The program of the King was to abolish the onerous and taxing feudal system of landlord domination and to divide the land equally among the peasants. Such a radical departure was never realized, and the program in fact became a tool of the landowners. Nevertheless, the armed might of the King extended his rule from Guangdong (Canton) in the south to Beijing in the north.

Great battles were fought, producing several stunning victories for the King. One battle in particular stands out. The Qing army was dubbed "Ever Victorious," but the insurgent Heavenly Army defeated not only this enemy but an English incursion as well.

The Ever Victorious (Qing) Army was under the leadership of an American, Frederick T. Ward. To my surprise I saw, in a museum in Nanjing, a tribute to Ward—a large headstone bearing Ward's name, put in place by the American Legion on May 29, 1923. The museum is wholly devoted to the events surrounding this upheaval.

As if these triumphs were not enough, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom gave rise to one special faction in addition to the King's party. This faction was headed by a self-styled 'brother of God' who claimed direct communication with the 'father of God'. So the rulers of Nanjing nearly became Trinitarians in practice, if not in the mysterious, unifying way achieved by most Christian denominations.

It is ironic that Christian preachers should have given rise to a militant but peculiar imitation of their own dogmas and that this imitation should assume the title  'heavenly peace' while waging aggressive warfare against the dominant Chinese emperor.

Perhaps a greater irony is the co-opting of this history of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom by the Communist Party. Instead of calling many aspects of the revolution foolish, the Party has applied Marxian dialectical reasoning to emphasize that, as Marx foretold, feudalism would be succeeded by capitalism—and this was the case. But the prediction that capitalism would be overthrown by communism seems now rather unlikely, to say the least.