The Tae-Ping Rebellion

During this rebellion in China, which broke out in 1850, women were as active as men in all military duties.

In Nankin in 1853 half a million of women from various parts of the country were formed into brigades of thirteen thousand each, under female officers. Of these, ten thousand were picked women, drilled and garrisoned in the city. The rest were compelled to undergo the drudgery of digging moats, making earthworks, erecting batteries, etc. This politico-religious rebellion is the most remarkable of recent events in China. The leader of the rebellion, Hungsewtseuen, having been led by the perusal of some Christian tracts to renounce idolatry, founded a society called "God-Worshippers."

In 1850 this society came into collision with the imperial authorities, the state religion of China being the Confucian. Hungsewtseuen persuaded himself and his followers that he had received a divine commission to uproot idolatry, and establish a universal peace.

He assumed the title of Tien-wang, or Heavenly Prince.

His followers held that Tien-wang was the Son of God, and worshipped him accordingly.

Polygamy was a dark feature of their religious system: Tien-wang had thirty wives. With immense armies of converts, men and women, he laid desolate some of the best cultivated provinces of China.

The city of Nankin was held by them until 1864, when the rebellion was finally suppressed by the government, assisted by English, French, and American officers.

The leader, Hungsewtseuen, perished by his own hands amid the blazing ruins of the palace he had occupied for eleven years.

Nankin became again the seat of the Chinese government.

The recapture of Pekin in 1860 by the English and French was followed by a treaty which granted important privileges to European merchants, and made it the direct interest of the English, French, and American governments, to re-establish order in China. China in art, literature, politics, was like a precocious child. It developed early, and then that development was arrested; and every thing has gone on without improvement for centuries.

[These notes upon "Tent on the Beach" have been kindly approved by the author of the poem.]