March 19, 1853 · Jiangsu Province Theater
March 19, 1853
After sweeping northward through Hunan and Hubei provinces and capturing Wuhan in January 1853, the Taiping Heavenly Army descended the Yangtze River in an enormous armada of captured boats, carrying hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians. Nanjing — the former Ming Dynasty capital and China's second city — fell after a siege of just eleven days. The Taiping captured the city by tunneling under the city walls and detonating mines that blew breaches in the fortifications. Approximately 30,000 Manchu garrison troops and their families were slaughtered in the aftermath — the Taiping made no distinction between soldiers and Manchu civilians, whom their ideology condemned as alien occupiers to be exterminated.
Commanders