Ch'ang-chih > Changzhi Shanxi (Shansi) China

Motley bands of peasants, army deserters, and salt smugglers have fomented sporadic outbreaks in China since the first decade of the nineteenth century.

These plundering gangs, called Nien, an offshoot of the Buddhist-inspired White Lotus secret societies, have ravaged northern Anhwei, southern Shantung, and southern Honan.

Oppressed by famine resulting from flooding during the 1850s and stimulated by government preoccupation with the Taiping, several Nien bands, having formed a coalition under the leadership of guerilla leader Zhang Lexing in 1852-53, begin to expand rapidly.

Many influential Chinese clans, with all their members, join the Nien cause; and among the Nien leaders, the clan chiefs play an important role.

Gentry of lower strata also join the Nien.

The greater part of the Nien force consists of poor peasants, although deserters from the government-recruited militias and salt smugglers are important as military experts.

The real cause of their strength is supposedly the people's support and sympathy for their leaders, but there is difficulty in creating a power center, because the Nien's basic social unit is the earth-wall community, where a powerful master exercises autonomy.

Chang Lo-hsing receives the title of “lord of the alliance” of the Nien in 1856, but he is far too weak to form a center.

The Nien leaders consolidate their bases north of the Huai River from 1856 to 1859 by winning over the masters of the earth-wall communities, consolidated villages that have been fortified for self-defense against the Taiping.

The Nien strategy is to use their powerful cavalry to plunder the outlying areas and carry the loot to their home bases.

The Nien, numbering from thirty thousand to fifty thousand soldiers and organized into five armies, begin to conduct raids into adjacent regions.

General Seng-ko-lin-ch'in, launching Imperial pacification efforts against the Nien rebels, leads a powerful cavalry into the affected area in 1862.

The Qing government had sent the Mongol cavalry General Sengge Richen, who had recently crushed a large Taiping army, to defeat the Nian in early 1856.

Sengge Rinchen's army has captured several fortified cities and destroyed most of the Nian infantry, and defeats and captures Zhang Lexing himself, along with his son and adopted son, after an ambush in 1863.

Prior to being executed, he confesses that he can no longer remember how many places he had plundered; he also claims to not know the whereabouts of his wife, who had been chased off by government troops, or his brother Zhang Minxing, who had left for the southwest along with several thousand men, and that other Nien leaders have already been killed.

The Nien lack any effective central leadership after Zhang is killed and their citadel captured in 1863, and are unable to coordinate their actions with the Taiping rebels in the south.

The Qing government had sent the Mongol General Sengge Rinchen, who had recently crushed a large Taiping army, to defeat the Nien, a collection of loosely affiliated gangs or groups in opposition to Qing rule, in early 1856.

Sengge Rinchen's army had captured several fortified cities in northern China and destroyed most of the Nien infantry, and killed Nien leader Zhang Lexing himself in an ambush.

The bulk of the Nien cavalry remains intact, however, and the Nien had soon reorganized.

In late 1864, the Nien movement gains new life as Taiping commanders Lai Wenguang and Fan Ruzeng arrive to take control of the Nien forces; those Taiping soldiers not defeated in the fall of the Taiping capital at Nanking join them.

The Nien begin to adopt guerrilla hit-and-run tactics, using mobile mounted units to strike at the weak points of the Qing armies and then retreating into strategic hamlets .

Sengge Rinchen's infantry-based army cannot stop the fast moving cavalry from devastating the countryside and launching surprise attacks on Imperial troops.

Seven thousand soldiers are transported to Tianjin via Shanghai to battle the Nien.

Li Hongzhang succeeds Zeng Guofan in 1866 and sets up encirclement lines along the Huang Ho and the Grand Canal.

Li Hongzhang pursues a strategy of surrounding the Nien fortresses, starving them into submission, and sacking their strongholds.