Taiping Rebellion

The Taiping Rebellion was a large-scale revolt in China from 1850 to 1864, during the Qing Dynasty, by an army led by heterodox Christian convert Hong Xiuquan. He established the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (pinyin: Tàipíng Tiān Guó), namely Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace with its capital at Nanjing and gained control of significant parts of southern China, at its height ruling over about 30 million people. The rebels tried to institute several social reforms, such as strict separation of the sexes, abolition of foot binding, land socialization, "suppression" of private trade, and the replacement of Confucianism, Buddhism and Chinese folk religion by a form of Christianity, holding that Hong Xiuquan was the younger brother of Jesus. Troops were nicknamed the Long hair (pinyin: cháng máo), as they sported a different queue to the Qing. Qing government papers refer to them as "hair rebels"(pinyin: Fà Zéi).
The Taiping areas were constantly besieged and harassed by Qing forces; the rebellion was eventually put down by the Qing army aided by French and British forces. Guinness Book of World Records calls this the bloodiest civil war in history, with an estimated death toll of between 20 and 30 million dead. Mao Zedong viewed the Taiping as early heroic revolutionaries against a corrupt feudal system. Today, artifacts from the Taiping period can be seen at the Taiping Kingdom History Museum in Nanjing.

(Source Wikipedia)