Li Yonghe () was a 19th-century rebel leader from Yunnan province,

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...

China.

Rebellion

In the autumn of 1859, as the

was plagued by the Taiping rebellion, Nian rebellion and Panthay rebellion, Li Yonghe, with two brothers Lan Chaoding () and Lan Chaozhu () raised a rebellion in their home province of Yunnan. They pledged to "kill rich landlords and officials" and to "defend the poor peasants." They used the name ''Daming Shuntian'' (), or "Great Ming following

Heaven Heaven, or the Heavens, is a common Religious cosmology, religious cosmological or supernatural place where beings such as deity, deities, angels, souls, saints, or Veneration of the dead, venerated ancestors are said to originate, be throne, ...

". Li declared himself "King-following-Heaven" (), while Lan Chaoding and Lan Chaozhu were declared Grand Marshal and Vice Marshal respectively. In September 1859, Li and Lan became members of the outlaw brotherhood Gelaohui, with whom they had significant contact with through the opium trafficking trade. In February 1860, the rebel army of 100,000 troops crossed into Sichuan province, occupying more than 40 prefectures and counties and capturing the city of Mianyang. The rebel army expanded to nearly 300,000. In 1861, Qing commander Luo Bingzhang was tasked to suppress the rebels with the newly established

Xiang Army file:Zeng Guofan.png, 150px, Zeng Guofan, the leader of the Xiang Army The Xiang Army or Hunan Army () was a standing army organized by Zeng Guofan from existing regional and village militia forces called ''tuanlian'' to contain the Taiping Rebel ...

. By October 1862 Li had been defeated, captured and transported to Chengdu where he was executed. Lan Chaoding had similarly been killed in battle. The surviving rebels under Lan Chaozhu retreated northward to

Shaanxi province Shaanxi is a province in north Northwestern China. It borders the province-level divisions of Inner Mongolia to the north; Shanxi and Henan to the east; Hubei, Chongqing, and Sichuan to the south; and Gansu and Ningxia to the west. Shaanxi ...

, where Lan was declared ''Dahan Xianwang'' (), or "Manifested King of the Great Han". The rebel forces linked up with Taiping Tianguo forces under Chen Baocai, and Lan received the title ''Wen Wang'' (), or "Cultured King" from the Heavenly King. He was also defeated and killed in 1864. The total casualties of the rebellion are estimated at over 100,000. The rebellion was one of the first in China to have explicitly anti-Western politics, framing Europeans and Americans as "enemies of Heaven."

References

{{Authority control 19th-century Chinese people 1862 deaths Generals from Yunnan Qing dynasty people Qing dynasty rebels