Why do some people have a low opinion of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom?

Everyone should have a better understanding of the crimes committed by Taiping Army, a hairy devil, by reading local chronicles or listening to the oral traditions of the old people. The population loss of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was mainly caused by the Qing army. The Taiping army entered Nanjing, but the whole city was a massacre, and the Han people did not lose. However, after Zeng Guofan entered Nanjing, the whole city was slaughtered.

When the Taiping Army attacked Hangzhou, it only massacred the whole city (Li Xiucheng even promised the Eight Banners garrison in Hangzhou not to kill them if they surrendered), but did not slaughter the Han people on a large scale (except for a few traitors). The Qing army did all the slaughter for 1. The Qing dynasty was extremely cruel to the rebels and was bound to be exterminated. 2. Xiang Huai Army belongs to the "Yong Lian" local armed forces, and the source of military pay mainly comes from burning, killing and looting.

The birth of the Han bureaucratic forces is definitely not "accidental". The Taiping Army wiped out the elite of the Eight Banners (see Tuman in Nanjing and Hangzhou, the Taiping Army broke the camp in the south of the Yangtze River and the north of the Yangtze River, and wiped out the Sanglinqin cavalry), and there was no traitor army in the Qing Dynasty. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement is absolutely significant for shaking the rule of Qing Dynasty.

After the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the Eight Banners Army was badly weakened (for example, Hangzhou did not recover its original scale for decades after the war), and the Han army established an ordnance warehouse and a new army (Beiyang New Army was born out of Huai Army) to seize military power, which led to the situation that local provincial governments partially obeyed the Qing court in the late Qing Dynasty, which led to the power of the Qing court being overhead.

Is the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom "officials forcing the people to revolt"? This is a misunderstanding of many people. Although the late Qing Dynasty was corrupt, it was not as miserable as described in textbooks. For example, Jiangsu and Zhejiang are still relatively rich. There are so many people in China, why don't people from other places rebel? Only immigrants from northern Guangdong will rebel. Due to the rapid reproduction of Hakkas and the shortage of land, they migrated everywhere, robbed, competed for land and fought with others, and later created a large-scale war.

According to a rough calculation in the Population History of China, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom caused 74 million deaths. Of course, there are not only the plunder and slaughter of Taiping Army, but also the slaughter and destruction of Qing Army, as well as plague and famine, which have caused such a huge population loss for various reasons. However, the initiator of this disaster is the Taiping Army, which is the chief culprit. In addition to population loss, there are also economic losses. There are also many prosperous industrial and commercial towns in Taihu Lake basin, which have exhausted their vitality after the war.

History is written by winners, but history cannot be tampered with. A thief is a thief. It is still necessary for us to remember the huge losses caused by Hong Xiuquan and his gang to China and the great harm to China society. Although history has two sides, there are still many things that people don't like. Maybe the system is different from reality, just like the imagination of Datong era and the real face of society. Reality is so real and cruel.