A failed examination candidate who became convinced he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ, Hong Xiuquan launched a millenarian rebellion in southern China in 1850 that swelled into what is often called the bloodiest civil war in history. His Taiping Heavenly Kingdom held its capital at Nanjing for over a decade, banned opium and foot-binding, proclaimed communal land ideals, and nearly toppled the Qing dynasty before being crushed in 1864 by provincial Chinese armies aided by Western-led forces. Death estimates — from combat, massacre, famine, and disease — run to twenty million or more.
He failed the imperial examinations four times. Then Hong Xiuquan fell ill, had visions of an old man and a younger one in a heavenly hall, and later read a Christian missionary tract. From it he concluded that he was the second son of God, the younger brother of Jesus, sent to drive the demons from China. The demons were the ruling Manchu dynasty and the old Chinese gods. Millions of the poor and the desperate believed him. The movement he founded became a rebellion, then a rival kingdom, then what many would call the bloodiest civil war the world has ever seen. Before it was drowned in blood in 1864, it nearly destroyed the Qing empire and left perhaps twenty million or more dead, one of the deadliest conflicts of the entire nineteenth century.