The Autobiography of the Chung-Wang
The statement written by the Taiping general Li Xiucheng, the Faithful King, while a prisoner after the fall of Nanjing in 1864, with the Qing commander’s reports of the capture printed after it. It tells the last days of the Heavenly Kingdom from inside.
The text is headed the “autographic deposition” of the Chung-wang “during his confinement after the capture of Nanking”, written when he was called on for his defence. It begins with the early life of Hong Xiuquan as Li had heard it and then follows Li’s own campaigns to the fall of the city. The appendix prints, in the same translator’s English, memorials of the Qing commander Zeng Guofan, the first of them dated 26 July 1864, and the edicts that answered them.
Li wrote as a captive addressing his captors, and what survives is the text as they kept it and as Lay translated it a year later. The Western dates in the English, such as 30 June for Hong’s death, are the translator’s conversions. The memorials are the victors’ reports to the throne. Each is cited for what its author states.
Cited in
- 1851 to 1864, firm date