shi Dakai, the wing king, was subsequently forced out.
Hong Xiuquan began to be a relative and made great contributions to Wang. Finally, it almost reached the point of a big sale. The title of Grand Duke was even given to many people at the same time. Finally, simply cancel the special title and call them kings. According to incomplete laws, from the Tianjing Incident in 1856 to the death of Hong Xiuquan in 1964, there were more than 2,700 kings, which was described as "as many as crucian carp crossed the river".
There are more princes, so you should enjoy them, so you continue to rob money and food, build a palace, and then there are many beautiful women in the palace. It is conceivable that at this time of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, not only Hong Xiuquan was crazy, but everyone was crazy.
In the end, Tianjing was besieged, and purchasing food had to be exploited layer by layer. When food was in short supply, Li Xiucheng suggested that Hong Xiuquan break through. Hong Xiuquan took out his Bible unhurriedly and gave a lecture to Li Xiucheng on the spot, saying that God would definitely come back to save us. If you want to go, God will give us food.
Hong Xiuquan imitated the story in Exodus of the Old Testament that Moses lacked food and God sent down food, saying that we can also eat "manna" for a living. To put it bluntly, the so-called "manna" is to find all kinds of weeds and weeds. Hong Xiuquan also personally took the lead in eating "manna".
Then, Hong Xiuquan either had indigestion or ate poisonous weeds and died of poisoning. Soon, he fell ill and died, ending his crazy life and really seeing God.