Red Turban Rebellion (1854–1856)

The initial core of the rebels were Tiandihui secret societies that were involved in both revolutionary activity and organised crime, such as prostitution, piracy, and opium smuggling.

[1] They were organized into scattered local lodges, each under a lodge-master (堂主) and in October 1854 elected Li Wenmao and Chen Kai as joint alliance-masters (盟主).

The Red Turbans were formed by religious members from Tiandihui, such as Qiu Ersao, who joined the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom with thousands more.

[4]: 660 [5][6] Viceroy of Guangdong Xu Guangjin (徐廣縉) sent braves (勇, or irregular militia), to the border to deal with the situation, but most of them defected to the rebels.

Provincial Governor Ye Mingchen then formulated a strategy of bribing lodge leaders to defect, which was successful in bringing Ling to heel, and the Emperor promoted him to Viceroy.

[8] A group, allied with the Small Swords Society in neighboring Fujian Province, succeeded in seizing the city of Huizhou.

[10]: 473  Failure to co-ordinate had exhausted the supplies of the rebel alliance, which faltered during the attack on the provincial capital Guangzhou, where the gentry had succeeded in raising a force of militia to defend the city alongside the British Royal Navy, which intervened on the government side.

The rebels retreated west to Guangxi and captured Xunzhou (modern-day Guiping) in 1855, renamed it to Xiujing (秀京), and made it their capital.

In September 1857, the Dacheng Kingdom managed to expand half of Guangxi, an area equal to northern Vietnam, and issued their own currency called Pingjing Shengbao (平靖勝寶).