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.

General Sengge Rinchen's pursuit of the Nien is ineffective, and the general himself is killed in Shantung in May 1865.

Thus, the last Imperial crack unit disappears.

However, with the government soon free from problems with the Taiping, Zeng Guofan, the victor of Nanking, succeeds Sengge as general and adopts a strategy of blockade.

Zeng enforces a policy of detaching the earth-wall masters from their men and of employing the latter as his troops.